Letter 113: Do we say 'Iran' or "I ran"?

"Never negotiate out of fear but never fear to negotiate." 

-- President Kennedy

OPENING THOUGHTS. For months, I have wanted to favour this arrangement negotiated among the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, China, Germany, Russia and Iran for three reasons. First, I have felt that Iran has its reasons for seeking a nuclear deterrent versus Pakistan; that notion proved to be incorrect. Second, I have felt that the best approach to Iran is to empower its middle class and moderates by bringing them into the community of nations.

Third, the behavior of Republicans toward President Obama has been disrespectful. The letter sent by most Senate Republicans to the Iranian leadership and the speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu to Congress, at the invitation of Republicans and without the courtesy of consulting the President, strike me as repugnant. The concern by conservatives toward this arrangement is understandable, as are the worries expressed by their more dovish brethren if no rapprochement with Iran can be achieved.

BLUF: I cannot support proceeding with this arrangement, at least at this time. Though I lean against the accord, I do so barely. There are some great arguments in favor of the accord by none other than President Obama via the social medium, QUORA:

• http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-about-the-Iran-nuclear-deal-that-keeps-them-from-getting-nuclear-weapons
• http://www.quora.com/Would-a-rejection-of-the-Iran-nuclear-deal-by-the-US-Congress-be-a-vote-for-war
• http://www.quora.com/Can-Irans-leaders-be-trusted 

Summary. We need to lessen tensions with Iran. Nevertheless, before moving ahead with this arrangement, there has to be a resolution of the situation in Syria; or, at least, a decisive move toward that resolution. Certain sanctions – for banking, peaceful nuclear development and weapons – should not be lifted unconditionally. Nor should frozen government-owned assets be released immediately.

Conclusion. This arrangement is not going to affect Iran’s calculations in deciding in whether or not to develop nuclear weapons. This accord may prove to be a guided pathway for Iran to follow toward developing nuclear weapons in a universally acceptable manner and timeline. 

Further, a nuclear Iran will not materially change the level of danger the world currently faces. The danger lies in the nature of the society hosting such weapons and its geopolitical pressures. The larger issue here is how to engage the Iranian people so they can throw off, peacefully, the shackles of a religious dictatorship.

Open questions. Though much of the agreement cites in detail many technical terms and concepts which I do not know, I have finally wandered through the arrangement. ¡UGGH! There are questions in this debate, the answers to which are not visible to the casual observer and will go a long way toward colouring the complexion of the agreement.

1. Are there side-agreements that may bind the United States to future commitments? If such commitments exist, they may be helpful or they may not.
2. Does the agreement represent a quiet coup (or shift of power) from the theocracy in Iran to the moderates and the cosmopolitan middle class of that country? Were such a shift of power to occur, the arrangement could well be a milestone in constructive engagement with the Iranian people.
3. Are the European leaders under pressure to lift the sanctions against Iran? If true, this arrangement might be an exercise of making a virtue of a necessity.

These questions tend to argue in favor of subjecting this arrangement to the scrutiny and accountability of a treaty.

Observations. There are certain observations that I tentatively make from my reading of this arrangement. Truthfully, I should be candid about feeling tentative since the text is complicated and detailed. My confidence in my understanding of the arrangement is modest; I wanted to see for myself what the agreement said, even if I am utterly confused by its twisted terminology.

• Sanctions do not lift immediately. They lift after six months or so, depending upon the lag between the 'Adoption Day’ of formal approval and the 'Implementation Day' when sanctions lift and Iran does her part to restrict enrichment activities.
• The snap-back provision is tenuous and will not work. This illusion may be in place to shroud the pressure overwhelming European and other policy makers that private companies are exerting to open up the Iranian market by jettisoning the sanctions.
• Certain time-lines are not readily apparent. There is no twenty-four day notice period for inspections (at least that I could find within the basic text). From my reading, adjudication of violations gives Iran more like six-to-eight weeks to shift prohibited materials around to avoid detection. Additionally, I could find no reference to a one-year break-out period.
• Oversight will be easier than it was in Iraq.  Since few sites (only two that I recall) will be active for eight years, the International Atomic Agency will have considerable enforcement powers, if, and only if, Iran complies with the arrangement and restricts activities to these stipulated sites.
• This agreement depends on good faith. Several requirements for following “the letter and spirit” of the arrangement make the complicated language unsettling in its inherent difficulty to understand and enforce.

There will be ample room for competing interpretations, giving Iran the latitude to violate the agreement before the international community can plausibly react. On the other hand, while good faith sounds ‘gooey’, that commitment is the bedrock underlying any international agreement.

Concerns with the Arrangement. There are two fundamental concerns for me. First, I am not convinced that this arrangement really changes anything going forward. The accord comes across more as a complicated communiqué than some hard-and-fast agreement. The value of the accord may well lie in empowering the pro-democracy elements in Iran for a moderate policy to prevail over the pugnacious preferences of authoritarian theocrats. 

Many Iranians are sophisticated. Outside of Israël, Iran was once the most progressive culture in a historically backward region. Second, the elements of timing, and not the arrangement itself, also trouble me. My specific concerns – at least those that I remember – include:

• superseding a settled bi-partisan sanctions policy, perhaps even Congressional resolutions or laws, via waivers;
• the possibility of secret and binding commitments extended by the United States – unilaterally or as part of the working group – to Iran or other stake-holders;
• the lifting of all sanctions -- including nuclear development, weapons, banking and frozen assets – in the short-to-medium term, thereby removing a potent deterrent against Iran violating the arrangement;
• the eventual willingness (sic) of the United States (and our working partners) to resist violations by Iran through snap-back sanctions;
• the current context of Iran’s and Russia’s activities in Syria and, to a far lesser extent, Iran’s continued funding of Hizbulah precluding the efficacy of a ‘good-faith agreement’; as well as,
• the likelihood that the days of comprehensive allied sanctions being numbered, with that pressure driving an accord deleterious to American interests.

The context issue is crucial but also very subjective. In view of the several events since 2008, American policy has come to be viewed by many friends and foes as prone to appeasement. Sadly, a 'good-faith' agreement, written within the current context of perceived appeasement, may end up looking weak to our cynical counterparts in Teheran.

The critical question here – and one I can not answer – is who is cynical and who is not, and the relative distribution of power between those two factions in Iran (and in Russia). Again, this arrangement may have a million things wrong with it but still be worthwhile if it empowers those in Iran ready to renounce terrorism, work with Israël and rejoin the community of nations at the expense of theocratic tyranny.

The vacillating ambivalence expressed above shakes out, on balance, in an adverse manner for me. The possibility of the scenario immediately below, embedded in a climate of such uncertainty, remains high enough to make this arrangement – in its current form and with its current timing – too risky to pursue, at least for now. 

1. Iran plays nice until the 'lmplementation Day', when the sanctions are lifted.
2. Iran starts using the global banking system to finance Hizbulah attacks and other covert aggression across the region, prolonging and worsening the appalling carnage in Syria.
3. Once Iran is integrated back into international economy, after six months to a year, she directly violates the treaty and produces a nuclear weapon.
4. The West screams and yells but does nothing, with too much business pressure –together with an unwillingness forcibly to blunt Iranian and / or Russian expansionism –for the mythical snap-back sanctions to occur.
5. Iran does not renounce terror but now has the financial system to expedite it.

Reflections. Now I am neither sure nor convinced that Iran would do these things. Yet the context is key, here, in view of the nation's capacity to act. American policy has been arguably perceived as supporting a trend of appeasement since 2008:

• little push-back on the Russian invasion of Georgia;
• delay of the deployment of missile protections in Poland and the Czech Republic;
• an unintentionally complicit silence in the face of a spontaneous then thwarted democratic uprising in Iran after phoney election results, reminiscent of Soviet charades in the previous century;
• unwillingness to push back on a manipulated election result in Iraq that kept a would-be sectarian dictator in power;
• following colonial powers willy-nilly into Libya, more to satisfy Italy without regard to a difficult régime's repudiation -- in word and deed -- of development weapons of mass destruction and state-sponsored terrorism;
• cancellation of those missile deployments to NATO’s Eastern allies;
• hysterical, then chimerical red-lines in Syria; as well as,
• no reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and reneging on a twenty year old commitment by the United States to guarantee the borders of Ukraine (in exchange for Ukraine giving up to Russia a credible nuclear deterrent).

If my view of perceived appeasement is a plausible one, the likelihood of Iranian non-compliance can be expected to increase materially. This framework would also have a higher probability of success, were it proposed at a more propitious time. 

Additionally, I would add that this agreement does little to address Iran's sponsorship of terrorism, to the extent she really does do that. (Is Hizbulah really any worse than the Contras or the U.S.-sponsored death squads in Central America?) The sanctions being lifted unconditionally ought not include those applying to financial institutions and the capital markets or the release of frozen Iranian assets; they ease the financing of terrorism.

Most of the sanctions are hurting the wrong people in Iran and, in fairness to everyday Iranian innocents, many of the sanctions should be lifted in any case. But those measures mentioned as troublesome (banks, guns and enrichment), together with the release of frozen assets, should be deferred and their lifting earned by deeds recorded not merely by intentions reported.

My recommendation to fellow Republicans. In the end, I think this agreement will be unenforceable and we have yet to receive that best kind of assurance from Teheran -- actual deeds to reduce terrorism and a genuine interest in the peaceful use of the uranium -- vital to forging a strong and self-reinforcing trust between the two sides. So, this is what I think my fellow Republicans should argue for:

• deferring, not scrapping, the agreement until a peace plan for Syria is reached;
• not lifting the sanctions on financial institutions and weapons makers, at least until Iran renounces terrorism;
• not releasing frozen assets until Iran has demonstrated good faith;
• lifting most other sanctions to encourage the Iranian people to push their government toward a more peaceful and democratic stance; as well as,
• requiring that the agreement be viewed, and voted on, as a treaty.

As always, I humbly thank you for your patience with my presumption.

Letter 112: Good parents, the forgotten best of America

"Certainly. When you find a diamond that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you discover an island that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you get an idea before any one else, you take out a patent on it: it is yours. So with me: I own the stars, because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

Christopher Hedges may sound shrill at times; he is one of the most articulate and vocal crtics of the society in which we live, inextricably bound to a culture of subtle toxicity. Times were when such critics were not dismissed as whiners, winoes or social albinos. Watch Mr. Hedges on YouTube; he is not a nut. Marxist sociologist Christopher Lasch anticipated the culture that Hedges indicts in his book, The Culture of Narcissism​, published in 1980. Twelve years later, I remember feeling uneasy when then President George H.W. Bush, whom I admired, campaigned on foreign policy by saying in effect:

• "We won the Cold War." and
• "The values of free-market capitalism prevailed."

I scratched my head and wondered, free market values...¿huh? Free market capitalism has, at best, a utility in allocating scarce economic resources. It doesn't have values per se; we do, or we are supposed to. The winning-the-cold-war remark left me cold, too. That could only humiliate Russia. Instead, I felt then, President Bush should have been praising Mikhail Gorbachev for avoiding bloodshed. Perhaps one of the twentieth century's greatest acts and legacies of statesmanship. 

That led me to vote for Bill Clinton, which still appalls me to this day that I would do that. President Bush was multiples the greater man than Clinton. When I disagreed, at least there was a 'there' there. President Clinton, on the other hand, was a man of the times: a two-dimensional theater stage back-drop; always painted over to suit the next scene. 

That absence of a moral rudder became clear over time – selling out old friends as ‘radicals’ when their thinking was actually quite firmly in the mainstream of America’s erstwhile liberalism; shutting down the Los Angeles International Airport for two hours so some coiffeur to Hollywood could graduate him into the ranks of the glitterati with a snip here and a clip there.

Good men call President Clinton a nice or a good guy. I know of few who ever call him great.  In that sense, I pose this question to supporters of Secretary / Senator Clinton: What would F.D.R have been like had he been married to Hillary Clinton? What would Bill Clinton have been like had he been married to Eleanor Roosevelt? Both men are remarkably similar; their point of divergence comes, I believe, in their married lives. 

Seven years after the sickness I felt when a man like Senator Dole had no chance against President Clinton, I could not support the invasion of Iraq fast enough. I will buy Rumsfeld a drink in Hell. After my first tour in Iraq, I toasted a classmate at his fiftieth birthday, citing him as a real American hero. Why?

Because he and his wife and millions like them do the heroic work of bringing up good kids who grow into great adults. These families are strong enough to shut out the cultural malaise that surrounds them. With divorce rates the way they are tending – with the percentage of dead-beat divorced parents as high as it is – most American children are likely not afforded the benefits of such quiet heroism.

Life goes on and so must we. The poverty rate in dollars and cents may be high today; but the cultural and emotional poverty weighing down on so many young people, forcing larger numbers into a burgeoning underclass is at a tipping point.  But, alas, I show my age. Hedges is correct in asserting -- whether one agrees or not with his assessment -- that the current state of American culture started in the late 1960s. 

If one thinks Hedges is off his rocker, I challenge that person to live overseas, among the people of another country and not in an Embassy or American enclave, for two years and see how the U.S. looks from afar. Not the America I knew; and it makes me feel like a grieving parent. No citizen should ever outlive his country.

Letter 111: concerns about quantitative easing

“Fool me once, shame on you—but fool me twice, shame on me!”

--Chaucer

Overview. I must confess that I have no idea how much money has been printed out of thin air to buy treasury bills and bonds issued from the same ether layer of unreality. So, my concern may be overshooting here. Here is that concern: all those green-backs (dollars) have to go somewhere. Now they seem to be on bank balance sheets as cash and as bonds in off-shore investment funds, insurance companies and mutual funds. What happens when they come back? 

(NOTE: this essay draws the material in the Stalla CFA study course and, my faint recollection of college Economics.) 

Quantitative Easing: historical roots. The rationale of quantitative easing runs along the lines of what President Carter tried to pursue with his ‘locomotion’ monetary policies of the 1970s: if all industrialized countries flood the market with liquidity, inflation will remain low, asset values will rise and the otherwise shrewd investors, too stupid to see the ruse of the massive influx of increasingly worthless paper currency, will invest.

The macro-economic goal of Quantitative Easing grew out of a desire, after the near collapse of the international system in 2008, to avoid a general depression of falling asset values and a psychology that would preclude new investments at any price (i.e., a liquidity trap).  The plan of President Carter did not work in the 1970s because Germany rightly said, “Thanks, but no thanks. The hyper-inflation that helped bring in the Nazis occurred only half a century ago. We remember.”

Why Quantitive Easing failed in the 1970s. As monetary policy became promicuous in the United States, other governments, which had once seen the dollar as a store-value currency now unloaded their green-backs. Those bills flooded back into the Unites States, causing unprecedented inflation. President Carter, as the last Keynesian, loosened the money supply further and treasury yields spiked to 21% within a day, as predicted by the 'continuous learning', or rational, variant of the efficient markets hypothesis.

It seems that people at Goldman Sachs, First Boston, Salomon, et al. were not quite as easily fooled as the Brookings economists seemed to have assumed. What happened then may occur today. The big difference is that many others are out on the dance floor doing the locomotion. In one key respect, the dollar as a store value currency and the helium currencies have one element in common.

Each one either dampens (dollar as a gold equivalent) or coincides with low (Quantitative Easing; still uncertain) velocity.  Velocity is the rate at which a green-back changes hands. The theory goes, the higher the velocity, all things being equal, the higher the inflation rate. That is to say: rather than too many dollars chasing too few goods, one sees a static number of dollars chasing a static number of goods too fast. With higher velocity, fewer dollars are needed to chase the roughly the same number of goods.

So, if dollars remain constant, with the increased velocity, one now sees more dollars chasing the same number of goods. Thus, inflation ensues. First under President Ford, and especially under President Carter, something triggered an increase in velocity. One factor may have been the first full generation of a digitized currency through credit cards. A larger factor was likely the repatriation of dollars by non-U.S. national banks that no longer viewed the green-back as a store value currency.

These sovereign institutions switched into metals and harder currencies like the D-Mark, the Yen and Swiss Franc. All that accelerated the velocity of money changing hands, as people were exchanging dollars for other assets, mobilizing many more dollars chasing a stagnating level of goods. A similar sturm-und-drang swan song for the green-back may be lining up to create a hyper-inflation in our day.

Current effect of Quantitative Easing. These days, it seems that most dollars are dormant. They appear to be parked in foreign funds, in banks as well as in those institutions intimately involved with the welfare of the nation’s senior citizens (i.e., the Social Security Trust Fund). The fact is: all that money has to go somewhere. That somewhere includes buy-and-hold (for now) investments; grotesque valuations for start-ups that have few tangible assets to speak of and create almost no jobs; and, banks’ balance sheets. 

Worst Case. Once that money starts to move, we may see a death spiral for the American economy, perhaps others.

1. Foreign funds start to unload the dollar, preferring €uroes since the latter has shown more fiscal resolve toward wayward states (i.e., Greece).
2. That flight to discipline raises yields and cutting bond values, prompting people to start selling treasury instruments and reinvest somewhere else.
3. Some currency or rate hedges are broken and thus more selling ensues.
4. For people to buy, the real rate goes back to +2% (a hike of two to four percentage points; 200-400 basis points).
5. That craters the real estate and other capital markets and people start to sell off, likely in a panic, while buyers also add inflation premiums.
6. If a panic ensues, and perhaps driven by regulations on balance sheet standards, holders of currency and treasury instruments may ignore their hedges to get out before the market freezes 

Why F.D.R. might fail today. We slide into the menu effect of no published prices since they will be out of date by the time the ink dispensed to publish them is dry. Were anything approaching this scenario to occur, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt, quickly. Without any tricks left to spur the economy along and with the loss of the basic wealth and job creating capacity of manufacturing, even a new F.D.R. may find himself hapless, helpless, hopeless. 

The tragic flaw. The heart-breaking part of this admittedly extreme scenario would be the fact that all this adversity would not arise out of some conspiracy but out of a coincidence of thinking and out of a convergence of interests by people who are, for the most part, loyal and decent Americans.

Letter 110 (Spanish and English): Memorial Day 2015; reflexiones por un ex-patriota

“America has many faults and she has done wrong at times. Nevertheless, I shudder to think of the world of the last century without an America in it.”

“Los Estados Unidos, tenemos nuestros pecados, en verdad. Sin embargo, tiemblo de miedo en considerar este mundo durante el siglo pasado sin una América dentro de él.”

Resumen. La carta para esta semana no hará frente a la lucha libre entre anuncios nativos, versus márketing mediante contenidos. Tal discusión, aunque preparada, va a seguir en dos semanas, después de una carta sobre el quinto paso de la transferencia de tecnología.	Summary. The essay scheduled for this week – a comparison between native advertising versus content marketing – is ready to go to press. But, dahlinnn’, t’aint comin’ now. I am postponing its issuance for two weeks; next week’s letter will be the regularly scheduled discussion on tech transfer (specifically, Step-5).
Porqué retrasar con la carta programada. En algunos momentos durante el año, deberíamos tomar un momento para pensar en el final de todas nuestras actividades y porqué se quiera vivir la vida. Este lunes de hoy, es el Día de la Memoria en los Estados Unidos de NorteAmérica. Las dos lecturas, a continuación, presentan pensamientos previos sobre este Día de la Memoria.	Explanation of the postponement. There are moments during one’s life and during the year when the time is right to take a step back and look at the life (s)he is leading and toward what end such a life is being pursued. This exercise is not intended as some existential treatise on my part; I am far too superficial for all that. M. Albert Camus, however, has written some brilliant essays like ‘The Fall’, the ‘Myth of Sysyphus’ and the ‘Rebel’, that can fill you in smartly. For those razor-sharp insights, I thank former Peace Corps Volunteer, good friend and better man, Steven Walker of Los Angeles.
Reflexiones sobre un momento sagrado. Para mí, al menos, tengo un deber durante este día para meditar y darles gracias a tantos hombres estadounidense que han tenido el coraje para servir mi país, especial-mente en las guerras no populares. Los soldados son disciplinados pero casi nunca estúpidos. Saben cuándo una guerra no se apoya por la gente de vuelta a casa. Sin embargo, sirven su país a pesar de los sentimientos de sus compatriotas.	Reflections of an American holy-day. Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a sacred day for many Americans. The writings on hand for this week explain what the day is and its history, followed by an essay I wrote about a relative, a very brave relative, and his experience in the great and terrible Battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945 with its echoes over time. But this Memorial Day, I want to salute those soldiers over the last fifty years who served their country in unpopular, at times arguably immoral, wars. Theirs is a courage, now appreciated by many.

El otoño de 1967. Fue el aniversario veinticinco de la batalla del Mar de los Coralinos, cuando la Armada de los Estados Unidos, junto con aquella de Australia, había terminado la expansión japonesa hacia el sur. Fue un gran día en Sydney; yo había acabado de cumplir diez años. El portaaviones, el U.S.S. Bennington estuvo en el puerto, visitando desde la guerra en Viêt Nam, para celebrar este gran día. Mi amigo y yo hemos remamos una lancha a través todo el puerto, casi matando a nosotros mismos dos veces en el proceso, para decir hola a los marineros norte-americanos. Yo era tan feliz porque estaba soñando del día cuando estaría en Viêt Nam, luchando para mi país.

Autumn, 1967: Sydney, New South Wales. We had been living in Sydney for five months and I had just turned ten. In early May, a small flotilla of the United States Navy steamed into Port Jackson (i.e., Sydney Harbor) to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. That battle had been the first allied maritime victory of the Pacific theater in World War II and had occurred in May 1942. The United States and the Royal Australian Navies turned back the Japanese advance toward Australia and New Zealand. My next door neighbor, an Aussie, double-dared me to join him in rowing a dinghy clear across the harbor, to Woolloomooloo Bay, to greet the Americans on the U.S.S. Bennington, an aircraft carrier in from the American Indochinese war. We were nearly rammed by the Empress of Australia, a massive car ferry, on the way over. And almost sucked under by the U.S.S. Sacramento, a  75,000 ton supply ship, on the way back. That day was a happy one for me because I dreamed someday of fighting in Viêt Nam, just like those sailors, just like my father’s cousin, the Captain of the U.S.S. Oriskany.

El invierno de 1969. Hace cuarenta-y-cinco años, estuve en mi nueva escuela. Mi familia había acabado de regresar a Pittsburgh desde Australia. Un día, para adular a mis nuevos compañeros de escuela (la mayoría de quienes eran desde familias contra la guerra trágica de Viêt Nam), hice una broma cobarde contra la destrucción masiva en Asia de la mano de mi país. Un compañero, pronto mi amigo más íntimo y un amigo querido hasta hoy en día, empezó a llorar, casi sin auto-control. No supe qué había sido el problema. Esa noche, durante la cena, mi abuela me dijo que el hermano de este niño fue matado en la provincia de Quang-Tri (cerca de Viêt Nam del Norte) en la primavera de 1967. No olvidé nunca este día; todavía, lloro en silencio cada vez pienso en eso, aún en este momento.

Winter, 1969: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  It was forty-five years ago when I entered a new grade school – my fourth in my short life. Mom and Dad had taken us back from Sydney to Pittsburgh, over the protests and whining of their two children. In that small private school, most families had soured on a deeply divisive and troubling war in SouthEast Asia by that year. One day, in a frankly craven effort to fit in with my new class-mates, I made some flippant remark against the war in Viêt Nam. Suddenly, a classmate started crying uncontrollably; the teacher ushered him out of the room with an arm around his shoulder. Of course, I felt like  total shit; no one explained to me what was going on. That classmate was soon to become one of my lifelong friends. That night, at my grandmother’s home, I found out that his older brother, the pride of his family, had died in combat in 1967, gunned down by the N.V.A. in Quang-Tri province, at the age of twenty-four, two years out of Princeton.

El verano de 1994. Veinticinco años más tarde, me encontraba en la Francia por la primera vez en dos décadas. Estaba manejando un coche (de transmisión manual, ¡por la primera vez!), y era ocupado en un esfuerzo espontaneo para establecer atrás relaciones franco-estadounidense por cincuenta años. Mi deseo consciente había sido solamente a visitar mi lugar favorito sobre esta tierra: la abadía benedictina, Le Mont Saint Michel. Como estaba manejando desde Caën a través de la Normandía, miré muchas muestras en colores rojo, blanco y azul que se leyeron: “Bienvenue a Nos Liberateurs”. (Tales muestras fueron para los ingleses y franceses, también.)

Summer of 1994: near Saint Lô, France.  After wrapping up a two-week business trip to Switzerland, I took a long week-end in France; it had been twenty years, and I desperately wanted to return to that place of carefree solitude, the medieval monastery, Le Mont Saint Michel. So driven was I to get there, that I had rented a stick-shift in Caën and forced myself to learn how to drive it on the often two-lane roadways of Normandy, likely muddling even further Franco-American relations. As I drove through the countryside that sunny day, I saw many crest-shaped signs in red, white and blue welcoming the liberators of June 6, 1944, the beginning of the great and terrible battle for France. The Benedictine abbey would simply have to wait.

Entonces, decidí que debería visitar el cementerio militar estado-unidense cerca de la playa sangrienta: Omaha Beach del seis de junio de 1944. Como San Pedro lo hizo, aparté la vista y lloré amargamente. Puedo recordar, especialmente, esas piedras sepulcrales que dijeron, “Aquí descansa en una gloria honrada un compañero en armas conocido sólo a Dios.” Me dije, en silencio, “Nunca sabré su nombre, frère américain. Sin embargo, que Dios me perdone si me olvida su sacrificio, jamás.”	Turning away from Le Mont Saint Michel, I drove to Omaha Beach and walked along it, wondering how those young men half a century before had managed to make that climb up that considerable hill, loaded as it had been with machine guns and Nazi artillery. Next, I went to the American Cemetery. What caught my attention were those marble grave-stones, without names for soldiers who had fallen without identity. Over and over again I could only whisper to myself as I saw each such grave, “Though your name shall never be known, God help us all if you are ever forgotten.”
El otoño de 2001 Como el gerente global de riesgos de crédito para la industria a seguros en el más grande banco entonces, el ataque contra el World Trade Center me hizo tan ocupado como enojado. El gerente de riesgo en Japón me dijo por teléfono que él se había herido por bromas malas comparando este asesinato en masa de miles de personas con el ataque japonés contra Hawaí sesenta años antes. (En esos días oscuros, pensabamos los muertos sobrepasarían más de diez miles; fue tres mil.) En mi opinión, Japón había probado su apoyo a los U.S.A. para más de cincuenta años. Sin embargo, el ataque contra el Puerto de Perla en diciembre 1941 había sido una sorpresa furtiva. Pero, la metáfora histórica no sintió correcta para mí. Después de investigación, informé por correo electrónico a los gerentes a través del mundo que yo no aceptaría la comparación, ni toleraría el chiste malo, entre el Puerto de Perla en 1941 y Nueva York en 2001. Los aviadores japoneses se habían centrado su ataque en los objetivos militares. Sí, el ataque había sido furtivo. Sin embargo, para comparar esos aviadores enemigos con esos asesinos en masa viles de Nueva York deshonraría a los japoneses.	9-11: Manhattan, New York. At the time of the mass murder at the World Trade Center in New York City and at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., I was the Global Industry Credit Manager for the insurance industry for the largest corporate finance institution in the world. With people panicking over the likely magnitude of insured losses, I was a busy young man; actually a lot more busy than young. In speaking with the country risk manager for Japan, I found out that colleagues of mine had been comparing the day that lived in infamy in 1941 with the day of ignominy sixty years later. While I really should have been focussing on the estimate of the losses to be suffered by insurance companies, the meanness of those cutting remarks made me angry and so I took a break from the numbers-crunching. Over lunch, I researched the attack on Pearl Harbor and learned that few civilians died that day, mainly from falling anti-aircraft flak. In my weekly letter to the managers around the world, I disagreed decisively with those hurtful  comparisons between Pearl Harbor and 9-11. One was a surprise military attack. The other a mass murder calculated to kill as many innocents as possible. To compare the two would dishonour those Japanese airmen who had confined their warlike actions to military targets that fateful day. No, as an American, I could never embrace the sneak attack against Pearl Harbor. No, as an American, I would never equate the actions of the Japanese Air Force in December of 1941 with those of Al Qaeda in 2001. No, not the least.

El otoño de 2004. Yo había sido en Bagdád por algunos meses cuando visitaba el hospital militar con oreos u otras galletas para dar a los soldados heridos. Más importante, tenía conmigo un teléfono celular que podría alcanzar a los U.S.A. u otros países para que los heridos pudieran llamar a sus familias preocupadas. Solo esos soldados quienes no fueron demasiado heridos – o, como iba a aprender esta noche, más allá de esperanza – estuvieron en este hospital; aquellos con heridos graves serían transportados a Alemania con facilidades más avanzadas de cirugía. Esta noche fue diferente. La enfermera del ejército tan linda fue tan linda, como siempre, pero era muy desconsolada, como nunca, este viernes.	Autumn 2004: Baghdad, Iraq. Once I had settled into my work as a civilian advisor to the national police department of the ‘New Iraq’ (sic), I had started visiting Combat Support Hospital (the ‘CASH’) armed with my cell-phone and a bag of cookies. The cookies proved to be utterly superfluous, thanks to churches, the girl scouts and other groups back home. The cell-phone was the prize because it enabled the injured soldiers to call their loved ones and let them know they were okay. In actuality, that CASH was a triage station for the moderately or mortally wounded only. Severe cases with a decent chance for survival would be med-evacced out to Wiesbaden, Germany. That day, my buddette, a beautiful young nurse, almost always so enthusiastic to see me come in, had no spark, no life in her. No welcoming hug; no old man’s fleeting solace for me that day.
Le pregunté a ella cuál fue el problema. Una docena de soldados estado-unidenses fueron heridos pero irían a sobrevivir, con manos quemados. Sin embargo, el chofer del camión – lo cual se había golpeado por una bomba, ocultada al lado de la calle – no iría a sobrevivir. Decidí inmediatamente visitar su habitación para dar mis respectos y oraciones para él. Primero, daré mi teléfono a la enfermera para tocar las teclas de parte de los heridos para que pudieran llamar a sus familias. En andar a la habitación del soldado moribundo, un ‘soldado primero’ de la Infantería de Marina, yo había asumido que su cuerpo sería desmembrado y mutilado. Pero, no fue; el Lance Corporal Johnson parecía bien como un joven típica-mente americano que estaba durmiendo tranquilamente.	Presently, I asked her what was the matter. A dozen soldiers of the United States Army had been injured when a road-side bomb had exploded and sent a fireball through their compartment. The squad was alright; they had burned hands and other slight burns, all of which were expected to mend completely. Thankfully, with the opening in the back of that truck, the fireball had blown through too quickly to impose significant damage on them. The driver of the transport truck, however, a young Lance Corporal of the United States Marine Corps, had been mortally wounded. When that hidden explosive had detonated, that young Marine’s reaction – instinctive and, therefore, a clear marker of his character – had saved his fellows at the imminent expense of his own life. The right thing for me to do was go into his room to pray for, and to pay my respects to, him. I hesitated because I figured he would be burned all to Hell, perhaps dismembered; I did not much feel like puking. Surprisingly, the young Lance Corporal, Johnson, had not one scratch. He looked like he was sleeping serenely and would be throwing a baseball around with some buddies in the a.m.
Fui sorprendido. Pregunté al doctor si estaba verdaderamente muriendo ya que él pareciera, tan sano, tan entero allí. Sí, el doctor me explicó; el soldado, con ningún día más de veinte años, estaba muriendo lentamente desde la hemorragia interna. Me sentí tan impotente que yo había durante los momentos finales de ambos de mis padres. Al menos, el joven no estaba sintiendo mucho dolor. Este Lance Corporal Johnson – como tantos otros  estado-unidenses clásicos desde muchas generaciones – había reaccionado instantáneamente cuando la bomba había explosionado. Sin hesitación y con una mente clarísima, él había maniobrado el camión de manera oportuna para salvar sus doce compañeros, pero, al costo de su propia vida. Ahora, aquí estuvo acostado, muriendo, mi compatriota valiente.	So, I asked the doctor if this was actually the young man who was dying. The attending physician said yes, solemnly. That answer, I refused to accept; I pleaded that the boy was whole; no one could look that healthy and still be dying. No, Lance Corporal Johnson would be dead by morning from internal bleeding. The doctor winced slightly as he told me that. Brushing aside my personal feelings of powerlessness, I wondered how this could be; this All-American kid, probably from a small town in the great middle of the Republic, was twenty years old, at most. He had a girl back home, praying for him every night as she went to sleep; he had a mom; he had a dad; he had family. It was evilly unfair that he should never see them again. His clarity of thinking and his grace under pressure had led him to an early death. The whole situation proved once again that there is, at the core of our lives, an element of random chaos; that we hang onto institutions to create a sense of order. But, every once in a while, for example with the insanely unjust death of a good and simple young man – better than I, certainly – all these things fall to dust under the weighty and wicked majesty of fate and its unyielding insolence.
Después de haber llamado a sus familias, los otros soldados, se dieron cuenta que el Lance Corporal Johnson no iría a sobrevivir. El soldado con la personalidad más fuerte repetía a menudo, “El Marine, no va a sobrevivir” o “El Lance Corporal, no va a continuar.” Todos estaban muy tristes a causa del destino doloroso del hombre que les habían salvado. Me sentí completa-mente inútil. Hasta ese momento cuando pedí a Dios (en lo cual no creo completamente, excepto en circunstancias como éstas), “Dios, ¿qué puedo hacer?” Inmediatamente, me di cuenta que los soldados sintieron lo mismo que yo. No tenían el uso de sus manos, ya que las suyas se habían vendado. Por lo tanto, me acerque a la enfermera para tomar un lápiz y papel. Así, me senté con cada soldado para escribir sus pensamientos de gratitud para su camarada caído. Por lo tanto, la familia de Lance Corporal Johnson siempre conocería lo que su hijo heroico había hecho para preservar las vidas de sus compañeros. Tal vez, la mejor acción que he hecho en mi larga vida.	And Lance Corporal Johnson just lay there, resting in peace – at least not in discernible pain – as he would soon be resting, forever. The Army squad members had made their calls home. They were deeply grateful; such thanks were an ample reward, paid in a permanent currency of the heart (not to mention the largess of the U.S. tax-payer picking up the tab for that phone). Now they realized that the ‘damn Marine’ who had saved them would never wake up to accept their gratitude and give them shit for being 'just Army'. The squad leader kept moaning lightly, over and over again, “The Lance Corporal’s not gonna make it.” Again I brushed away those foolishly selfish feelings of helplessness. A thought came instantly; that intuition did not come from me, no not at all. Quickly, I walked over to the nurse. She was still sinking into her sorrow. I asked her for a tablet and pencil. Then I took these things and called the men together and suggested that I write down their thanks and gratitude and feelings for the compatriot they would soon leave behind. At least his loved ones would have these words of grateful remembrance, echoing a sincerity few can ever know, with them in the mournful months and years ahead. After all, with bandaged hands, the Army soldiers could not do it themselves. I opened that letter to the Johnson family with something like: 'Dear Mr and Mrs Johnson, I am a U.S. government official and am writing you to record the remarks of the men whom your son, Lance Corporal Johnson, saved today….' That took a good long while through many tears openly shed from American servicemen far braver, far greater than I. After proof-reading the letter, I walked it over to the Doctor and asked that this tesimonial be included with the Lance Corporal’s personal effects sent to his family receiving the crushing news. The doctor smiled; he was grateful.

El verano de 2010 Yo era casi listo para salir de Afganistán para regresar a los Estados Unidos y, después, ir a México para servir mi país una vez más. Yo iba a cumplir un sueño de muchos años para ser un cooperante del Cuerpo de Paz. Desafortunadamente, una patrulla del ejército se había emboscado; tres soldados fueron asesinados por el Talibán. La base militar – el equipo de reconstrucción provincial – tenía  un servicio en memoria de estos tres jóvenes valientes. Yo no podría hacer un saludo formal ya que soy un civil. Sin embargo, cuando oí el himno nacional alemán, puse mi mano sobre mi corazón, como lo había hecho durante los servicios para varios soldados norteamericanos. Esos soldados muertos del ejército alemán fueron mis hermanos, también; tuve un deber de honrarles como hombres valerosos que habían hecho el sacrificio último para que otras personas -- a quienes no conocieron -- sufriendo en pobreza y terror, ahora tendrían una oportunidad para dejar una mejor vida para sus niños.	Summer 2010: Kunduz, Afghanistan. Things were all set. Good bye, AfghanLand – Adirondaks, here I come. Then, hola México. Finally, after thirty-five years of dedicated procrastination, I would fulfill my lifelong, if not very high-flying, ambition of serving as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer. Prior to my departure, a military patrol had been hit hard by the Taliban. Three soldiers had been murdered while on a foot patrol. The Provincial Reconstruction Team held a memorial service for the dead infantrymen. As a civilian official stationed in the field, I could not salute the dead men. As a small military band played “Deutschland Über Alles” and as my colleagues sang their country’s melancholy and almost mystical national anthem, you can bet your ass that my hand was over my heart, just as it had been for those fallen American boys over the years. After all, these young soldiers from the Bundeswehr had been my younger brothers in uniform, too. In a plain way, I had a duty to acknowledge their bravery and their sacrifice for the benefit of others. Those others, among the wretched of the earth, had known only terror, poverty and death at a young age. Thanks to these younger brothers in uniform, who spoke a different language, these adults and, more likely, their children of rural Afghanistan might someday know a better life, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEdunqTVfc  //  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw96cSYo9dU  //  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJNNzbWM4F8
Hoy en día, 2015 Como los santos de Dios de la iglesia episcopal, hay muchos norteamericanos honrados entre nosotros no tan famosos. Tenía el privilegio de conocer a muchos en Afganistán e Irák. Me duele mi corazón por sus sufrimientos; han dado tanto a mi querido país. En los U.S.A. ahora, oímos mucho sobre la generación más grande: aquella que lucharon en la segunda guerra mundial. Sin embargo, esta generación del ciudadano-soldado estadounidense ha servido en dos, tres o aún cuatro turnos de servicio en guerras sin la respalda de sus compañeros en situaciones muy peligrosas (ya que los enemigos parecían idénticos a los civiles). En este día, entonces, espero que todos nosotros tomemos un momento profundo para ellos, aunque la gran mayoría de nosotros lamentan, al menos, la guerra iraquí.	Memorial Day 2015: Tijuana, Baja California. Back in that grade school in 1969, we had a favorite hymn (from the then 1940 Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America.): #243, “I sing a song of the saints of God”. The Episcopalians got it right: there are saints in everyday places, all around us – perhaps even ourselves once in a while. Looking back over those years in Afghanistan and Iraq, I have been privileged to know the everyday heroes that came predominantly from smaller American towns with Mexican names, Irish names, English names, Arab names, French names, Italian names, Jewish names, German names, Scot names, Japanese names, Chinese names and so many other names. My country rightly venerates those few veterans from World War II as part of the ‘Greatest Generation’. But, on this Memorial Day, I wish also to take a minute to  salute all those who served in unpopular wars, in Viêt Nam or in Iraq and, after so long, even in Afghanistan. Especially those in the most recent two wars; these younger brothers and sisters in uniform served two, three or four tours in places where they knew not who was good and who was evil, until – too often – bullets or explosions came their way. There was little that was glorious about these more recent conflicts, which makes the professionalism of these American soldiers in never giving up  and their sacrifice in always showing up all the more, well, glorious.
Idos pero nunca olvidados		Gone But Not Forgotten
EATING QRO: ARTÍCULOS DE NEDDY McDonnell III, Edward CFA PMP; el 31 de mayo de 2013 http://articulosdeneddy.blogspot.mx/2013/05/cidesi-articles-31st-of-may-2013.html
La lectura para esta semana se dirige a un día importante en el calendario de los U.S.A., el Día de Memoria.  Esta fiesta estado-unidense es uno de dos tales días dedicados a los soldados del pasado o quienes ahora en un lugar peligroso en servir a la República estadounidense.  En noviembre, se observa el Día de Recuerdo que corresponde a la fecha del armisticio para terminar los combates en Europa de la primera guerra mundial.  La esperanza inicial del día era para recordar a la humanidad que esta primera guerra mundial, tan llena de horror, sería la última.  No era verdad entonces; no es verdad ahora.  Sin embargo, este Día de Recuerdo pretende honrar a los veteranos vivientes de las guerras, de reciente pasado.		This week’s reading focuses on an important day in the American calendar, Memorial Day. This holiday – truly, a holy-day – represents a dual-remembrance of those soldiers in my country’s history who died in combat and of those in harm’s way today in service to my belovèd Republic. In November is a similar holiday, Remembrance Day, which corresponds to the end of the Great War (i.e., World War I). The hope for that Remembrance or Armistice Day had once been that all such terrible slaughters had ended, forever. Sadly, that proved not to be true then, nor is it true today, as we see blood-drunk gangsters slaughtering innocents across the Middle East. These days, however, that national holiday in November honours all veterans who have served the United States. As always, and in forthright humility, I salute their service to my country.

De otro lado, el Día de Memoria, se empezaba al fin de la guerra civil estadounidense entre 1861 y 1865, un evento tan traumático que su imprimátur todavía perdura ahora en la psicología estado-unidense. Esta guerra resolvió la naturaleza de la nación estadounidense y terminó la institución vergonzosa de esclavitud. Dicha lucha sangrienta mató a más estado-unidenses (de ambos ejércitos regionales) que la agregación de todos los muertos de guerra norteamericanos desde entonces. En verdad, de una perspectiva mexicana de hoy en día, una tal guerra tendría que matar a dos o tres millones de hombres. Con los muertos de tantos jóvenes soldados, el Día de Memoria fue comenzado, como se diga la historial, por esclavos liberados en mayo de 1865.

For its part, Memorial Day began at the conclusion of the Great Civil War of the United States, from 1861-1865, in which more of my fellow Americans died than every other war put together; the war between the states left a permanent scar on the American psyche. That war resolved the split personality of the Republic in favor of a unified whole (like Germany or Australia), rather than a league of independent states (like the European Union of today). The torrent of American blood swept away the shameful institution of slavery. Thus was Memorial Day initiated by freed slaves out of gratitude to the ultimate sacrifices made by many white – and, later, black – men to secure the basic liberties that had been allowed every Mexican since 1811, when the Reverend Miguel Hidalgo, banned involuntary servitude.

Estas personas quisieron mostrar su gratitud para los soldados muertes que habían sacrificado todo para que los negros del Sur pudieran gozar de sus derechos naturales (es decir, aquellos conferidos por Dios). Es porqué el Día de Memoria se llama “El Día de los Caídos”: para consagrar los sacrificios de estadounidenses matados en guerras pasadas.  Entonces, la primera traducción se escribía hace veinte meses sobre el diez de septiembre de 2011, como parte de una serie de tres discusiones para recordar el décimo aniversario el ‘día de ignominia’: el once de septiembre 2011.  Sin embargo, se adapta con el espíritu de la fiesta nacional del Día de Memoria.	Those young men died, wearing the Blue of Union and 360,000 in all, so people they would never know would be afforded the natural rights conferred by God upon every man at birth. So, too, did a great many die in World War II so that Europeans, especially those of Jewish heritage, might be secure in these natural rights again. In this sense, Memorial Day extends to those fellows from France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Scandinavia, New Zealand, the BeNeLux region and China who also died that their kinsman and neighbors live free. There is an, at best, ambivalent glory in their deaths – young lives were snuffed out casually like candles at the end of a sit-down dinner – but there is eternal greatness in, and a lasting gratitude for, their sacrifice. The reading that follows is the translation of a letter home to ‘friends and familiares’ on September 10, 2011. The essay lays out my own celebration – permanent imprimatur –  of my country’s ‘Holy Day of Obligation”, perhaps ‘Oblation’.
El diez de septiembre 2001		The Tenth of September 2001
LETTERS TO FRIENDS AND FAMILIARES: #40 McDonnell, Ned; el 10 de septiembre 2011 http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.mx/2011/09/tenth-of-september-2001.html
Durante los dos últimos días había estado ocupado, en recoger a mi hermana y una prima en el aeropuerto de Detroit-Metro, así como en prepararme para el funeral de mi tío, el sargento Henry McDonnell, prevista para la mañana siguiente. Yo había estado en Detroit durante unos días porque visité a mi tío en el final de su vida de ochenta-y-tres años y para darle las gracias por ser un buen tío y un excelente padrino y para decir adiós. Por supuesto, y de nuevo, me gustaría aparecer en lugar de mi padre, esta vez para honrar su hermano querido.		Things had been busy for the preceding couple of days, picking up my sister and a cousine at the Detroit-Metro Airport as well as getting ready for the funeral of my Uncle Henry McDonnell the next morning. I had been in Detroit for a few days because I had visited my uncle at the very end of his life to thank him for being a good uncle and for being my godfather. Most of all, I was in Michigan to say good-bye. Of course and again, I would show up in my father’s stead; this time for his belovèd brother.
El ritmo de preparación, finalmente, se había tranquilizado durante la segunda noche de la visitación en una funeraria local. Hacia el final de la noche, me tomé un momento para mí de mirar el retrato de la foto de mi tía Marion y el tío Henry en su día de boda. Ya ha transcurrido una década, el calendario de eventos han revuelto desde la memoria hasta el significado, a partir de la secuencia hacia la significación. Parecían jóvenes, tan atractivos, aún expectantes - hicieron mi tía Marion y el tío Hank.		The pace of preparation had finally slowed during the visitation at a local funeral home. Toward the end of the evening, I took a few moments for myself to look at the photo portrait of my Aunt Marion and Uncle Henry on their wedding day. Since a decade has elapsed, the timing of events has scrambled from memory to meaning, has migrated from sequence to significance. They looked young, lovely, expectant – my Aunt Kit and Uncle Hank did.
Años más tarde, me gustaría ver una escena en la película, "Cartas desde Iwo Jima", en la que Sam, el herido mortalmente soldado de los Marines de los Estados Unidos, hablando con el coronel japonés que le estaba consolando con la última de la morfina disponible. Sam le preguntó al oficial, "¿Es usted alguien famoso?"		Years later, I would watch a scene in the movie “Letters from Iwo Jima” with Sam, the mortally wounded United States Marine, speaking with the high-born, truly noble, Japanese Colonel who was comforting him with the last of the morphine available. Sam asked that officer, “No kiddin'? Yeh-you somebody famous?”
Dentro de tres años del descanso final de Hank McDonnell, yo pasaba varias horas en el hospital de combate en Bagdad, Irák, en visitar a otro joven soldado muriendo de los Marines de los Estados Unidos, Lance Corporal Johnson, mientras lentamente se alejó de los médicos que habían intentado todo lo posible para asegurar a este joven una vida plena. El escuadrón de infantería del United States Army, a quién ese joven les había salvado sin ayuda de nadie, con la singular virtud de sacrificio, se estaban sufriendo. La suya no era  la gloria del combate en esa habitación, pero una profunda mezcla fuerte muy humana de la culpa, la gratitud y el duelo amargo.		Within three years, I would spend several hours in the combat hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, watching over another young United States Marine – Lance Corporal Johnson – as he slowly slipped away from doctors who had tried everything to assure this boy a full life. The infantry squad whom that young man had saved single-handedly, with singular virtue and sacrifice, were hurting. Theirs was not yet the glory of combat in that room but the very human mixture of guilt, gratitude, grief.
De verdad, la maravilla de Sam en esa cueva remota en 1945 me perseguía ahora seis años antes de la película de Eastwood brilló en las pantallas de cine. Se puede ver, el sargento Hank. McDonnell, que él se parecía mucho a Sam (y, seis décadas más tarde, a Lance Corporal Johnson). Hank había aprendido a hacer lo correcto - y así lo hizo al unirse al Ejército de los Estados Unidos como un sargento, recién salido de la universidad. Las diferencias fueron dos. Hank McDonnell había sobrevivido y se había disparado a sobre la playa, no de Iwo Jima, pero de Okinawa, durante esa misma primavera, llena de sangre de los jóvenes, de cincuenta y seis años antes de 2001.		Indeed, Sam’s wonder-ment in that cave in 1944 haunted me now six years before the Eastwood film flashed across the screens. You see, Hank McDonnell was much like Sam. He had learned to do the right thing – and he did so by joining the United States Army, fresh out of college, eventually becoming a sergeant. The differences were two. Hank McDonnell survived; secondly, he was gunned down on the beach of Okinawa, not Iwo Jima, during that very bloody Spring of fifty-six years before 2001.
La escuadra de Hank no había avanzado mucho en esa playa cuando vio la cabeza de su hombre de las comunicaciones se destrozó un metro de él, bajo el fuego enemigo. Hank pronto siguió a su compañero, golpeando la arena con tres balas en su interior. Probablemente estaba muriendo y no podía moverse. Durante horas yacía allí en esa playa. Durante horas, oyó los ruidos sordos de balas golpeando la arena a su alrededor. Hank rezó a un Dios para en quién habían sido indiferente hasta unos momentos antes y, a través de la valentía de campo de batalla de los demás, él vivió.		Hank’s squad had not made much headway on that beach when he watched the head of his radio-man shatter, just a feet away from him, under enemy fire. Hank was soon to follow, striking the sand with three bullets inside him. He was probably dying and he could not move. For hours, it seemed, he lay there on that beach. For hours, he heard the dull thuds of bullets hitting the sand around him. Hank prayed and through the battle-field courage of others, he lived.
Dicho coraje, tal vez innata o tal vez la gracia del momento, estableció a Hank McDonnell encima de la mayoría, y aparte de casi todo el mundo. Mi tío Henry tomó la imagen de un amigo cortado salvajemente -- de la espera de su turno para morir -- dentro de él por el resto de su vida. Siempre bailando por mi mente, mis recuerdos rápidamente vagaron por delante hacia la tranquila celebración del octogésimo cumpleaños de Henry McDonnell en Tucson, Arizona en 1998. Como yo había hecho durante los cuatro años anteriores después de su muerte no oportuna, me estuvo asistiendo en el lugar de mi padre.		Such bravery, perhaps inborn or perhaps the grace of the moment, set Hank McDonnell above most, but also kept him apart from almost everybody. Apparently, war does that to many of the survivors. My Uncle Henry took that image of a friend severed savagely, of waiting for his turn to die, with him for the rest of his life. Only on the day following his death did I learn about what Hank McDonnell had seen, and survived, that crushing day so long before. Dancing as they do, my memories quickly shifted ahead to the quiet celebration of Henry McDonnell's eightieth birthday in Tucson, in 1998; I showed up in the stead of my father.
Mi regalo de cumpleaños para esta ocasión era un sobre delgado, al igual que aquello que había contenido la carta de rechazo que Hank había recibido de la Universidad de Yale cuando él se estaba graduando de la preparatoria de Philips Academy (Andover) en los años treinta; yo sufrí la misma puramente adolescente agonía cuatro décadas más tarde, en la Choate School. ¿Un sobre? ¿Y uno delgado? No mucho. Sin embargo, Henry McDonnell había ganado todo lo que yo podía permitirme el lujo de comprar que él podría valorar.		My birthday gift for this occasion was a thin envelope, much like the one containing the rejection letter Hank had received from Yale when he was graduating from Andover; I suffered the same tritely teen-age agony four decades later at Choate. An envelope? And a thin one? Not much. But Henry McDonnell had earned everything I could afford to buy that he might value.
Después de una cena de bajo perfil con la tía Marion, mi primo Peter, y su realmente magnífica esposa, Paula, le di mi regalo al tío Henry y contuve la respiración, deseoso de dar una buena impresión. Tío Henry abrió el sobre quizá molestado que yo le había dado sin convicción ochenta dólares, por cada uno de ochenta años. Leyó el formulario-carta de uno de hicieron mi héroes, el senador Robert Dole, dándome las gracias por una contribución de mil quinientos pesos - en honor del sargento Henry Egglesoe McDonnell, Jr – hacia la construcción del Gran Monumento de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Washington, D.C.		After a low-key dinner with Aunt Marion, my cousin Peter, and Pete's truly magnificent wife, Paula, I gave my gift and held my breath, anxious to make the right impression. Uncle Henry opened the envelope, perhaps annoyed that I had lamely given him $80 for eighty years. He read the form-letter from one of my heroes, Senator Robert Dole, thanking me for a $100 contribution -- in the honor of Henry Egglesoe McDonnell, Jr -- to the World War II Memorial, then beginning construction in Washington, D.C.
Hank McDonnell acogió ese regalo: me había hecho a mi padre orgulloso. Dos meses más tarde, en una reunión familiar mucho más amplia para celebrar 'oficialmente' el cumpleaños del tío Henry, me encontraba solo, saliendo del baño, cuando Hank McDonnell, a punto de llorar como la noche cuando había dicho adiós a su hermano 'chico', apenas unas horas antes de que mi padre se había ido, dijo, en lo que me sonaba como un tono severo, "Ned, ven aquí."		Hank McDonnell welcomed that gift. I had made my father proud; that is a big deal for those of us who are Irish. Two months later, at a much larger family reunion to celebrate Uncle Henry’s birthday, I happened to be alone, walking out of the powder room, when Hank McDonnell, as close to crying as the night he said good-bye to his ‘kid’ brother (just hours before my father departed four years before), said, in what sounded to me like a stern tone, “Ned, come here.”
Ansioso como siempre y más que un poco inseguro, vi a mi tío alcanzar en un cajón y sacar una caja con tapas de cuero, del tipo que tiene el forro de terciopelo azul real, por lo general contiene joyas. En abrir la caja, Hank McDonnell me mostró sus medallas: una estrella de bronce y un corazón púrpura y otro que no reconocí. Sus palabras eran apenas audibles, "Rara vez he mostrado estos, Ned, pero yo quería que los veas."		Anxious as always and more than a little insecure, I watched my uncle reach into a drawer and take out a square, small leather-bound box, the type that has the royal blue velvet lining, usually containing jewelry. Opening that box, Hank McDonnell showed me his medals: a bronze star and a purple heart and one other I did not recognize. His words were barely audible, “I have hardly ever shown these, Ned, but I want you to see them.”
El anuncio hecho por el hermano de mi tía Marion, un sacerdote episcopal de muchos años en Carolina del Sur, que lideraría un tiempo de oración en honor a mi tío, me sacó de esa sueño de algunos momentos. Que un sacerdote episcopal - el hermano de mi tía - exhibiera la gracia para honrar el catolicismo de Henry McDonnell mediante un rosario me hizo darme cuenta de que Hank había sido muy afortunado. La riqueza de la familia de su esposa de más de cincuenta años resultó ser tan real como lo había sido evidente.		The announcement of the brother of my Aunt Marion, an Episcopal priest of many years in South Carolina, that he would lead a time of prayer to honour my uncle, snapped me out of that momentary reverie. That an Episcopal priest – my Aunt’s brother – would exhibit the grace to salute Henry McDonnell’s Catholicism with a Roman prayer made me realize that Hank had been very fortunate. The wealth he had married into turned out to be as real as it had been apparent.
Después de las oraciones, mi hermana y yo estábamos caminando fuera de la sala de visitación para volver a nuestro hotel, ya que los fuertes sentimientos de los últimos días me había dejado cansado. Mi querida prima, Nancy McDonnell, que había gozado - como su padre - un gran éxito en los negocios y que, de nuevo como Hank, entendía la importancia de una reserva personal, se quedó cerca de la entrada, completamente solo por un momento. Mi intención había sido para ofrecer a Nancy un paseo al aeropuerto después del funeral, no solo para ser gentil, sino con la esperanza de que ella pudiera decidir por mí si yo regresaría a Manhattan mañana, el once de septiembre de 2001, o esperar hasta el doce.		After the prayers, my sister and I were walking out of the visitation room to return to our hotel, since the emotion of the past days had left me tired. My cousine, Nancy McDonnell, who had – like her father – succeeded in business and, much again like Hank, understood the importance of a personal reserve, stood near the entrance, briefly alone. My intention had been to offer her a ride to the airport after the funeral, hoping that she would somehow decide for me whether I would head back to Manhattan tomorrow, the eleventh, or wait until the twelfth. It was September, a pretty slow time of the year for insurance companies.
En cambio, ella se quedó allí, con los ojos hundidos en el dolor de una hija. A pesar de mi estúpida mirada de Charlie-Brown por no tener las palabras propicias para decir lo que debería decir, Nancy McDonnell me miró, hizo una mueca de sacudir la cabeza sutil-mente, y dijo:		Instead, she stood there, her eyes deep in a daughter’s grief. Notwithstanding my stupid-ass Charlie-Brown look of not having the words to say what I should be saying, Nancy McDonnell looked at me, winced in shaking her head subtly, and said,
“Ya sabes, Ned, esto es el final de una época.”		“You know, Ned, it’s the end of an era…”