RUTHFULLY YOURS

Henry Kressel for thirty years was the senior partner in the technology practice of Warburg Pincus, one of the most successful private equity and venture capital firms, after a distinguished scientific career at RCA Labs. Norman Winarsky runs the venture capital division of SRI International (originally founded as Stanford Research Institute), one of Silicon Valley’s great idea factories. In this compact volume they offer a step-by-step guide to creating world-shaking new companies with billion-dollar market valuations. Why reveal their secrets? In fact, there are no secrets, only a set of filters that eliminate the vast majority of contenders from the running.

This is a cautionary tale more than an inspirational one, and many of the book’s deepest insights are found in its diagnosis of what went wrong with seemingly bulletproof ventures. Great new companies require the right technology for the right market niche, the right management for the right customers, the right investors for the right executives, the right financial controls for the right take-off trajectory. It sounds simple, and it is. It requires vision, experience, contacts and common sense to bring all these elements together in one venture. There are very few venture firms with the brains and bandwidth to do it all, but the ones who do produce a remarkably high number of hits.

Kressel and Winarsky have no use for the popular notion that start-ups should fail until they succeed, “pivoting” to things that work by trial and error. They write:

Failure has become de rigeur, particularly in software start-ups that initially require little capital and small teams. The idea seems simple enough: you start with an initial venture concept, put together a team, and launch the venture. You develop minimally viable products, keep testing different market and product hypotheses, and pivot based on the market feedback you get. You expect to fail repeatedly and hope to eventually get to product-market fit.

For an old Cold Warrior the scene on a bright October afternoon was surreal: America’s Second Cavalry Regiment crossing a Romanian river on a Soviet-built tactical bridge assembled by the Romanian Army, while overhead Vietnam-era MiG 21s carried out mock attacks, with German-made antiaircraft guns manned by Romanian crews simulating the destruction of the intruding MiGs.

The symbolism of the river crossing brought home to me the precarious condition of the U.S. military presence in Europe. American armor crossed on Romanian bridges because the Army has no tactical bridging in Europe. Romanian antiaircraft guns at the crossing sites highlighted the fact that our Army has no mid- and low-level antiaircraft weapons to protect America’s ground forces in Europe.

The Second Cavalry’s lightly armored Stryker vehicles that crossed on Romanian bridges worked well in Afghanistan against the Taliban. But they would turn into burning coffins when confronting Russian tanks. Numbers tell an even more frightening story: At 30,000, there are fewer American soldiers protecting Western Europe, a piece of the planet that produces 46% of global GDP, than there are cops in New York City.

How shall we rate the state of the world? Take a look around — from Islamic State atrocities in Sinai and Paris, to the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, to China’s efforts to control the South China Sea, to Russia’s intervention in Syria, to the stabbing intifada in Israel.
You might be reminded of the classic exchange in Woody Allen’s movie Play It Again, Sam. The scene takes place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Allen spots an exotic-looking brunette staring intently at an abstract painting. Plucking up his courage, he sidles up to her and asks: “That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it. What does it say to you?”

In an accented, bored-sounding voice, she answers: “It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.”
“What are you doing Saturday night?” Allen asks.

“Committing suicide.”

“How about Friday night?”

So there we are. How do we move forward? Let me begin by offering a few thoughts on how we got here. And then allow me to play National Security Adviser to the next president and offer some ideas for how best to conduct US future foreign policy.

The word “hubris,” from the Greek, refers to overbearing pride or excessive presumption. In his latest book, the distinguished British historian Alistair Horne takes us on an episodic journey through the violent first half of the 20th century to see where and how hubris led to military debacles costing millions of lives and leading to the downfall of warlords, regimes and empires. It is an eminently provocative and readable volume in no small part because Mr. Horne, who has written more than two dozen books on modern European history, here ventures into what for him is the new territory of East Asia. Readers are the beneficiaries of this voyage of discovery.

Even students of military history are unlikely to know much if anything about the 1939 Battle of Nomonhan, fought between the Japanese and the Soviets in one of the world’s most rugged landscapes, the bleak steppes between then Japanese-occupied Manchuria and Soviet-dominated Mongolia. Mr. Horne brilliantly reconstructs this long-forgotten battle—featuring tanks clashing on the trackless wastes—and connects it to future military cataclysms, including the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad a few short years later. It’s as if he has discovered a hidden spring from which mighty rivers of blood were to flow.

In the closet of Abdalrahman, eighth-century caliph of Spain, this note was discovered after his death: “I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call.…In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen: O Man! place not thy confidence in this present world.”

In a footnote to this item, in the fifth volume of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon writes: “If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty number of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labour of the present composition.”

America’s role in the Global War on Terror grows stranger by the hour. President Obama’s fight against ISIS and other radical Islamic terrorists — such as it is — has entered the Twilight Zone. That is the only explanation for Obama’s increasingly bizarre tactics and statements against these existentially dangerous savages.

• After 15 months of airstrikes against ISIS, America finally managed to bomb 116 trucks that smuggle oil out of ISIS territory, generating some $1.2 million in clandestine cash daily. That sum buys plenty of knives for beheadings, Kalashnikovs for mass shootings, and plastique for suicide vests. France now leads the War on Terror, in the wake of ISIS’s November 13 massacre in Paris. Obama must have reckoned that, with France bombing from in front, he might as well bomb from behind.

But even this is kinder and gentler.

“This is our first strike against tanker trucks,” Operation Inherent Resolve Colonel Steve Warren told journalists from Baghdad on November 18. (A November 23 raid destroyed 238 more trucks.) Then he added this detail:

“To minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike.” Each leaflet reads, “Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them.” It continues, “Warning: Airstrikes are coming. Oil trucks will be destroyed. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life.”

Reminiscing after World War II, former chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall remarked: “With Chennault in China and MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, I sure had a combination of temperament.” If Marshall had also recalled the European Theater, he doubtless would have included George Patton among the exasperating commanders he had to manage.

Winston Groom is a best-selling author of both fiction and nonfiction, including accounts of the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg and, most recently, “The Aviators,” a look at the trio of Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle and Charles Lindbergh during the early years of flight. In “The Generals,” he sets his sights on Patton, MacArthur and Marshall. “Their stories are linked as closely as any other set of generals in history,” he writes, “and when they died they passed into legend.”

One strength of Mr. Groom’s effort is the portrait he draws of these men in their formative years. He is a good storyteller, and after a chapter devoted to the ancestors and early years of each, he weaves together their exploits on the Western Front in World War I. There are gripping tales of Patton urging tanks forward and MacArthur assuring his superiors that he will take an enemy position or his name will head the casualty list. Marshall, meanwhile, was learning the intricacies of operational planning, initially with the 1st Infantry Division and later with Gen. John J. Pershing’s headquarters in France. Pershing, commanding the American Expeditionary Forces, had close ties to all three men, including romantic interests in Patton’s sister and the heiress Louise Cromwell Brooks, MacArthur’s future first wife.

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 and 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 favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course 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 has 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 trangressions; 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 shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase 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.

Kerry Calls Russia to Urge ‘Calm and Dialogue’ with Turks After Shootdown By Bridget Johnson
Secretary of State John Kerry hopped on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, today to “offer condolences” for the “loss of life in yesterday’s incident with Turkey,” the State Department said, referring to Turkey’s shootdown of a Russian jet that Ankara said crossed into Turkish airspace.

Kerry “urged for calm and for dialogue between Turkish and Russian officials in the days ahead.”

“He also stressed the need for both sides not to allow this incident to escalate tensions between their two countries or in Syria,” the State Department added in a readout of the call. “The Secretary underscored the importance of progress toward a diplomatic solution in Syria continuing unabated.”

That comes on the heels of a call President Obama had with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday in which Obama “expressed U.S. and NATO support for Turkey’s right to defend its sovereignty.”

Pink Floyd is an English rock band formed in London. Roger Waters, the black belt Israel basher and boycotter is their lead singer. rsk

WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION BY PINK FLOYD

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall