Rejecting Proportionality — Bartlet Demands a Disproportionate Strike
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Fitzwallace presents three retaliatory strike scenarios, emphasizing proportionality and minimal risk.
Bartlet challenges the virtue of a proportional response, questioning its effectiveness and predictability.
Bartlet demands a disproportional response, rejecting the notion of a ritualized retaliation.
Bartlet storms out, ordering the team to devise a more impactful response.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Measured calm under pressure, tinged with quiet resignation to limited options
Admiral Fitzwallace sits attentively, calmly briefs the three proportional scenarios including Pericles One details, defends the doctrine factually when pressed, interjects politely to Leo, and absorbs Bartlet's tirade without visible fluster, maintaining professional composure.
- • Present viable, low-risk military options clearly
- • Uphold doctrine of proportionality as the only realistic path
- • Proportional response minimizes escalation and U.S. casualties
- • Disproportional action risks uncontrollable war
Somber attentiveness amid rising tension
Secretary Hutchinson is present at the table as civilian oversight, named directly by Bartlet in the order to reconvene with a new scenario, participating silently in the briefing absorption and standing upon Bartlet's exit.
- • Coordinate interagency response per presidential directive
- • Balance military input with civilian control
- • Civilian authority supersedes uniformed advice
- • Proportionality aligns with political accountability
Seething rage laced with profound grief, barely contained behind rhetorical precision
President Bartlet dominates the room, seated but commanding attention as he repeatedly challenges the presented options with pointed questions, gestures emphatically, bangs his fist on the table to punctuate his demand for disproportional force, rises abruptly, and exits, leaving stunned silence.
- • Force military advisors to abandon proportional doctrine
- • Establish a precedent of overwhelming retaliation to deter future attacks
- • Proportional responses signal weakness and invite repetition
- • True deterrence requires disproportionate force to instill terror
Tense apprehension masking steadfast allegiance to the President
Leo McGarry sits beside Bartlet, attempts to redirect focus to Pericles One briefing with 'Sir, if you would turn your attention...', affirms standard procedure supportively, and interjects mildly to manage the exchange, standing last as Bartlet exits.
- • De-escalate confrontation to keep briefing on track
- • Protect Bartlet's authority while guiding toward feasible options
- • Institutional norms of proportionality ensure stability
- • Bartlet's instincts need channeling, not contradiction
Guarded shock at the proposed escalation, professionally restrained
General Clancy, as part of the team, briefly affirms operational readiness with 'We're there,' later challenges Bartlet's escalation directly with 'Are you suggesting we carpet-bomb Damascus?', standing silently as the President departs.
- • Clarify implications of disproportional orders
- • Assert military realism against impulsive directives
- • Carpet-bombing equates to reckless overreach
- • Military advice must prioritize feasibility and proportionality
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The Roosevelt Room oval conference table functions as the physical locus of confrontation: Fitzwallace and staff spread scenarios on it, and Bartlet bangs his fist on its polished surface to punctuate his demand, scattering the room's procedural rhythm and converting rhetoric into a violent, publicized command.
Fitzwallace's steaming coffee cup appears at the opening as a small domestic detail that underscores the officers' calm; its casual presence contrasts with Bartlet's sudden eruption and highlights how routine procedure meets personal catastrophe.
The Pericles One strike packet is the central operational object: a coded plan detailing targets (two ammo dumps, a bridge, Syrian intelligence agency). It is the briefing's focal point and the object against which Bartlet measures the sufficiency and predictability of proportional responses.
The 'ammo dumps' exist here as mapped, discussed objects — targetable caches plotted on Pericles One and invoked by staff to justify proportional strikes; they function as clinical coordinates that irritate the President for their predictability and lack of symbolic heft.
The abandoned railroad bridge appears as a plotted target on the briefing slides; it stands for sanitized military logic — a strikeable object whose emptiness makes a proportional attack tactically feasible but narratively unsatisfying to Bartlet.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Damascus is invoked verbally as the hypothetical site of extreme, carpet-bombing retaliation when the President calls for 'total disaster.' It functions as the potential battleground whose naming raises the stakes of the rhetorical escalation.
The two ammo dumps exist as mapped coordinates within the Pericles One plan; in this event they are invoked to illustrate the proportionality argument, their emptiness and predictability used by staff to argue restraint.
The Situation Room is the operational heart where doctrine, intelligence, and presidential will collide. It provides secure briefing conditions and the institutional language that the President both invokes and violently rejects, turning a procedural venue into the scene of a moral rupture.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"The bombing that destroys Syrian Intelligence (in beat_b9919a0f87204720) is a direct result of the President's demand for a disproportional response (in beat_e1fe84c660037c14), showing the consequences of his initial impulse."
"The bombing that destroys Syrian Intelligence (in beat_b9919a0f87204720) is a direct result of the President's demand for a disproportional response (in beat_e1fe84c660037c14), showing the consequences of his initial impulse."
"Bartlet's demand for a disproportional response (in beat_0776413780209e6e) escalates to Fitzwallace presenting the catastrophic Hassan airport strike option (in beat_529b901bffc3ca71), showing the progression of military considerations."
Key Dialogue
"FITZWALLACE: "All three scenarios are comprehensive, meet the obligations of proportional response and pose minimal threat to U.S. personal and assets.""
"BARTLET: "What's the virtue of a proportional response?...They hit an airplane, so we hit a transmitter, right? That's a proportional response.""
"BARTLET: "A disproportional response. Let the word ring forth from this time and this place, you kill an American, any American, we don't come back with a proportional response, we come back [bangs fist on table] with total disaster!""