JOHN FENZEL

Jeffery Deaver on Outlining...

The Good, Bad and Ugly Played by Great Britain's Ukelele Orchestra

Court vs. Mediation: 15 Rules to Follow with Family Law Mediators...

As an alternate means of dispute resolution, mediation is often an avenue that parties will be directed toward prior to litigation. After my own experience in several mediation proceedings, here are some thoughts for those who are either preparing for, or engaged in, family law mediation:

1. Know your end-state. Go into mediation fully prepared, having done your homework. If you go in unprepared, the mediator will have absolute control over the discussion and you will be left to react. Know what is truly important and let those principles guide you.
2. Maintain the initiative. Time is money. Unethical mediators won't hesitate to enter into open discussions with you in order to burn up your deposit and require you to pay them more.
3. You are your own honest broker. No one is a better advocate for you. Never sign anything without your own attorney's review or without knowing that you made the right choice.
4. Stay above the fray. Your ego can be your worst enemy. Don't go in trying to "win" an argument. Keep what is important to you at the forefront of the mediation and the negotiations. Remind the mediator when they are off-base.
5. Know when the mediator is working against you. Make no mistake: unethical mediators are fully capable of taking sides. If you believe they are (even if it's on your own side), you should remind them that they are a neutral party. Biased mediators will destroy an agreement well before it's drafted. As harsh as it may sound, many mediators won't hesitate to take a stance that is not supported by the law. Call your mediator on what you suspect to be biases or misrepresentations. If a mediator seems to want an agreement more than you do, alarm bells should be going off....
6. Trust your instincts. Unethical mediators will deliberately misrepresent their understanding of the law in order to drive you toward an agreement, at your own expense. It's common for them to make statements such as, "I have consulted with several of my colleagues who are familiar with this aspect of the law and they believe you do not have a good case...." It's often a lie, designed to cover up their own lack of preparation or unwillingness to remain impartial.
7. You are your own attorney (even if you bring one with you). You can bring your attorney to mediation. Much depends on your opposition. If you believe that an agreement is likely and they have the capacity to compromise, bring your attorney and document all agreements made on the spot. If you don't have an attorney with you, have the mediator provide a draft agreement to your attorney for review at the soonest opportunity. Don't allow delays by the mediator.
8. Know that some attorneys work together. Mediators are often attorneys themselves. They often know one another well from past cases, professional associations, and frequently through law schools or social acquaintances. That's normally not a problem, but often you will be left interpreting whether it is or not. If it's an obstacle, trust your instincts and get a new mediator. Insist that the mediator disclose any past association with attorneys who are involved in your case.
9. Be open to saying "yes," but be prepared to say "no." Compromise in areas where it makes sense. Know where and when to compromise going in. Know what is non-negotiable: your bottom-line (or "BATNA" as it's been called).
10. Disagree. If you suspect that your mediator is not neutral or impartial, here's a strategy for you: disagree with your mediator on a substantive point of importance to you and see if she is willing to take your point under advisement. If she automatically takes the opposition's side or starts to accuse you of violating a negotiated agreement, it's time to fire the mediator. Don't hesitate to do it: it's your money, your prerogative, and your time. And your future.
11. Be Ready to Go to Court. It's your right. But many mediators feel it's their job to keep you from doing just that. They'll do everything they can to make you feel unreasonable in order to pressure you back to the negotiating table. Negotiate, by all means. But be ready to go to court. At least in court, you can expect well-reasoned, honest and thoughtful analysis. Unquestionably, it's more expensive to go to court, but you wouldn't be in mediation if you weren't heading in that direction anyway.
12. Beware of Diminishing Returns. When the time with the mediator goes on without any substantive compromise or result forthcoming, you are spending money. Lots of it. And it's time to ask if you are getting a return on your investment. But also know when to compromise--if it's a trivial point, compromise.
13. Never Give Away Your Rights through a Negotiated Agreement. Your rights are yours. Unless you relinquish them. If you have a previous agreement that you are satisfied with, that is the law. Only you can open the tenets of that agreement to negotiation. Some mediators may try to change past agreements in the interest of arriving at a negotiated solution. Some tenets may need to change based on changed circumstances, but most do not need to change at all.
14. Your Signature Can Become the Law. Be careful what you sign! Think everything through...all of the contingencies and second and third order effects. Again, have your attorney review any agreement before signing.
15. Insist on a Written Deliverable. If your mediator does not produce a draft agreement for your review within several days after your first round of mediation, she is incompetent and is probably not an honest broker. Chances are, in this case, you are also an after-thought to her. My advice: Fire her (or him). Don't give it a second thought.

Here are the most Common Codes of Conduct for Mediators:

-a commitment to inform participants as to the process of mediation.
-the need to adopt a neutral stance towards all parties to the mediation, revealing any potential conflicts of interest.
-the requirement for a mediator to conduct the mediation in an impartial manner
-within the bounds of the legal framework under which the mediation is undertaken any information gained by the mediators should be treated as confidential.
-mediators should be mindful of the psychological and physical wellbeing of all the mediations participants.
-mediators should not offer legal advice, rather they should direct participants to appropriate sources for the provision of any advice they might need.
-mediators should seek to maintain their skills by engaging in ongoing training in the mediation process.
-mediators should practice only in those fields in which they have expertise gained by their own experience or training.

Good Luck!

When it Takes too Long to do the Right Thing...

It took WAY too long for this to happen, but the Polar Bear has finally been placed on the threatened species list. This has wide-ranging implications for oil and natural gas exploration in Alaska; in the end, however, it was the courts that forced the decision (in spite of serial Department of Interior objections and delays). The real tragedy here, is for the Polar Bear--who depend on the ice for food. The more the sea ice melts, the further and further these bears must swim out for food. The melting has occurred to such a dramatic extent that the Polar Bear are drowning from exhaustion, often during their return swim to land.... The next and logical step is to place the Polar Bear on the engangered species list as soon as possible.

An Interview with Margaret Atwood

'Spell Checker Blues'

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

-Anonymous

Andrea Bocelli & Sarah Brightman :: Time To Say Goodbye

On Obstacles...

One of the secrets of life is to make stepping-stones out of stumbling blocks.

-Jack Penn

Charlotte Church :: Amazing Grace

'All the world's a stage'

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms,
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare
From As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

Elizabeth Warren :: The Collapse of the Middle Class

A thought provoking lecture from Elizabeth Warren (author of the book, The Two Income Trap) about the collapse of the middle class--an alarming trend that she sees in the United States. This will take some time to view, but save the post until you have the time to watch it in full. It's well worth the time....

Why Squidoo? Here's Why...

People often ask me about Squidoo and about those "lenses they do there." Well, I came across this comment from Squidoo's Chief Operating Officer, Megan Casey--and it really sums up the value of the Squidoo Lens, as well as my own internal rationale for creating them....

Got this note today from my mother-in-law, an Art History teacher at a public high school in Connecticut.

Megan,

Kids studying Cuban Missile Crisis……………. and a lens came up first in the search today and proved to be very useful!

Thanks to you and your fellow Squids!

T.

I love when this happens. Selfishly, I love even more when one of my family members (an in-law, no less) finds it. Makes it a whole lot easier to explain that internet company website thingy I spend all my waking hours on!

Passing the Buck...

In a recent New York Times article, entitled "Where was the Wise Man?" former Treasury and current Chairman of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, Secretary Robert Rubin denies any responsibility for the enormous losses that have hit Citigroup in the wake of the sub-prime and credit crises:

“By the time I finished at Treasury, I decided I never wanted operating responsibility again,” Mr. Rubin, 69, said during a two-hour interview in his office. Sitting in a red-cloth chair and propped against a thick book to support a bad back, he made it plain that responsibility for Citigroup’s staggering losses can’t be laid at his feet.

“People know I was concerned about the markets,” he says. “Clearly, there were things wrong. But I don’t know of anyone who foresaw a perfect storm, and that’s what we’ve had here.”

“I don’t feel responsible, in light of the facts as I knew them in my role,” he adds.

But did he make mistakes?

“I’ve thought a lot about that,” he responds. “I honestly don’t know. In hindsight, there are a lot of things we’d do differently. But in the context of the facts as I knew them and my role, I’m inclined to think probably not.”

I've met Robert Rubin, spent time talking to him in his office, and walked away completely impressed with the man. In fact, they really don't come any better--he's decent, professional, experienced, kind, and brilliant. But in this case, he's dead wrong. When you are sitting in an office on the executive floor of Citigroup's headquarters in New York City, getting paid $15+ million a year, issuing denials rather than accepting one's share of responsibility for poor management decisions (and effectively blaming them on others)...well frankly, it just boggles the mind. As the "Wizard" of Citigroup, he absolutely shares responsibility for the disaster that has hit his organization.

Ultimately, that is the difference between leadership and management. Managers pass the buck. Leaders make the buck stop where they sit. Reading Rubin's statements, I was surprised. More than anything, I was saddened. Rubin is better than that.

And then yesterday, anticipating statistics that would confirm an anemic economy, President Bush also pushed the blame for the nation's economic woes elsewhere, blaming Congress for "letting the American people down." No admission of responsibility there either....

Neil Diamond :: Pretty Amazing Grace

For the best version,

Click Here!

From Neil Diamond's appearance on "American Idol:"

WSJ: One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees Now

One of Peter Bernstein's worries: 'If China goes into a recession, God knows.'

This Wall Street Journal interview with Peter Bernstein places our current economic situation in context. This, in conjunction with Warren Buffett's statement that the U.S. "recession will be longer and deeper than most people think...this will not be short and shallow," point to a long and difficult road ahead for the American economy. Bernstein's point that our recession could be further worsened by a Chinese recession points to the extreme degree of interdependence that did not exist for the United States in previous recessions. This could well be the perfect storm: as the United States enters its recession, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis continues to worsen, as gasoline prices approach $4 per gallon, food prices continue to escalate to record levels, and as consumer credit defaults escalate to unprecedented levels, and as an aging baby boom generation enters the Social Security rolls (not to mention Medicaid/Medicare), we find ourselves particularly vulnerable to what happens overseas, well-beyond our control. How did it happen? How bad will the recession be? How long will it take to correct? See Peter Bernstein's WSJ interview below, to find out....

One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees Now
By E.S. BROWNING
April 26, 2008; Page B1

Peter Bernstein has witnessed just about every financial crisis of the past century.

As a boy, he watched his father, a money manager, navigate the Depression. As a financial manager, consultant and financial historian, he personally dealt with the recession of 1958, the bear markets of the 1970s, the 1987 crash, the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s and the 2000-2002 bear market that followed the tech-stock bubble.

Today's trouble, the 89-year-old Mr. Bernstein says, is worse than he has seen since the Depression and threatens to roil markets into 2009 and beyond -- longer than many people expect.

Mr. Bernstein, whose books include "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk," sees two culprits. One is the abuse of securitization -- the trend for banks to hold fewer loans on their books and instead turn them into securities that were sold to other investors. The other is simply years of overborrowing by financial institutions and consumers alike.

Mr. Bernstein is hopeful that Federal Reserve intervention will prevent deflation and depression, but he says there is no guarantee.

Excerpts of a recent interview:

WSJ: Aside from securitization, what were the main causes of the problem?

Mr. Bernstein: You don't get into a mess without too much borrowing. It was sparked primarily by the hedge funds, which were both unregulated by government and in many ways unregulated by their owners, who gave their managers a very broad set of marching orders. It was a real delusion. It was like [former New York Gov. Eliot] Spitzer: "I am doing something dangerous, but because of who I am, and how smart I am, it is not going to come back to haunt me."

When you think about how all of this will work out in the long run, we are going to have an extremely risk-averse economy for a long time. The lesson has painfully been learned. That's part of the problem going forward. You don't have a high-growth exit from this, as you've had from other kinds of crises. We won't have a powerful start, where the business cycle looks like a V. Here, the shape of the business cycle is like an L, where it goes down and doesn't turn up. Or like a U, a flat U. The reason for that is that people aren't going to get caught in this bind again. They will tell themselves, "I'm too smart to do that again." And everyone else is going to be saying the same thing. It is, in fact, going to be a wonderful environment in which to take risk, because there aren't going to be any excesses.

I'm a child of the Depression, and I am thinking about what the early years were like after World War II. It took a very long time to get the memory of the Depression out of business decisions, and certainly banking decisions. I think this is going to be the same. The Fed, too, is going to be less decisive and is going to feel that what it should do is less clear. One of the things that gave people a sense that they could afford to take risks was the sense that the central bankers more or less know what they are doing. But I don't think we are going to feel that way going forward.

WSJ: You said that it could turn out that the smart thing to do is to take more risk, because everyone will be so risk-averse. What kinds of investments do you see as the big winners coming out of this?

Mr. Bernstein: You could say: the things that have been beaten down the most, which would be real estate. But I think real estate is going to be under a cloud for so long, and you can't buy real estate with cash, it is too much money. I think you should go with the stock market. If things are better, the stock market will go up, and if things are awful, the stock market is going to be way down. But it is a place where, if you want to take risks, you've got a wide range of choices. This is why I own stocks [in addition to other investments], because I don't know where the bottom is going to come, and I want to be exposed to every kind of possibility I can think of. And, at least, if you pick the stock market and you are wrong, you can change your mind. There is some liquidity there. Stocks never became cheap, but they didn't become crazy, the way other assets were.

WSJ: How long do you think this whole process will take, before we get back to normal?

Mr. Bernstein: Longer than people think. The people who think we will have turned in 2009 are wrong. There has to be a respite along the way. Nothing goes in one direction forever. But it will take longer than people think. If that weren't the case, I would be talking entirely differently. I would be saying, "What an opportunity we have got." And I just can't believe that the opportunity is here yet. There is too much to unwind.

WSJ: Can you explain the reason you think it will take a long time?

Mr. Bernstein: We have to go back to a moment when people have the courage to borrow and lenders have the courage to lend. Until credit is going up instead of down, you can't have growth. Housing has got to be a very important part of that; it always has been. You have to reach a point where somebody says, "This house is cheap, I am going to buy it," or where some businessman says, "This is a great opportunity for us to expand our business. Everything is available to us."

If China goes into a recession, God knows. The Iraq war and the whole situation with terrorism, we really don't know where that is going to come out. There are so many things that have got to get buttoned down before you say that the future looks good enough to take a risk.

WSJ: What kind of indications are you looking for as signs that the economy is about to get better and that the stock market and the investment world are about to turn the corner?

Mr. Bernstein: Somehow, the housing trouble has to at least flatten out. As long as that is going on, I think the pressure on the credit system is going to persist. It is kind of the leading indicator. It is where the trouble started. We have to underpin the consumer. That is why this is different. That is why this is like nothing we have had before.

Before, it was investment that made the V at the bottom of the business cycle. I don't see real investment turning enough without some sign from the consumer side. Maybe the foreign countries will do it for us. That is a substitute for consumption here. Maybe. But I think that they won't do enough for us, and maybe will be too infected by us to do it. But maybe growth in Asia will help us. The Asian thing is tremendously exciting.

Write to E.S. Browning at jim.browning@wsj.com

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Basics of Creative Writing...

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Peggy Noonan :: Declarations: The View From Gate 14

This OpEd from Peggy Noonan, entitled "Declarations," really does say it all....

April 25, 2008. America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in Pennsylvania. No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what Samuel Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

Gate 14 doesn't think any one of the candidates is going to make their lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the grownups of America and must play the role and do the job.

When Galaxies Collide...

Arp 148, shown here, is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. This image is part of a large collection of 59 photos of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: MSNBC

Secretary of Defense Gates Address to West Point, April 21, 2008

Here is a transcript of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Evening Lecture to USMA Cadets at West Point, New York on Apr 21, 2008....

Thank you. Thank you, General Hagenbeck.

First things first. Congratulations on beating Navy in lacrosse. (Cheers, applause.) Army football will be at Texas A&M in College Station on September 27th. (Cheers.) When the two teams last played in San Antonio two years ago, y'all took 10 years off my life, years I can't afford. I expect it'll be another great game, and I think I'll stay away in a safe place, like Baghdad. (Laughter.)

And in normal speech, I'd thank y'all for coming, but I know full well that this evening is not exactly optional – (laughter) – and my apologies. (Laughter.) So I'll be content with thanking you for staying awake, or at least trying to, given the schedule that y'all have here.

Of course, falling asleep in a lecture or a class is one thing. Falling asleep in a small meeting with the president of the United States is quite another. But it happens. (Laughter, applause.) I was in one Cabinet meeting with President Reagan where the president and six members of the Cabinet all fell asleep. (Laughter.)

But former President Bush created an honor to award the American official who most ostentatiously fell asleep in a meeting with the president of the United States. This was not frivolous. The president evaluated candidates on three criteria – (laughter) – first, duration – (laughter) – how long did they sleep? Second, the depth of the sleep; snoring always got you extra points. (Laughter.) And third, the quality of recovery – (laughter) – did one just quietly open one's eyes and return to the meeting, or did you just jolt awake – (laughter) – and maybe spill something hot in the process? Well, the award was named for Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft who was the first President Bush's national security adviser. He was, as you might suspect, the first awardee, and, I might add, won many oak leaf clusters. (Laughter.)

I actually regret a lot that I will not be here for the commencement of the class of 2008 because of an overseas commitment, but I am honored and grateful to have the opportunity to speak with you this evening. And in fact, I think this is better than commencement, because at commencement the firsties – by then near second lieutenants – would be only thinking about how fast they could get off post. In this way, I get to speak to all of you at least once for about 35 minutes or so – just for those of you who are checking your watches – and while I am secretary of Defense, and I have every confidence you can make it, just keep nudging the person next to you.

This evening's talk is the culmination of a day spent on the road. And I've already made a bunch of headlines at the Air University at Maxwell, criticizing the Air Force. So, now it's the Army's turn. But it is always a welcome duty to be away from Washington, D.C. The faculty should have issued a warning by now that most of you, if you stay in the Army long enough and do everything you're supposed to in your career and are successful, you will one day be punished with a job in the Pentagon.

Some of you may have already heard the jokes and stories from your instructors about the sheer size of the building and the bureaucracy.

The late newsman David Brinkley told a story about a woman who told a Pentagon guard she was in labor and needed help in getting to a hospital. And the guard said, "Madame, you shouldn't have come here in that condition." And she said, "When I came here, I wasn't." (Laughter.)

Even the great General Eisenhower was flummoxed by the experience of making his way around the Pentagon. Soon after returning to Washington, he made the mistake of trying to return to his office all by himself. He later wrote, quote, "So hands in pockets and trying to look as if I were out for a carefree stroll around the building, I walked…and walked and walked, encountering neither landmarks nor people who looked familiar. One had to give the building his grudging admiration. It apparently had been designed to confuse any enemy who might infiltrate it." (Laughter.)

No doubt many of you have studied Eisenhower in your time here. Last year I read Partners in Command, a book by Mark Perry. It is an account of the unique relationship between Eisenhower and General George Marshall, and how they played a significant role in the American victory in World War II and laid the foundations for future success in the earliest years of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Marshall are, of course, icons, legends etched in granite. Their portraits hang in my office.

But one of the things I found compelling in Partners in Command is how they were both influenced by another senior Army officer who is not nearly as well-known and in fact, as a reader of history, I had never heard of.

His name is Fox Conner, a tutor and mentor to both Eisenhower and Marshall. Conner and Marshall first became friends when they served together on the staff of General "Black Jack" Pershing during World War I. And in the 1920s, Eisenhower served as staff assistant under Brigadier General Conner in the Panama Canal Zone.

From Conner, Marshall and Eisenhower learned much about leadership and the conduct of war. Conner had three principles of war for a democracy that he imparted to Eisenhower and Marshall. They were:

· Never fight unless you have to;

· Never fight alone;

· And never fight for long.

All things being equal, these principles are pretty straightforward and strategically sound. We've heard variants of them in the decades since, perhaps most recently in the Powell doctrine.

But of course, all things are not equal, particularly when you think about the range and complexity of the threats facing America today, from the wars we are in to the conflicts we are most likely to fight. So tonight I'd like to discuss with you how you should think about applying Fox Conner's three axioms to the security challenges of the 21st century, the challenges where you will be on the front lines.

“Never go to war unless you have to.”

That one should only go to war as a last resort has long been a principle of civilized people. We know its horrors and costs. War is, by its nature, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Winston Churchill wrote in January 1942: "Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe that any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter… Once the signal is given, the statesman is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

In a dictatorship, the government can force the population to fall in behind the war effort, at least for a time. The nature of democracy, however, limits a country's ability to wage war – and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed with perhaps the exception of World War II, every conflict in America's history has been divisive and controversial here at home. Contrary to what General Patton said in his pep talks, most real Americans do NOT like to fight.

Consider the conflicts today. Afghanistan is widely viewed as a war of necessity – striking back at the staging ground of the perpetrators of the September 11th attack. The Iraq campaign, while justified in my view, is seen differently by many people. Two weeks ago I testified, in front of the Congress on the Iraq War. I observed that we were attacked, at home in 2001, from Afghanistan. And we are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure, because we mistakenly turned out backs on Afghanistan after the Soviet troops left in the late 1980s.

We made a strategic mistake in the endgame of that war. If we get the endgame wrong in Iraq, I told the Congress, the consequences will be far worse.

Truth to tell, it's a hard sell to say we must sustain the fight in Iraq right now and continue to absorb the high financial and human cost of the struggle, in order to avoid an even uglier fight or even greater danger to our country in the future. But we have Afghanistan to remind us that these are not just hypothetical risks.

Conner's axiom – never fight unless you have to – looms over policy discussions today over rogue nations like Iran that support terrorism; that is a destabilizing force throughout the Middle East and Southwest Asia and, in my judgment, is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need. And in fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table, given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat – either directly or through nuclear proliferation.

And then there's the threat posed by violent jihadist networks. The doctrine of preemption has been criticized in many quarters, but it is an answer to legitimate questions. With the possibility of proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical materials, and the willingness of terrorists to use them without warning, can we wait to respond until after a catastrophic attack is either imminent or has already occurred? Given the importance of public opinion and public support, how does one justify military action to prevent something that might happen tomorrow or several years down the road? While "never fight unless you have to" does not preclude preemption, after our experience with flawed information regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, how high must the threshold of confidence in our intelligence have to be to justify at home and abroad a preemptive or preventive war?

Conner's second axiom was "Never fight alone."

He recognized from the onset that the way World War I ended – and particularly the terms of the Versailles Treaty – made another major conflict with Germany almost inevitable. Victory would require a strong partnership of the Anglo-American democracies, and the most successful Army officers would have to adapt to working with allies and partners. Eisenhower and Marshall executed this concept brilliantly in World War II, despite the fact that, as one historian wrote about Allied generals, Eisenhower had to deal with, "as fractious and dysfunctional a group of egomaniacs as any war had ever seen."

Nonetheless, as Perry writes, “Eisenhower was a commander who believed that building and maintaining an international coalition of democracies was not a political nicety…but a matter of national survival.” And he brought this concept to the founding of NATO.

But what do you do when, as is the case today with NATO in Afghanistan, some of your allies don't want to fight; or they impose caveats on where, when and how their forces may be used; or their defense budgets are too small as a share of national wealth to provide a substantial contribution? Not counting the United States, NATO has more than two million men and women under arms, and yet we struggle to sustain a deployment of less than 30,000 non-U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and we are forced to scrounge, hat in hand, for a handful of helicopters.

In August 1998, after the terrorist bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, I wrote an op-ed in the The New York Times about terrorism and national priorities, and I noted that taking a more aggressive approach to terrorism would, in virtually all cases, require America “to act violently and alone.” And even after September 11th and a string of attacks in Europe and elsewhere, the publics of many of our democratic allies view the terror threat in a fundamentally different way than we do – and this continues to be a real obstacle with respect to Afghanistan and other issues.

But as Churchill said, the only thing worse than having allies is not having them at all. They provide balance, credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world. And in the case of Afghanistan, one should never discount the power of the world's wealthiest and most powerful democracies coming together – as they did in Bucharest three weeks ago – to reaffirm publicly their commitment to this mission. Nor, above all, should we forget the superb performance in combat and the sacrifices of allies like the British, Canadians, the Australians, the Danes, the Dutch and others. And I would note with sympathy that last Friday, the same day that the general took command of the Dutch forces, his son, a lieutenant, age 23, was killed in Afghanistan.

Just about every threat to our security in the years ahead will require working with or through other nations. Success in the war on terror will depend less on the fighting we do ourselves and more on how well we support our allies and partners in the modern Muslim world -- moderate Muslim world and elsewhere. In fact, from the standpoint of America's national security, the most important assignment in your military career may not necessarily be commanding U.S. soldiers, but advising or mentoring the troops of other nations as they battle the forces of terror and instability within their own borders.

Finally, Fox Connor said, "Never fight for long."

According to Perry, General Connor believed that “American lives were precious, and no democracy, no matter how pressed, could afford to try the patience of its people.” Early on, Connor instilled the idea in both Eisenhower and Marshall, on finding the enemy, fighting the enemy, and defeating the enemy all within a short period of time.

In World War II, the American people had already begun to lose patience by the fall of 1944, when the lightning dash across the plains of France following D-Day gave way to a soggy, bloody stalemate along Germany's western border. And that was only two-and-a-half years after Pearl Harbor.

Eisenhower no doubt had this in mind when he became president during the third year of the Korean war. He believed that the United States – and the American people – could not tolerate being bogged down in a bloody, interminable stalemate in Northeast Asia while the Soviets menaced elsewhere, especially in Europe. Eisenhower was even willing to threaten the nuclear option to bring that conflict to a close.

It has now been six-and-a-half years since the attacks on September 11th, and we just marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. For America, this has been the second-longest war since the Revolution, and the first since then to be fought throughout with an all-volunteer force. In Iraq and Afghanistan, initial, quick military success have led to protracted stability and reconstruction campaigns against a brutal and adaptive insurgency and terrorists. This has tested the mettle of our military and the patience of our people in a way we haven't seen in a generation.

At the turn of the 21st century, the U.S. armed forces were still organized, trained and equipped to fight large-scale conventional wars, not the long, messy, unconventional operations that proliferated following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The same traditional orientation was true of our procurement procedures, military health care, and more. The current campaign has gone on longer and has been more difficult than anyone expected or prepared for at the start, and so we've had to scramble to position ourselves for success over the long haul, which I believe we're doing.

A drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq is inevitable over time – the debate you hear in Washington is largely about pacing. But the kind of enemy we face today – violent jihadist networks – will not allow us to remain at peace. What has been called the “Long War” is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies. To paraphrase the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in the long war, but the long war is interested in us.

How America's military and civilian leadership grapples with these transcendent issues and dilemmas will determine how, where and when you may be sent into the battle in the years ahead.

In discussing Fox Conner's three axioms, I've raised questions and provided few, if any, answers, and that's the point. It is important that you think about all this, not just at the Academy but throughout your military careers, and come to your own conclusions.

But in order to succeed in the asymmetric battlefields of the 21st century – the dominant combat environment in the decades to come, in my view – our Army will require leaders of uncommon agility, resourcefulness and imagination; leaders willing and able to think and act creatively and decisively in a different kind of world, in a different kind of conflict than we have prepared for for the last six decades.

One thing will remain the same. We will still need men and women in uniform to call things as they see them and tell their subordinates and their superiors alike what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

Here too Marshall in particular is a worthy role model. In late 1917, during World War I, U.S. military staff in France was conducting a combat exercise for the American Expeditionary Force. General Pershing was in a foul mood. He dismissed critiques from one subordinate after another and stalked off. But then-Captain Marshall took the arm of the four-star general, turned him around and told him how the problems they were having resulted not from receiving a necessary manual from the American headquarters – Pershing’s headquarters. And the commanders said, “Well, you know, we have our problems.” And Marshall replied, “Yes, I know you do, General…but ours are immediate and everyday and have to be solved before night.”

After the meeting, Marshall was approached by other officers offering condolences for the fact he was sure to be fired and sent off to the front line. Instead Marshall became a valued adviser to Pershing, and Pershing a valued mentor to Marshall.

Twenty years later, then-General Marshall was sitting in the White House with President Roosevelt and his top advisers and Cabinet secretaries. War in Europe was looming but still a distant possibility for an isolated America. In that meeting, Roosevelt proposed that the U.S. Army – which at that time was ranked in size somewhere between that of Switzerland and Portugal – should be the lowest priority for funding and industry. FDR's advisers all nodded. Building an army could wait.

And FDR, looking for the military's imprimatur to his decision, said, “Don't you think so, George?” And Marshall, who hated being called by his first name, said, “I'm sorry, Mr. President, I don't agree with that at all.” The room went silent. The Treasury secretary told Marshall afterwards, “Well, it's been nice knowing you.” And it was not too much later that Marshall was named Army chief of staff.

There are other, more recent examples of senior officers speaking frankly to their civilian senior officers. Just before the ground war started against Iraq, in February 1991, General Colin Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, met with the president, first President Bush. I was there in the Oval Office. Colin looked the president in the eye and said words to this effect: “We are about to go to war. We may suffer thousands of casualties. If we do, are you prepared to drive on to victory? Will you stay the course?” Colin wanted the President to face reality. The President gave the right answer.

I should note at this point that in my 16 months as secretary of Defense, I have changed several important decisions because of general officers disagreeing with me and persuading me of a better course of action. For example, at one point I had decided to shake up a particular command by appointing a commander from a different service than had ever held the post. A senior service chief persuaded me to change my mind.

On trips to the front, I've also made it a priority to meet and hear from small groups of soldiers ranging from junior enlisted to field-grade officers, and their input has been invaluable and shaped my thinking and decisions as well. All in senior positions would be well-advised to listen to enlisted soldiers, NCOs, and company and field-grade officers. They are the ones on the front line, and they know the real story.

More broadly, if as an officer – listen to me very carefully – if as an officer you don't tell blunt truths or create an environment where candor is encouraged, then you've done yourself and the institution a disservice. This admonition goes back beyond the roots of our own republic. Sir Francis Bacon was a 17th century jurist and philosopher as well as a confidante of the senior minister of England's King James. He gave this advice to a protégé looking to follow in his steps at court: “Remember well the great trust you have undertaken; you are as a continual sentinel, always to stand upon your watch to give [the king] true intelligence. If you flatter him, you betray him.” Remember that. If you flatter him, you betray him.

In Marshall's case, he was able to forge a bond of trust with Roosevelt not only because his civilian boss could count on his candor, because once a decision was made, FDR could also count on Marshall to do his utmost to carry out a policy – even if he disagreed with it – and make it work. This is important because the two men clashed time and again in the years that followed, ranging from yet more matters of war production to whether the allies should defer an invasion on the mainland of Europe.

Consider the situation in mid-1940. The Germans had just overrun France and the battle of Britain was about to begin. FDR believed that rushing arms and equipment to Britain, including half of America's bomber production, should be the top priority in order to save our ally. Marshall believed that rearming America should come first. Roosevelt overruled Marshall and others, and came down on what most historians believe is the correct decision – to do what was necessary to keep England alive.

The significant thing is what did not happen next. There was a powerful domestic constituency for Marshall's position among a whole host of newspapers and congressmen and lobbies, and yet Marshall did not exploit and use them. There were no overtures to friendly congressional committee chairmen, no leaks to sympathetic reporters, no ghostwritten editorials in newspapers, no coalition-building with advocacy groups. Marshall and his colleagues made the policy work and kept England alive.

In the ensuing decades, a large permanent military establishment emerged as a result of the Cold War – an establishment that forged de