Today is March 2nd, Texas Independence Day. Each year on March 2nd, at the Texas Capitol, the Travis Letter is read aloud. For on February 26th of 1836, Lieutenant Colonel William Travis, commandant of the garrison at the Alamo of San Antonio, wrote thus to “To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World”:
I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna - I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man - The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken - I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls - I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch - The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country - Victory or Death.
On March 2nd of 1836, at Washington-on-the-Brazos, assembled representatives of the Texan people declared their independence from the corrupt regime of a brutal dictator. On April 21st of that year, at San Jacinto, the Texan Army under General and future President Sam Houston defeated once and for all the Mexican Army under Antonio López de Santa Anna. Houston’s men captured the caudillo as he attempted to flee the battlefield, and in return for his (later broken) promise never to menace Texas again, they agreed not to shoot him on the spot as the war criminal he was.
This entire episode seems somehow familiar, and particularly today.
For this year, March 2nd is also Ukrainian Independence Day, as will be August 24th, and every other day this year. For as their flags still wave proudly from their walls, Ukrainians fight for all of Europe, and beyond. They fight under Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a man whom I respect more than any so-called leader in any NATO capital, and whom I expect will come to be seen as William Travis and Sam Houston wrapped in one.
Today, their flag also waves from the front of my house. I have been embarrassed that I have not done more to help. For this year, in the West, March 2 is also Ash Wednesday. If we choose not to aid the Ukrainians in their time of peril, we will have much for which to atone.
I am disgusted that the governments of NATO member states have not done more. Thanks for the offer of the ride, as Volodymyr Oleksandrovych put it, and thanks much more for the ammunition, but really—actual bombing would be much better. NATO could end this tragedy quickly, with its overwhelming air power, by turning those comically inept assault columns into a second Highway of Death, all the way back to the Russian border.
Yet I can and do now resolve to do more. I learned of Texas Independence Day, and all that it means, during my many years living in Texas, culminating in my graduation from the University of Texas with a doctorate in public policy. To do more, I draw upon my skills as a political economist of international security, with long experience in the industrial, managerial, and technological tools that secure freedom. I can now turn my efforts to the study of economic warfare, to make pay the thugs who would assault the freedom of people in Ukraine, Taiwan, and yet more nations beyond. I reaffirm that I will not work with or on behalf of brutal regimes, regardless of who claims them as allies, and I call upon others to do the same.
For this reason, I am similarly rebranding my marketing efforts. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on marketing to the military during wartime, and over those years of research and writing, I learned the value of that function. Moreover, if I take anything from the events of the past week, it is that war is now upon us. As the American author Fannie Hurst famously said in November 1941, “we may not be interested in this war, but it is interested in us.” So I will market this war, this inescapable war, and the actions that we must take to bring economic warfare to the enemies of all that is good and right. I am now a wartime economist, for a world in which the peacetime tools are no longer appropriate.
God Bless Texas, and Glory to Ukraine.
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