Marine Joke making the rounds

A Marine is working on a Police Training and Transition (PTT) team. Two of his Iraqi Police trainees grab an insurgent, who calls out "By Hussein, let me go!" The IPs drop the insurgent, who runs away.The Marine, astonished, asks why they released the man, and the IPs explain: "He asked for mercy by Hussein, the son of the Prophet, and custom demands that we set him free." A week or two later, the Marine is captured by insurgents. He remembers the IPs, and decides to give it a whirl, so he calls out "By Hussein, let me go!" The leader of the insurgents stares at him for a moment, and then says to the others: "Not only is he an American dog, he's a Shiite too! Kill him!"

C'est la vie

Segoline Royal is not going to be the next President of France. Too bad. Reading the news has been such a Debbie Downer lately. The Segoline ooh la la factor would have brightened things up a quite a bit. At least for men. And I guess for women, too. But our Gallic gal is not destined for center stage. Yet.

So, no added dose of feminine mystique for now.

Not to ignore the worthy women currently occupying worldly seats of power. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, seems like a competent head of state. But unlikely to cause much excitement. And here we have Nancy Pelosi and Hillary. Both competent and unexciting. Nancy dresses like Mother Superior and likes to remind us that she's a grandmother. Hillary has a man's voice and wears pants.

At the risk of being offensive (translation - I'm about to be offensive), what is intriguing about Segoline is her embrace of femininity in such a deliberate and wholehearted way. None of the American "I'm just as qualified as any man, so ignore my gender, while I attempt to appear publicly asexual." That's not a real quote by the way, I just made it up.

But, but, but - this whole femininity thing is, I believe, a tip of a much larger iceberg. One that affects us all. I think it reflects a difference in thinking about life that is as much masculine/feminine as it is French/American.

The real issue in the French election was the man, Sarkozy, who won, and wants the French to be more American. He wants our wine-sodden allies to get up earlier, a la Ben Franklin. Go from a 35 to 40 hour work week. I don't believe he suggested cutting the traditional French 6 weeks of vacation per year, but he generally wants France to work harder. To be more competitive.

I may be the only American businessman who thinks this is a bad idea.

But, our cheesy chums on the continent voted for him, 53 to 47, which sounds kind of close to me, but politicos consider it a pretty big win. So the French have voted to be more like us and work harder.

I love cliche's. Life is short. See? So I say work smarter, not harder. For most people I know, work itself is not a lot of fun, but it's masculine. Some Americans like to try to get rich at work, which can be fun. Success in your career can give you a good feeling. And some jobs give you a feeling that you are doing good in the world, like nursing or teaching. So sure, there's lots of important work to be done.

But that's not the work most of us are doing. Most of us work for a paycheck.

About that paycheck. Let's take a look at our economy. What exactly is it that we are getting for all of our hard work? When I drive down the street I see lots of fast food, gas stations and convenience stores. We are a service economy now. Mike Dukakis (remember him?) warned us about this when he debated George Bush (the other one.) He said that Republican job growth meant that we'd all end up making sandwiches for each other. Prescient.

Walk into a Wal-Mart or Target and look at all of the crap we buy. That's what our economy is. Is that why we work so hard? I really think that the work smarter idea could be worked into our society. But it would have to be a revolution in social thought. A lot of our economy is based on producing, selling, and buying crap. Who needs that? At my house we literally cart several garbage bags of accumulated cheap toys off to either Goodwill or the dump several times a year.

Meanwhile our leaders tell us we cannot afford healthcare for everyone. Or to clean up all of the toxic waste dumps that pollute the groundwater. Or build more schools. Bullshit. We just decided somewhere along the way that those things were not as important as what we do spend our money on.

Let's work smarter on making life better. I think the French may be onto something with this lifestyle gig they've got going. Work should be about life, not the other way around. What if we restructured our economy to really reward things like cleaning the air or water, healing the sick, or teaching our kids. Maybe not give tax breaks to build factories to produce Coca Cola or Lincoln Navigators. We could drink clean water from the tap, like in olden times, instead of Coke. Maybe take the train to work. Whack soda and a car out my household budget and I could really save some dough.

I work hard, by most standards. And I feel guilty when I leave the office at the end of the day. I could work harder or longer to make more money. But frankly, I'd rather be kicking back with a frosty Blue Moon at the Taco Mac, trading witty banter with my wife while Florida pounds Ohio State on the big screen, and my kids mess around in the game room. Kind of an American version of the French cafe'. But I rarely get to.

We have all of the ingredients for all of us to have great lives here. But we add unnecessary stress about money and work. There's more to life than money and there's more to America than the economy. You live your life. You don't work your life.

Those French folks get this. And they're good at it. Good food and conversation. Smoking is allowed. They dress cool and don't seem fat. While eating a lot of rich food. I think a lot of them must walk home.

Life is made up of beautiful moments. I think I'll pick up some wine on my way home.

Costs of War - It Ain't Cheap

I support the troops. But George W. Bush, he's another story.

At the risk of typing out a long string of profanity, I am thinking about my President. I still capitalize the word President, though I notice a lot of people don't.

But back to Bush. He vetoed the war spending bill. No timelines for withdrawal. Cut and Run. Give our troops the resources they deserve. Don't second guess the military commanders. Etc., etc., etc.

Bush wants victory. Or at least success. He doesn't want to have any limits on what it takes to get it. And his veto was upheld, so our political system supported his position. But something tells me that there is, in fact, some limit to what America is willing to give to continue the war. How about we give it a little thought. What is this war worth to you?

I know it's hard to articulate. It requires us to know what we want, and then to say it. A good way to start this thought process is to create our outside parameters. The parameters that define our "buy it" or "don't buy it" decision. Though here it's more of a "stay" or "get out" decision.

We have already spent a lot. So far, this war has cost around 3,334 dead soldiers, over 50,000 wounded soldiers, somewhere around $800,000,000,000.00 of cash, the killing of an uncertain number of Iraqi civilians, and the destruction of Iraq as a functioning country. But these are sunk costs. We won't get them back no matter what happens going forward.

So, as difficult as it is to think that we just wasted all those lives and money, in order to make wise decisions for the future we need to set that aside and look at where we are today and where we can realistically get to.

First, what do we want? We want the Maliki government to bring all of the Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, and other groups into the democratic fold, respecting and participating in the new Iraqi government, recognizing it's authority to resolve disputes, give up their separate militias, love America, hate Iran, beg us to keep permanent military bases, and maximize oil production. Did I miss anything?

Oh yes, of course. If they happen to find Osama bin Laden, fedex his head and hands to the White House. (Apparently he can both run and hide.)

There, now that we know what we want, what are we willing to give up to get it?

Since this is not an all cash deal, we need to understand the currency we will be dealing in. We also need to understand that this is not a simple buy/sell situation. This is a high risk investment. That means we could lose everything we put into it, even if we pay full price. Let's say that again. We could put everything we have into Iraq and still not get what we want.

So what does that mean to this mental exercise? It means that our outside parameter is not a price we are willing to pay for success, it is the limit that we are willing to invest without succeeding, before we refuse to invest anymore. In other words, it is the maximum we are willing to lose.

We will also be dealing in several types of currency. First is cash. By the end of 2007, we will be sunk for a cool trillion bucks. That's a lot of money. Next is dead soldiers. At the current rate of slightly above 100 per month, by Christmas our war dead will be at around 4,200. Third is injured soldiers. Figuring about 800 a month in military wounded, we should be right at 60,000 by year end (although it is hard to find concrete data on this.)

I think this is enough to consider for now. If we try to quantify all of the costs like the mental and emotional scars on our returning soldiers, all of the dead and injured Iraqi people, increased world-wide oil prices, the continuing loss of a functioning country, and of course our national lost opportuity costs, it just gets too complicated. Overwhelming even. That might make the whole war look like a bad idea, and I don't want to appear unpatriotic.

So, cash, dead, wounded. That should be manageable.

First, figure our low, "buy" parameter. Usually this is the parameter that makes a deal a "no brainer" to get into. However, since we are already locked into this one, it will be the cost for us to get out asap. Figure that logistically it will take a year to get all the guys and gear home. That's about $200,000,000,000.00 cash. We could probably knock our casualty rate down by half by not having any new offensive operations. So figure 600 dead and 5,000 wounded over 12 months. That's the least this deal is going to cost us if we decide to cut our losses now.

But hold on a moment! Let's not get overly pessimistic about this option. Remember, we'll be trying to cut deals with all sides as we go. And there isn't any enemy sufficiently large and organized (like North Vietnam) that will automatically take over if we leave. So even though we are cutting our losses, it's not an automatic loss for us. Iraq has a lot of non-governmental social leadership floating around. Tribal leaders, religious leaders, militias. Chaos is not inevitable. These people were organized as a country before we arrived, and it is possible that they can pull themselves back together. We could leave and still come out OK.

Now the tough one. The "don't buy" parameter. How much more do we put into this project before we decide it's enough? Let's start with an absurd "all in" suggestion and work backwards toward the "no brainer" parameter.

We have 300,000,000 people and a $13,000,000,000,000.00 ($13 trillion) a year gross domestic product. We have about 1,400,000 military. So what price is obviously too high? Using Vietnam as a starting point, let's say that 60,000 dead soldiers is too many. Let's also say that $10 trillion is too much money. (I got tired of typing all the zeroes.) Let's also say that a million wounded is too many.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? It's your decision to make. If in 2016 President McCain gets on tv and says that to pull out now would mean that our 60,000 dead soldiers had died in vain, would you say, "No, no more." Or would you pack your son's duffel bag and tell him how proud you are that he's serving his country?

Let's stop here and realize the point of this exercise. It is a grotesque calculation.

But you know what is even more grotesque? Not doing it. Continuing to feed our young soldiers into the meat grinder without a calculation of the costs. With no limit in sight. That's grotesque.

Condi Rice said nobody made any casualty estimates before invading. Am I the only one who thinks that is criminally negligent? My only comfort is that I don't believe her. She is a proven liar. Remember when she said that nobody could have imagined that terrorists would try to fly airliners into skyscrapers? How do these people keep their jobs?

We need to manage our costs in this war. Our costs here include the lives, bodies and minds of our most patriotic young people. It is criminal not to hold them dear.

When is enough enough? It's not rhetorical. It's a real question.