Letter 137: Playing 'Chicken' with lran

"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice...."

--LTG Flynn (Ret.), National Security Advisor, February 1, 2017

Those who follow the way
counsel against war
knowing the use of force
will simply create more
war and fill the land with thorns

--Lao-tsu, circa 550 B.C.

BLUF: The heated rhetoric about Iran is frightening. The Trump Administration does not yet know what Iran’s intentions are with these missile tests and possible nuclearization in the future as well as what Iran views as its security interests. 

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hossein-askari/uniformed-threats-against_b_14619770.html
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/03/statement-national-security-advisor-michael-t-flynn-iran
• http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/mattis-us-has-no-plans-to-increase-mideast-forces 

Historical backdrop for me. Forty years ago, in college, l was studying the actions of Germany, following Bismarck’s deft leadership as Chancellor, in the run-up to the 'Great War'. In a book I read, the Berlin press, apparently at the behest of the government, often sounded the war drums to coerce concessions out of other countries. This policy or practice had a name like 'hair-trigger'. 

http://topppaper.com/the-role-of-germany-in-the-development-of-world/ 

That book’s author, I think, was arguing that the climate of fear made the ease and consequence of miscalculation far more dangerous, not to mention begging the rivals eventually to call the Kaiser's bluff. Ten years ago there were similar 'bleatings' of war drums, climaxed (at least on my visual radar) by a 'Time' magazine and other periodical covers with menacing portraits of President Ahmadinejad looking like Mephistopheles.  

Those covers recalled my hearing casual remarks that people made in Baghdad in the Summer of 2004, when the United States were in the upswing of a weapons procurement boom, "Better brush up on your Persian, dude -- it's Christmas in Teheran." The whole idea of invading Iran in 2004 was, to state it mildly, dissociated from reality and arguably evil. Operation Iraqi Freedom was already mired in difficulties. 

http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2015/09/letter-113-do-we-say-iran-or-i-ran.html

Iraq had been by far the easiest of the three members of the Axis-of-Evil (plus Syria) to invade: half-starved population from sanctions; wrecked infrastructure; minimal air-defense; flat terrain for easy avenues of approach; military without spare parts, etc. Iran had a better economy, double the population; a far better-provisioned military; and, a mountainous terrain. In short, if Iraq was not our Syracuse, Iran would be.

The Folly of the Toupée Trigger. The most tragic aspect about this ill-advised and unecessary game of chicken -- sponsored by the Lord of the Lies and his Loose Bannon -- is that my conviction that, while Iran may detest Israël, more for being a Western Democracy throwing regional dictatorships (like the theocratic tyranny in Iran) into disrepute, she truly fears Pakistan. 

https://thewire.in/41862/the-rising-threat-against-shia-muslims-in-pakistan/

Recently, I was swatted down by a military expert here in Birmingham for asking about the Pakistani threat to Iran; the dismissive answer indicated more the tunnel-vision taken by those tied to the military and the military-industrial nexus, constrained by threat assessments that lock in false consenses. Nevertheless, as an outsider with some experience on the ground, I will stick to my thesis in that case. 

The brutal treatment of Shi´ites in Pakistan plus that failed state having 155 nuclear weapons are the real reasons for Iran going nuclear. Lastly, Iran has a cosmopolitan middle-class we failed to support in 2009. If we play our cards right, they will overthrow the religious tyrants. These people have historically been neutral, perhaps pre-disposed, toward Israël (obviously, our #1 priority).

Letter 136: When Facts can be Feckless

"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." --George Orwell

One aspect of fact-checking concerns me. I refer to this article about Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions lll apparently having little time for disabled children. In a time when the President, as the Lord of the Lies, is often compared to Messrs Hitler and Mussolini, this indirect allegation has serious implications of, via indirect references to, the eugenics policies of the Third Reich. The article has been fact-checked by ‘Snopes’ as being true

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/29/1605134/-Jeff-Sessions-Protections-for-disabled-kids-are-ruining-America-s-schools 

We all know that we are all under assault when it comes to the truth these days and that assault hurts everyone for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, fact-checking unintentionally misleads us when the context is not spelled out clearly. Senator Sessions is a very decent man and has served Alabama well; in many ways, he is a model of the emerging post-racial South. True, Senator Sessions has the attributes of the Southern gentleman. Yet he suspends race in his extension of his personal honor to others, especially when it comes to prosecution of racial crimes, committed by blacks or whites. He also has displayed the courage at times to call the public's attention to the short-comings of popular policies (e.g., criticizing some aspects of mainstreaming disabled children). ‘Snopes’ assigned a green-check for 'true' on a speech Senator Sessions gave years ago.

http://www.snopes.com/jeff-sessions-slammed-protections-for-disabled-students/  

The bare-bones truth – the words stated in isolation – appears to say one thing when the context plainly implies another. The Senator was obviously not referring to all disabled children who are being mainstreamed but to those who come from homes, usually broken and awash in drugs, where children receive no discipline and have no role models if they are lucky; or criminal role models, if they are not. Senator Sessions, I suspect, was not deeming these children as evil or somehow bad.

Like most of us, the Senator realizes these living cast-aways do not have and, barring some miracle, will not have a chance to assume their fully ordained statures in the eyes of God (or Justice, etc.). Senator Sessions, like most Republicans, believes that every just society should set out to facilitate such 'self-actualization' for as many of its citizens as possible. This societal ambition, this social contract, calls for hard choices and gutsy policies, not votes purchased by dependency.

Nevertheless, the damaging start in life of these untutored students is regrettably and undeniably disrupting class-rooms. This reality is what Senator Sessions intended to address: the dynamics of the class-room where two or three hurting children make learning well-nigh impossible for the great majority of their better behaved class-mates. He was not saying that this particular segment of 'disabled' children is wrong; its members are children, after all, who can not know better if they are not shown better.

The problem with 'Snopes' is that, while its opinion did clarify the context, eventually, those details came too late as many readers likely saw only the green-check, indulged their confirmation bias and moved on. That scan-to-pan bias trivializes the immense pain borne by millions of our children. They bear the crippling scars and daily burden of being under-privileged, under-nourished and under-bred. Had the Black Panthers in the 1960s flourished peaceably, these troubling issues, at least in urban ghettoes, could have been addressed.

As far as I can see, I strongly suspect that the Senator had a compassionate alternative in mind. Since, as I have read or heard somewhere, these unsocialized children typically number one, two or three to a class room, and are most often boys, why not segregate them into separate classrooms run by former Marine drill sergeants so they have a chance to mature and learn? These children are screaming for guidance and attention; they thirst for a male role model, at least as a part-time father figure.

In that manner, then, everyone has a better chance of getting what (s)he needs: children cursed by the accident of birth into a maelstrom of malevolence get the manly attention they need and the rest -- able-bodied and disabled alike -- get on with their studies. For those who will screech, holler, hoot and boot -- especially those educated in private schools or wealthy suburban public schools where these lost little ones never show up on the radar -- I advise your doing two things.

• Watch the confirmation hearings of Senator Sessions for Attorney General and then see if you can rightly look people in the eye and say that the Senator is somehow deficient or malevolent and then do one of the following.
• Read the novel, Lord of the Flies. OR
• Watch the 'Miri' episode of Star Trek (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KII_6yhkEL4).

Letter 135: a letter to President Trump

"You have to think anyway, so why not think big?"

-- President Donald Trump

"Oh, good grief..."

-- Charlie Brown, American philosopher

The Honorable Donald J. Trump

President

The United States of America

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Friday, January 20, 2017

Dear President Trump,

First of all, I confess to being surprised not only by your nomination, but also your election. Accordingly, I congratulate you for both feats. Mr President, you led a repudiation of what many view as a corrupt establishment at the beck and call of Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. Republican counterparts of Senator / Secretary Clinton (e.g., Governors Kasich and Bush) stumbled badly and quickly in the primaries.

Mr President, you and the other ‘change’ candidates from four peripheral parties or movements obtained four million more votes than did the quintessential candidate of the establishment. Your clarion call of ‘Lock her up!’ was inappropriate at best and yet it engaged people across the Republic sufficiently for you to eke out a victory in the Electoral College. While your hard-earned victory was far from the mandate you claim, it serves as a wake-up call to people across our country.

Nevertheless, you are failing to be transparent, Mr President. You have failed to acknowledge the blatant manipulation of the Trump family charity to pay down personal debts. Mr President, you have yet to release your tax returns, at least to a bi-partisan group of Congressional leaders meeting in a confidential setting. Sir, you continue to defy not only the will and sense of the Congress but the tradition of Presidents freeing themselves from competing personal financial interests prone to corruption.

Specifically, Mr President, Article-1; Section-9; Clause-8 of the Constitution clarifies that, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Such off-shore emoluments may include subsidized interest rates, waived fees and / or permissive loan terms from foreign banks, especially state-owned banks, on which you have built at least a significant part of your personal wealth. Such subsidized borrowing costs, increase the cash-flows generated by your projects. That incremental increase of cash flows from subsidized costs, Mr President, would arguably represent an emolument.

Mr President, you may argue that private banks or investors based overseas do not violate that clause designed to prevent corruption since they are non-governmental actors. Many, perhaps most, of these lenders are based in countries with authoritarian régimes. Under such régimes, companies that surpass certain asset levels – as your banks almost certainly do – are subject to the highly intrusive and influential scrutiny of their operations by these régimes. In a sense, such ‘private’ financiers are de facto state-managed entities.

Mr President, your insistence that you need not be bound by the uniform practice of governmental ethics, in place for at least a half-century, remains troubling. The preliminary evidence adduced against you may indicate the commission of an impeachable offense from Day-1. Mr President, this situation is not just another law-suit to contest but your personal contest of the rule-of-law. Please take a page out of your predecessor’s play-book and stand tall for integrity as the Spirit of the law and not as a matter of law.

Sir, as a fellow Republican, I request that you apologize publicly to President Obama for the calumny you have directed his way, starting with your utterly bogus accusation about his birth status. Additionally, I request that you apologize publicly to President Peña Nieto for your heated rhetoric against his country and the people he serves, especially as you look to be following President Obama’s policy of deporting jailed (likely criminal) illegal aliens.

The next stride toward reconciliation is to visit a leading Islamic Cultural center to assure the great majority of our Muslim compatriots, who practice and actively promote peaceful citizenship, that they, too, are afforded the protections of other Americans or resident aliens of good standing. As a private citizen, racism was a regrettable luxury; but you are the President, now. 

Lastly, Mr President, I would like to indicate my support for many of your trade and economic policies. Several of your foreign policy ideas are also refreshing. Please, Sir, consider taking the following actions.

• Instituting an investment tax credit will help spur basic manufacturing.
• Going slow on dismantling the Affordable Care Act may indicate that only a few changes are required:

1. amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to exclude exemptions with respect to health insurance;
2. permit inter-state sales of health-care without repealing McCarran-Ferguson;
3. allow British, Canadian and AustraZealand carriers to compete;
4. limit punitive damages under law suits and cap pay-outs under mal-practice claims;
5. penalize doctors for practicing defensive medicine;
6. provide or subsidize end-of-life insurance;
7. federalize malpractice insurance; as well as,
8. eliminate tax breaks related to the provision of health insurance by corporations.

• Waiving all IRS penalties outstanding for early retirement fund withdrawals after 2007, when people's net worth plummeted, needed to care for elderly parents and / or sending children to college will benefit the middle class.
• Deferring tax cuts in favor of refunding penalty payments made on early retirement withdrawals between 2007 and 2012 will benefit the middle class.

Mr President, my fervent hope is that you succeed. Much of that will rest with you and the example you choose to set for the rest of us.

Thank you and best regards,

Ned
Edward J. McDonnell III, CFA PMP
Birmingham, Alabama.

Letter #134: a thank you letter to President Obama

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

                                                                         -- Saint Matthew; Chapter 5; Verse 11

"The future rewards those who press on. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on."

-- President Barack Obama

The Honorable Barack H. Obama

President

The United States of America

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Friday, January 20, 2017

Dear President Obama,

Today, I write you as an American who is deeply ambivalent about some of the policies you have pursued and still who gives you a well-merited ‘two-thumbs-up’ rating. Why? The answer is simple, I am now old enough and have been around long enough to know that the majority of those ideas I deem innovative today will either be refuted in the short-to-medium term or change over the longer term.

Elements of your troubling foreign policy – in Syria and Ukraine --provide apt examples of why my ambivalence has not faded. For years, Mr President, I have come to fear that your behavior appears to be one of appeasement in the face of direct assaults on democracies – whether in place now or inchoate – in Ukraine and Eastern Europe as well as one of turning a blind eye toward appalling carnages, such as those in in Syria and México. 

Mr President, I truly do not believe you are weak or prone to appeasement when I remember to recall the following factors. 

1. The interventionist ideas I support, as opposed to yours, are really nothing more than best-case scenarios. 
2. Mr President, I supported the invasion of Iraq, a war of aggression that failed to follow its evident best-case script; you tried another path for obvious reasons.
3. You probably did not favor interceding in Libya but deferred to your Secretary of State and your top National Security Council expert on multi-lateral initiatives.
4. When the Libya initiative collapsed under the weight of mission creep, you harboured an understandable skepticism of the policy prima donnas and chose to follow your less hawkish instincts. 
5. Though tearing up the Buda Pest memorandum and failing to intervene decisively and early in Ukraine appears to be an act similar to the Munich accord of 1938, the American people clearly did not support risking war over Crimea.

In Syria, the intervention many of us viewed as worth the risk may well have landed us in another military quagmire through mission creep with thousands of sorties and boots on the ground to push it along. Nonetheless, Mr President you have taken action – a fact that many of your gainsayers (e.g., me) fail to note -- in Iraq and Syria, while simultaneously ejecting a Shi´ite strongman in Baghdad.

Additionally, Mr President, you have also displayed the diplomacy, founded on humility, to defer to Russia’s leadership in removing the chemical weapon stockpiles of President Assad, the dictator of Syria. There are other policies that I could criticize, Mr President. That is not the point of this letter. My mission here is to tell you why I give you two-thumbs-up. Policy has little to do with my assessment as admitted earlier.

The fine example you set each day, Mr President, has made you an incontestably decent leader, one that makes me proud of my country. And, for that, Sir, I thank you. Mr President, I sincerely hope your successor understands this reality of modern leadership by example. There are so many trait-based actions of yours that I admire so deeply that I can merely cite a few with enthusiasm:

• the first significant attempt at reform of a dysfunctional health-care distribution and provisioning system;
• your humility in calling on the rest of us not to rush to reaction on instances of police violence or shootings of police and children;
• working in soup kitchens and veterans’ homes on holidays;
• your compassion in pardoning Bradley / Chelsea Manning, a young person driven almost to suicide by twenty-three months of solitary confinement before facing a military tribunal for charges already confessed;
• engaging us in meaningful discourse on the trade-off between liberty and security, thus implicitly showing us respect as citizens;
• providing a consistently conciliatory and reasoned view amid bitter partisan debate;
• your gracious demeanor toward President George W. and Mrs Bush;
• taking decisive, if measured, steps toward helping those who are most vulnerable such as LGBTs, Muslims, undocumented Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, etc.; as well as,
• so very much more, Mr President.

While your record is mixed, I fear that you will never be fully appreciated as a great man, which you most assurèdly are. History tends to hang the greatness of Presidents on their performance during crises – often wars or economic cataclysms. As far as I can see, you have not displayed such high-profile leadership. What matters here is why you haven’t.

Mr President, many reasonable people will point toward your work to revive the American economy as proof-positive of your leadership in a crisis management mode. Unfortunately, I can not agree with that assessment. Again, I do not want to pursue that thread. Far more important, my political party, the Republican Party, dominated Congress throughout much of your tenure.

lnstead of answering your repeated and conciliatory overtures for compromise, these Republicans did everything they could to undermine your opportunity for greatness. Mr President, I do not understand how these political rivals can put their private – often Tea Party – interests so far ahead of the public good that they conspire to deprive you of your opportunity to lead us – all of us – forward toward a brighter day.

What my thoughts really boil down to, Mr President, is my awe in your teaching us how to behave with civility and restraint in the face of vituperation, much of it racist or implicitly anti-Muslim (based on your name sounding like a Muslim name). Frankly, Sir, your greatness lies in what you did not do:

• abuse your powers to harass Republican politicians, particularly those of the Tea Party;
• lash out at the increasingly palpable racism directed at you – and other minority officials in your Administration;
• throw Mexicans and LGBTs under the proverbial bus; as well as,
• compromise your integrity at the expense of the FBI Director during the campaign.

All that is to say, Mr President: you provided 318 million people with adult supervision. My fondest hope remains that future historians will detect these subtleties of your greatness. In closing, Sir, I salute your service to our country as well as that of the elegant and lovely First Lady.

Thank you and best regards,

Ned
Edward J. McDonnell III, CFA PMP
Birmingham, Alabama.

Letter #133: How do you handle a problem like Judea?

"And if a man from another country is living in your land with you, do not make life hard for him; let him be to you as one of your countrymen and have love for him as for yourself; for you were living in a strange land, in the land of Egypt...." -- Leviticus 19 : 33 & 34

B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front). Like other elements of the political left, the two-state solution has proven to be an intellectual hoax; now toward a one-state future.

lNTRODUCTION: why the two-state solution is history. The New York Times headline (https://lnkd.in/eHmJkJx) says it all: “Is Israël Abandoning the Two-State Solution?” Of course she is and, equally of course, she is not. Publicly, any Israeli support for the two-state solution is dead, at least for now. On the other hand, Israël is not abandoning this carefully orchestrated charade because she never supported it in the first place. To do so would jeopardize the Jewish state and also consign Palestine to a waterless rump of desert.

Why Settlements Do Not Work. Historically, settlements – or forced re-settlements – have rarely worked as a policy instrument over the long-term. For millennia, such intermingling of populations remained a favoured tool of colonialism, and a more palatable alternative to genocide, to keep the subjects close and detection of their revolutionary impulses closer. In more recent totalitarian states, forced re-settlements sought more than control; they also strove to defuse the historically volatile ethno-sectarian tensions that had previously precipitated many bloody wars. 

The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed a spectacular end to these practices of subjugation and control. The most visible vestiges of colonialism fell away with the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa and the ‘Unilateral Declaration of Independence’ in Rhodesia. The sinking of parts of the erstwhile Soviet Empire and Yugoslavia into brutal conflicts proved that an iron fist had never been suitable for holding the olive branch. Even now, we see the 135 year old policies of Abdur Rahman Khan to re-settle Afghanistan into Pashtunistan as unravelling. 

So why does Israël insist on pursuing these same failed policies in the West Bank and Gaza (i.e., the occupied territories)? There are three basic reasons, at least as I perceive them. 

• First, and being brutally honest, Israël views the West Bank and Gaza as conquered territories and, therefore, under her sovereignty.
• Second, and focussing on military security, the pre-1967 borders would be impossible to defend over time with the thin middle strip, especially in view of ongoing terror attacks against the democracy by murderous Palestinean Islamists.
• Third, and existentially, Israël seeks to preserve her status as a post-Holocaust haven for international Jewry (https://lnkd.in/dQq8_5b). 

Such reasons make the settlement policy compelling, at least in the short-to-medium term. Over time, however, the consequent oppression will likely be impossible to sustain. The policy retardant to any policy change remains, from the Muslim view, the three strikes against Israël as:

• a Jewish state refusing to recognize a legitimate right of return;
• a European and, therefore, largely secular democracy; as well as,
• an Israeli culture, like those of her Arab cousins, imbued with an anti-assimilationist attitude.

Looking Beyond Apartheid. Fortunately, in view of the small amount of territory enclosed among Israël and the West Bank and Gaza, together with a strong dose of European pluralism and rule-of-law, such repressive and bellicose policies toward a conquered people is ultimately unnecessary. Unlike Afghanistan, Israël is not seeking to govern a vast domain. Additionally, if the largely Ashkenazi Jews can work together with their similarly hard-working Palestinean brethren, the economy of fourteen million people would vastly out-perform the aggregated economies of the three constituent territories (https://lnkd.in/dBNjV4t).

In truth, greater Israël would not only be a beacon of democracy and economic growth to the region but also the harbinger of harmony between Shi´ites and Sunnis, Arabs and Persians, as well as other ethno-sectarian cleavages cutting across the Muslim population. This desirable end-state appeals to moderates on both sides but will be, initially at least, scorned by Jewish and Muslim extremists alike. Many U.S.-sponsored initiatives have been tried and only one – President Carter’s Camp David accord – has succeeded. For evident reasons, the United States lacks credibility as an honest broker among the Arabs. 

The mote in the Muslim eye remains as obvious to most neutrals as it likely is undetectable among Muslims: the unrelenting violence. The Jewish state has been encircled for decades by adversaries apparently united by a desire to drive Israël into the sea, now dissipating slowly with familiarity over time and emerging tribalism and other divisions among Arabs. Arguably, one should be impressed by the region’s lone democracy standing steadfastly by the principles of a robust and representative government (including for Arab Israelis). 

Perhaps the most insidious consequence of the outgoing Administration’s refusal publicly to identify ‘IslaMaoism’ as Radical or Militant Islam that enables a continually growing worldwide bias against Israël. The recent U.N. resolution condemning Israël’s morally questionable settlements policy becomes ludicrous in the face of an appalling carnage in Syria, public depredations in the Sudan and Darfur, as well as growing death tolls in Iraq and Yemen. So, Israël must continue to chart her historically lonely path and the United States should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her. 

Stride toward Freedom; Struggle toward Unity. Israël must progress beyond a settlement policy that negates the fairness of the right-of-return. The Jewish state will have to make policy choices that assume risks and require courage. (Truthfully, what follows is the same old thesis that I have been advocating for fifteen years. If you have been dubiously blessed with these views in the past, you can end right here to avoid a repeat of the ordeal of reading it.) 

The road-map from Point-A of the status quo to Point-B of a peaceful pluralistic democracy entails twelve steps which, together, resemble giant stride toward freedom.

1. Israël sets up an even number provisional provinces across the country proper and the occupied territories.
2. Israël announces a policy of the right of return, either through direct return or, more likely, compensation based on current market values for up to one trillion U.S. dollars (or three times the current G.D.P. of Israël proper and the occupied territories, together ‘Greater Israël’).
3. Said compensation would not be directed toward individuals; the total would be set aside in a trust to promote infrastructure, education, etc. in the Palestinean provinces.
4. The United States, drowning in liquidity from Quantitative Easing, redeems 30% of the circular certificates to pull dormant greenbacks created out of thin air out the money supply, and places them in a collateral account to back Israël’s commitment (https://lnkd.in/bnhKMDT). 
5. Israël announces the immediate annexation of the occupied territories together with an amended Federalist Constitution that splits the provisional provinces evenly among those with Islam as the provincial religion and those with Judaism as the provincial faith.
6. There is a division between church and state at the national level.
7. A united Jerusalem becomes the neutral capital territory under the stewardship of a Christian patriarchate.
8. Jewish provinces can allocate funds for cultural activities and education of Jewish minorities in the Islamic provinces while the Muslim provinces can do the same for Islamic minorities in Jewish provinces.
9. The Christian Patriarch has the tie-breaking vote voting in the Parliament and among provinces as well as being the chief Justice of Supreme Tribunal over an equal number of Justices from the other two faiths.
10. Any tie-breaking vote by the patriarch applies only to questions split along non-sectarian lines in Parliamentary voting, or substantial 'bi-partisan' voting on each side of a deadlocked question; otherwise, the motion is defeated.
11. If voting on questions is recorded by provinces casting one ballot each, the tie-breaking vote applies only when at least one Palestinean province votes with a Jewish majority on one side of the question and one Jewish province votes with a Palestinean majority on the other side.
12. The Israeli Defense and Police Forces continue as they have in the past but integrate their Palestinean counterparts through direct hiring and training of new recruits.

While such a road-map is radical, with audacity and perseverance, the moderates of all sides can make it work. This arrangement should be able to hold together for two generations; enough, for the culture to change and stamp out belligerent militancy on both sides. Such violence is more frequent and less restrained among Muslims than among Israelis.

CONCLUSION: Bravery or Blood? The largest measure of courage will be whether moderate Muslims will repudiate their violent co-religionists and endure the murders by these extremists sure to follow. Islamic jihadists are, like most gangsters, interested less in their stated beneficiaries than the power over, and wealth from, those same supposed constituents. As for the elements (i.e., provincial boundaries, provincial but not national religions*, etc.) contemporary arrangements and history provide precedents indicating that fulfillment of these policies is not only achievable but also desirable – right here, right now.

* The idea for a separation of Church and State on the national level, together with provincial religions, draws upon the persistence of U.S. state religions among many individual states for up to fifty years (e.g., the Episcopal Church as the state church of the Commonwealth of Virginia) following the split between Church and State on the national level under the 1787 Constitution.

Letter 132: Why the 19th of December will be interesting but likely insignificant

“The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.”

--Constitution of the United States of America:
Article II (Executive), Section 1, Parapgraph 3;

as ratified on the 21st of June 1788, as amended the 15th of June 1805 
and the 23rd of January 1933.

   

BLUF: The Electoral College vote to be taken at the State Capitols on Monday the 19th of December will almost certainly ratify Mr Trump’s election. It would be difficult to justify overturning the constitutional machinery, particularly in favor of Senator / Secretary Clinton.

Scenarios. There are three manners by which this situation will unfold:

• ratification of Messrs Trump and Pence as President and Vice President;
• switch-out to Mrs Clinton to inaugurate a Clinton-Pence Administration; or,
• switch-out to another Republican for President and, perhaps, Vice President by moving that determination into the House of Representatives voting state-by-state and, if necessary for selecting the Vice President, into the Senate.

The most likely outcome is that a sufficient number of Electors will vote for the candidate for whom they are pledged to ratify Mr Trump’s election. On a subjective basis only, I would assign a ninety-five per cent (95%) probability for this eventuality, which I deem as the worst case for reasons I have stated ad nauseam and need not be repeated in this essay. In all three scenarios, Governor Pence is assumed to have no problems in being ratified for Vice President and, in one case, President.

Also falling under this scenario would be the case where at least thirty-seven (37) ‘Trump’ Electors abstained and no one else received an Electoral vote. In this theoretical latter case, the final vote would go into the House of Representatives to be balloted state-by-state. Nevertheless, with a decisive thirty to twenty margin of those states with the majority of the Congressional delegation being Republican, Mr Trump would almost certainly still win the the White House. 

The second most likely scenario is that a sufficient number of Electors in states where Mr Trump won switch their votes to make the Senator / Secretary the President. Though with only a four (4%) per cent subjective likelihood, this would be the scenario I would view as the base case. The highly unlikely event of the Senator / Secretary being awarded the Presidency would not change the post-election reality too much since Governor Pence would be confirmed in the Electoral College as the Vice President. It would make continuing grid-lock more likely with a Clinton-Pence Administration.

The final, best case scenario remains the least likely at a one per cent (1%) probability, subjectively assigned. That would be enough Electors switching away from Mr Trump to other candidates for the House of Representatives to vote state-by-state to pick from the top five. This scenario would require ample coördination to solidify a Republican alternate to Mr Trump and his Democratic rival who would be able to carry a majority of the states. While my preference – and that of many Republicans – of that alternative would be Governor Bush or Kasich, the House would be under some moral obligation to select a change-minded Republican, probably Governor Pence.

If Governor Pence ascended to the Presidency, the Senate Republican majority would be under pressure also to select another change-oriented Republican (e.g., Governor Walker or Mrs Fiorina) for Vice President. If a Republican other than Governor Pence were selected for the Presidency, the Electoral College ratification of Governor Pence as Vice President would proceed. As I stated, this selection of a change-committed Republican would be a ‘soft’ moral obligation since the American electorate repudiated the establishment candidate, Mrs Clinton, by a margin of four million votes on November 8th.

Conclusion. Mr Trump will be our next President. The positive value of all of this protesting, bickering and, more recently, calling for the Electoral College to exercise the discretion constitutionally vested in it – as well as separate calls for audits to clear Mr Trump of conflicts of interest, particularly with Russia – is to lay the cornerstone of accountability. Call it prudent protest.

The incoming Administration is now on notice that America has the constitutional machinery in place to prevent a usurpation of power or traitorous collusion with a foreign power. Should that machinery break down, we Americans have the natural right to overthrow tyranny. Personally, I believe that Mr Trump will act in good faith; this fear and caution, while understandable and necessary, will prove to be unfounded in subsequent acts or events.

Letter 131: Remembering Pearl Harbour -- what it was and what it was not

"Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." 

--President Franklin D. Roosevelt; 8th December 1941

"I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

--President George W. Bush; 14th September 2001

On September 10th of 2001, I spent time in Detroit, Michigan getting ready to bury my Uncle Henry. My cousin, Nancy, a successful investment banker on Wall Street, made a fateful remark as she reflected on the fact that a decorated war hero of Okinawa in 1945, her father, would be laid to rest on September 11th. She noted that we were facing the end of an era.  

The next day, of course, the United States suffered the worst foreign attack on her soil since the sneak-attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, nearly sixty years before. The horrific events of that morning overshadowed my uncle’s funeral that coincided with them. My cousin, Peter, summed it up well by counselling a respectful good-bye since his warrior-father would want us to kick some ass.

With the funeral complete, I drove my sister back to her daughters in Annapolis post-haste since my brother-in-law was stuck in Montreal. Then, shedding the Avis, I Amtracked it back to New York, wondering where the usual land-mark of the city was. There was a factory, somewhere beyond view, belching smoke; something I had not noticed previously. But no twin towers. Then, I remembered. Oh, my God.

After a forever ride under Lincoln Tunnel – one never knew where these suicidal sociopaths would strike next – I found that the fastest way from Penn Station through the newly minted Pottersville to my apartment was simply to walk. After a run and vain offer of blood, I settled in my desk at the bank. As the Global Industry Credit Manager for Insurance at the world’s largest bank and overseeing a $35 billion portfolio, I knew I would have my work cut out for me.

What I did not expect, however, was the touch of international diplomacy that I would have to bring to the maelstrom of work, speculation and contingency planning. My rapidly calculated estimate of losses insurers would have to indemnify, from the ground up would eventually prove to be one of the best across Wall Street (within 5% of industry losses after five or six years). 

Luck of the Irish, I suppose – actually, I know.  On that estimate and analysis of expected impacts of the sneak terror attack, I had to append a cover-memo to twenty managers around the world reporting to me providing guidance for the days to follow.

The Ghost of Pearl Harbour. Along the way, the Japanese credit manager e-mailed me that he was very hurt by the comparisons between 9-11 and the sneak attack on Pearl Harbour of December 7th of 1941. My heart went out to him since the two attacks seemed different, at least intuitively. Having spent some time in Australia as a kid, I also figured the Aussies were flakking him mercilessly.

That evening, days after 9-11, I stayed in very late researching Pearl Harbour and what we knew about the mass murders in New York for that cover-memo. As I released my coincidentally accurate estimate, I decided to be very firm with these managers. With British, German, American, Australian and Canadian managers among others receiving my guidance, I had to be sensitive to all sides.

Consequently, I concluded that 9-11 was not Pearl Harbour; it was worse, far worse. While Pearl Harbour was certainly an act of war, for which the Japanese paid mightily, to equate the two attacks was to dishonour the Japanese. Why? Because 99%+ of the people killed on December 7, 1941 were U.S. military personnel, primarily sailors and grunts.

Most of the few civilians not affiliated with military facilities who had died were hit by falling anti-aircraft flak. In New York, suicidal sociopaths using religion as a rationale for murder had slaughtered thousands of innocents; thankfully we would find out that the death toll was 20-30% of what we had feared initially. Nevertheless, that massacre had been deliberate and that planning had made it a monstrous evil. 

The Japanese, however, had limited their attack to military targets sixty years before. In that memorandum, I made it clear that to compare the two attacks would be to dishonour the Japanese airmen by equating the opening gambit of war with wantonly killing civilians. I closed with a warning that said, in effect, “Such prejudice is utterly unacceptable and I will not hear it as we proceed through the difficult days ahead.”