WAR

UPDATE:

Many of the comments have asked, correctly, what would Rumpole have done and do now? Of course we have the solutions. 

John Von Neuman along with Oskar Morgenstern in their ground-breaking Game Theory book decided that Poker was the best example of a game subject to game theory analysis because like many real-life scenarios, Poker involved a game of incomplete information in a zero sum game (only one player takes the pot 99% of the time). 

Poker has been subject to millions of hours of simulations and analysis. And the result is the emergence of a near optimum strategy. That strategy involves heightened aggression. Being the lead in a hand. Raising not calling. Dictating the terms. When raised, fold or re-raise. Rarely call. Place the decision back to the opponent. 

Biden and the West have ignored those lessons. Having developed the (incomplete) information that Russia was probably going to attack Ukraine- call that the bet by Putin, Biden and the West called. They threatened sanctions. They formed coalitions. And then they waited for Putin to make the next move. He did. First sending troops into the breakaway republics- call it another raise, and again the West called- imposing more sanctions. The calls didn't work. The sanctions and threats of sanctions did not stop Russia. 

The strategy of responding to aggression with measured responses never works with nation states. We are seeing it now. We saw it in 1938 and 1939. What we saw that worked was what England did in 1940. Having just barely rescued its Army from France, England did not surrender. England did not threaten sanctions. England attacked. They sent bombers to Germany and it's Army to North Africa, handling the Germans their first defeat in Egypt at El-Alamein. 

So what should have been done here for Ukraine? NATO should have immediately admitted Ukraine. NATO troops should have been moved to the borders as trip wires. And Ukraine should have preemptively attacked the massing Russian forces. Tanks were on railroads. Troops were being flown into airports. The railroads should have been disabled with air and missile attacks. Airport runways should have been bombed. In short, Ukraine, protected by NATO, should have raised. Attacked Russian transportation structure and put the onus on Putin and Russia to respond. 

Sun Tzu advised to choose the battlefield. We do that all the time as defense attorneys. The state has DNA? Defend the crime as consensual- choosing the battlefield of consent and not DNA as the area to fight on. 

Crimea's airfields and train depots and its electronic infrastructure should have been attacked and shut down. Make Putin call the raise. He didn't need casus belli- he showed that last night when he invaded Ukraine without provocation- unless you believe his Trumpian claim that he is interested in outing Nazis from the Ukrainian government (whose president is Jewish). 

That's what POTUS Rumpole would have done. 

WAR. What is it good for? 

Absolutely nothing. 

Say it again. 

War has begun. 

Russia has invaded Ukraine, a peaceful and sovereign and democratic country. 

The Western countries and alliances have promised ....brace yourself....SANCTIONS!

Oh boy. Talk about getting tough. 

See our prior post. 

"Democracies have failed again to protect a small democratic nation from aggressors." 

Shame on us. 

All those politicians who belittled British appeasement of the 1930s towards Germany....where are they now? 

All those people who would smugly say that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them...where are they now? 

You do not...repeat...you do not defeat dictators with sanctions. 

Sanctions will never work. 

Dictators who use force, only understand force. When your neighbor's house is on fire you do not offer to sell her a hose. You put out the fire. 

The world has been watching for some time. 

So is history. 

COSTS

The Iraq war costs $177M per day, $7.4M per hour and $122,820 per minute.

Here is nice little up to the minute War Cost counter: COST OF WAR .

The Cost of a tooth extraction for a child varies from $100.00 to $500.00.

Bob Herbert a columnist for the NY Times wrote about 12 year old Deamonte Driver, of Prince George’s County, Maryland. We should note that Prince Georges County is not that far from Washington DC. Perhaps less than 100 miles.

Young Deamonte Driver had an abscessed tooth. A dentist offered to extract it for $80.00. Driver’s mother could not afford the fee, so when the pain got bad she took her son to the emergency room of the local hospital. The hospital gave Deamonte some pain killers and medicine for sinusitis and sent him home.

On February 25 2007, in agony, Deamonte died when the bacteria from the abscess spread to his brain.

We spend $122,000 A MINUTE for a mistake. A mistake in intelligence. A mistake in believing our elected representatives. A mistake that will haunt our country, like Vietnam has, for decades.

We cannot spend $80.0 damn dollars to save a child’s life. A life in which that child may have grown into the next Dr. Pasteur; or Picasso; or Beethoven, or Bill Gates. Without such delusions of grandeur, shouldn't American children be entitled to grow up with adequate health care. Shouldn't Deamonte have been able to reach his teen years; fall in love; get his heart broken; play sports; go to the movies; get married; have children of his own? Shouldn't a child in a country that calls itself the greatest society on earth have a decent chance of not dying from a tooth ache before the age of 20?

Would this have happened to Deamonte in Canada? or England? or France? Or Germany? Or Russia?

Bob Herbert quoted Nelson Mandela:
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul
than the way in which it treats its children.”

We have spent close to half a trillion dollars for the mistakes of our president and vice president ( and we are generous when we use the term mistake; one could easily make the case for “lies”).


Lets say circa 2001 there was no terrorist attack. Lets say that the people of Iraq in 2002 rose up on their own and peacefully overthrew Saddam Hussein.
The question is this: without a war on terrorism and a war overseas pending, would we as a society have agreed to spend one quarter of the cost of the war in Iraq on our children’s health over the next ten years? Would we have agreed to spend 10 billion a year more on health care for the 9 million uninsured children in this country? 10 billion is a lot of money. You can do a lot with 10 billion dollars.

10 billion dollars is what we are spending every 65 days in Iraq.

Think about it.

Think about all the lost lives in Iraq.
Think about all the lost opportunities and all the better ways we could have used that 400 billion dollars we have already spent.

And think about Deamonte Driver. Dead at age 12. George Bush and the Republicans would and have gladly spent 400 billion dollars to stop a terrorist from shooting Deamonte. But they wouldn’t spend an extra 80 bucks to have his tooth pulled.

We reflect on Nelson Mandela's quote and we come to this conclusion: we are not the greatest society on earth. Far from it. We are not the greatest country in the world. Whatever claim we had to greatness we have squandered. We may have had the greatest generation that saved the world from totalitarianism. We may have put men on the moon. But we can't protect the lives of our most valuable resource- children. And we continually vote for duplicitous and deceitful men whose only defense of their right to lead is that they are prayerful and believe in the lord.

George Bush hasn't squandered our greatness. We have. By voting for him. Twice.

See You in Court.