By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor–and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be–That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in thecourse and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions–to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually–to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord–To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go: Washington

_______________________

Letter image courtesy the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.

Stay!

Go!

They are both bad options.  So are the other alternatives.  And yet when it comes to Afghanistan, the American president is hounded by all sides.  Stop Dithering!  Get us out of there!  How dare you second guess a General!  Surge!

It’s like learning to drive with your mother.  Stop!  Slow!  Faster! Aaahhh!  Noooo!  Concentrate!  Relax!

Sometimes it’s okay to just watch things unfold for a while.  Remember: troops are on the ground under the still-new leadership of Stanley McChrystal.  US forces have expanded significantly since Obama took office.  McChrystal is executing a new counterinsurgency (“COIN”) strategy.  So why does it feel like we are a Napoleonic Imperial army poised on a battlefield, waiting for the decision to charge or retreat?

The reality is that the situation in Afghanistan is progressing day by day, with or without a “decision” by Obama.  This is not to say that the deliberations in the White House are unimportant, but rather that they need to be seen in context.  “Wait and see” is a perfectly valid short-term strategy for any leader; sometimes a situation develops in your favor once things are in play.  And they are very much in play in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So what can interested citizens of the world do?  Read widely, listen to others and think deeply about one of the great strategic problems of modern geopolitical history.

The Cowboy has been trying to follow this advice, and he has come around to supporting the McChrystal troop request.  After attending a National Security Conference on the situation last week and speaking with thinkers far more thoughtful than the Cowboy, it seems that this is the least bad option with the best odds of a least bad outcome.

Who has influenced the Cowboy’s thinking?  Who does the Cowboy like other than his trusty steed, who can be relied upon for many things, but on whose geopolitical insights the Cowboy has belatedly learned to place less stock?

Zbigniew Brzezinsky is one of the great minds in political science, with the academic grounding, the intellectual chops, and the real world diplomatic experience to be able to analyze and synthesize a large amount of information and develop a thesis without trite hyperbole.  While the Cowboy’s horse may be better at wrangling a literal mustang, Brzezinsky would be the clear choice when wrangling a metaphorical one, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for example.  Brzezinsky’s talk at a recent dinner was like the performance of a concert pianist (inside joke here).  The Cowboy shook his hand and greeted him like a 1960s teenage groupie backstage at a Beatles concert.

The Cowboy also enjoyed speaking recently with John Nagl, who wrote the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual together with David Petraeus.  Nagl is funny and approachable – always refreshing traits for a weary and humble Cowboy just off the trail.  Nagl’s story about appearing on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in full uniform is amusing.  Nagl also shares the Cowboy’s conviction that a woman’s mother is a good leading indicator of future compatibility; lovely, smart and charming women tend to have lovely, smart and charming daughters – a hypothesis that has been tested at least once by the Cowboy (with positive results).  McChrystal is following the COIN Field Manual in Afghanistan with applicable variations from Iraq.  Remember that Iraq is a highly literate and urban population.  Afghanistan is the opposite.

And finally, the Cowboy likes Stephen Biddle at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Stephen is very sharp, thoughtful and open.  The Cowboy has had a few conversations with him over the past year, and he is a very pleasant person with whom to discuss the waning of American hegemony or any other topic in international relations that might interest you.  If you happen to see him across the room at a cocktail party, I would encourage you to pass the voluptuous blonde and head right for this soft-spoken Harvard man in a tweed jacket.  (Although the Cowboy would look the blonde in her eyes, tip his hat and smile as he passed.)  As the Cowboy told Stephen last week, the world needs more thoughtful communicators like him in the public space, and he definitely needs to get out more.

(You can skip the intros and pick up Biddle at 3:10.)

Here are a few more links to get you up to speed:

Biddle in the New Republic

All about McChrystal

The Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Amazon, PDF – 13.8 MB)

The McChrystal request

The Cowboy’s past thoughts

A decision about the troop request will be announced by Obama next Tuesday night.  All of those Afghan hounds will undoubtedly persist until, and even after the announcement.  As for the Cowboy, he has made his call.

Woof!

What if the foot, ordain’d the dust to tread,
Or hand to toil, aspired to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin’d
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another in this gen’ral frame;
Just as absurd to mourn the tasks or pains
The great directing Mind of All ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous Whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That changed thro’ all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth as in th’ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro’ all life, extends thro’ all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns.
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all!

- Alexander Pope, 1732, from Essay on Man, Epistle 1:
Of the Nature and State of Man, With Respect to the Universe, Section IX.

_______________________
* See Heraclitus

With the Monster…

Sergei Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Opus 30.  Vladimir Horowitz, Piano; Zubin Mehta, Conductor.
New York Philharmonic; September 24, 1978; Avery Fisher Hall.

As any regular reader might have observed, the Cowboy is a bit of a sentimental sap.  So it should come as no surprise that one of his longtime favorites is the Monster.  Yes, it’s all show and flash and raw sentimentality, but what’s wrong with that?

Vladimir Horowitz made the first-ever recording of the Rach3 in 1930.  This performance at Lincoln Center is the last time he played the piece.  In case you want to quibble about some wrong notes here and there, take note:  he was 75 at the time.

The Rachmaninov 3rd begins rather simply, but it soon takes the performer and listener on a wild ride.

It is difficult to listen to the entire piece with dry eyes.  Here’s Yefim Bronfman discussing it.

Money quote:

“Just think that he [Rachmaninov] could come up with such an incredible idea of writing this monster.  First of all it’s one of the most beautiful melodies ever written, in the beginning of the concerto.  It is really a marvel in melody, melancholy, expressivity.”

There is much debate about the “best” performance and the “best” recording.  The Cowboy is partial to Evgeny Kissin’s interpretation.  Kissin’s understated control, given his youth, creates a hidden tension that the Cowboy likes.  Perhaps the most widely praised recording is Ashkenazy in 1963, but you have to put up with the recording technology of the day.

Enjoy.

Please review the material for each question, then fill in the blank.

1.

The student demonstrators in Tehran are protesting at the embassy of, and shouting death to,  ____________.

A)  the United States

B)   Russia

2.

THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

“Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.” He went on to request extra troops and equipment. “Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time,” he said.

This is a description of a war that is being fought by ____________ against a guerrilla force based in the Afghan/Pakistan border area.

A)  the United States

B)   Russia

________________________

Correct Answers:

1980: 1. A; 2. B

2009: 1. B; 2. A

________________________

History on its head.

How many people does it take to create a trend?  A revolution?

This one made the rounds a while back, but it is interesting to think about it in the context of events in Iran over the last several months.

An interesting parallel is highlighted by Roger Cohen.  Here are some earlier thoughts by yours truly.

The Cowboy recently met David Gill, the leader of the social council that led the  citizen’s takeover of the Berlin Stasi headquarters in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) when the wall fell.  Some background here.  Yet again, you see how people are caught up in history, how events push and pull them along, and how pressures build until a dam bursts.

Whether in business or politics, the actions of individuals, in all of their mortality and frailty, are the ultimate cause of change.  People can and do make a difference.

Et bien…

Le Commun Des Mortels

A mon avis
Il faut quérir aussi loin
Que les banis
D’une ville sans enfants

Au-dessus des montagnes
Jusqu’à lenfer des bagnes
Je suis le commun des mortels

Sur le parvis
D’une cathédrale en feu
Je fais mon lit
Et j’attends la voix de Dieu

Au-dessus des connaissances
Jusqu’à la perte de sens
Je suis le commun des mortels

Toujours en vain la quête
De vérité en tête
Toujours en vain la quête
De vérité en tête
Oh Arrêtez cette pirouette

A mon avis
Il faut quérir aussi loin
Au-dessus des montagnes
Jusqu’à l’enfer des bagnes
Au-dessus des connaissances
Jusqu’à la perte de sens
Au-dessus des doucereux
Jusqu’à ce que je sois heureuse
Je suis le commun des mortels

(en Anglais…)

The Common of Mortals (the status quo, the average man)

In my opinion
One must quest as far
As those banished
From a city without children

From above the mountains
To the depths of prison camps
I follow the common of mortals

In the square
Of a cathedral in flames
I make my bed
And await the voice of God

From above all knowledge
To the loss of mind
I am the common of mortals

Always in vain
The quest
For truth
Always in vain
The quest
For truth
Oh, stop
This Pirouette

In my opinion
One must quest as far
From above the mountains
To the depths of prison camps
From above all knowledge
To the loss of mind
From above the sugar-coated
Until I am happy
I follow the common of mortals

(Video and translation by Pomplamoose)

Here are their rules:

1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

Since you read to the very end, you get an extra special treat:

The Cowboy found himself thinking about Eva Evdokimova the other day.  She died earlier this year at the relatively tender age of 60.  She is undoubtedly still dancing in the heavens.

The Cowboy met her many years ago at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in the office of the Balletdirektor, Gert Reinholm (link auf Deutsch).  Gert was a good friend to a young Cowboy, and he even once gave me the clothes off his back – literally.   It was a very chic jacket that he thought would look good on me.  The Cowboy wore it regularly for a time before leaving it in a friend’s car by the zoo in Frankfurt a couple of years later.

Eva was the quintessential ballerina, living in a somewhat alternate, artistic reality.  She was tall, gaunt, pleasant, but not especially friendly.   She spent the last years of her life in New York at the same time the Cowboy was living there, but we never met again. One of her last jobs was as Ballet Mistress for the Boston Ballet – a short-lived assignment that the Cowboy struggles to comprehend: she wasn’t the type.  Her obituary speaks of her numerous performances with Rudolf Nureyev.

Nureyev, or Rudi, was a far more charming and friendly person.  He shared the other-worldliness that so many great artists share, but he was approachable.  The Cowboy spent a lovely evening having a quiet, post-performance dinner in San Antonio, Texas with Rudi, his agent, Gert and another close friend.  The restaurant and the city were sound asleep, but our table was not – except for the unloved agent, with whom no one wanted to converse.  Gert and our other friend were locked in conversation in German all night.  Rudi’s German was not so good, and he and I were sitting next to each other, so we had a long, fairly intimate conversation over dinner, by candlelight no less. Despite having performed that night, he was very awake and engaged.

Rudi and I spoke of many things, but we ended up spending much of the evening discussing Russian literature.  The Cowboy’s knowledge of the Russian greats was relatively limited, so Rudi took it upon himself to edify and spark an interest in a young Cowboy. Who would have guessed it, but Rudi was well versed in the Russian canon. His favorite was Ivan Turgenev, and especially Turgenev’s 1861 novel, Fathers and Sons.  If Rudi spoke about his own father, those memories are lost, but the topic sounded a strong chord in the Cowboy’s heart.  Here is the full text in the original Russian, and here in translation.

The Cowboy’s own father disowned him as a toddler.   He rode off into the New Mexico sunset and never looked back.  With two strong immigrant women loving and caring for him, the Cowboy tended not to think much of the loss, at least not until he was much older.  Children are adaptable, and, often they can readily accept unfortunate circumstances, large and small, that might incapacitate an adult.  Not to exaggerate the Cowboy’s own trauma, which was either trivial or significant, depending on the frame of reference, but as an adult and father himself, it is an absence that the Cowboy feels regularly.

In retrospect, the Cowboy had many father figures, none perfect, all fleeting: a Chicano high school janitor, an Italian-American Major from Brooklyn, a chess-playing Kansas farm-boy who married a young piano-player he met in Sicily during the War, a Polish defector in Mexico City, a Russian artist and film star for the German studio Ufa during the Nazi era, a Swiss-trained surgeon from New Jersey who met his Mexican wife in Lausanne, a drug-dealing, long-haired roadie, and of course Gert, who gave me the chic jacket.  There were others, too.

A fatherless boy with an absent but larger-than-life mother attracts a surprising number of caring people. Looking back, it is astounding to think of all the people who gave their love to a little Cowboy.  There was the Mexican bus driver who took the Cowboy for a tour and something to eat, the high school girl who brought back a Mickey Mouse pin for a little boy who longed to go to Disneyland with her, the young Mormon from Amarillo who inspired the Cowboy to be a good man, drink milk and eat bran cereal, the numerous men who kept a 12 year old boy from getting into too much trouble while working a physical and dangerous job , the college girl who took him to get his teeth worked on, have dinner and an illicit underage beer in a city in Mexico, a haggard and poor commercial fisherman who taught the boy to fish with an empty beer can and some fishing line, the lounge singer who taught him to shoot a gun…  The list goes on and on.  Sadly, or perhaps indulgently, the problem with small acts of love is that they don’t replace the larger gaps.

Sometimes being a good father is about being there.  One can always do more, and one should try.  But sometimes it’s not the dinner where you hang on every word your son says, or the magical fishing trip or the kite-flying adventure, or teaching him to play chess or the trip to Disneyland.  Fathers always should try to be GREAT fathers.  But what little Cowboys really need are GOOD fathers: fathers who are there, all the time, once a day, once a month – it doesn’t matter as long as they don’t ride off into the sunset forever.

If you are a present father who could do better, go for it; your kids deserve it.  But don’t let guilt over what you could do diminish what you are doing, just by being there.  If you are an absent father, it’s never too late to come back.  Until it is.

And as for those acts of kindness, know that little cowboys appreciate them very, very much.  They are not a replacement, but they are remembered for a lifetime.

Go figure.  It was a Russian ballet dancer with no children who really got the Cowboy thinking about fathers and sons.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897); Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E Minor, Opus 38: Allegro non troppo.
Gregor Piatigorsky, Cello; Arthur Rubinstein, Piano.  1936

Autumn

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o’er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven’s o’er-hanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer’s prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1845