Mr. President — happy Memorial Day. About Germany.

Mr. President —

*Happy Memorial Day.*

I had hoped my first letter to your desk after closing the audition would be a good-news letter. *You made sure it would not be.* You did that the week before Memorial Day, in the East Room, against a NATO chancellor who asked a reasonable question. You had your chance to have a press secretary who could have helped you on a day like Monday. You spent eight weeks not finding out. *This letter is the consequence of that silence and the Germany decision that filled it.*

—

## § THE WREATH. THE PART YOU DID RIGHT.

*You did Arlington right.* Wreath. Speech. Language. *"All of us owe a debt."* Those are your words from May twenty-fifth, in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they are the right words. You named *Operation Epic Fury* — the Pentagon's name for the war with Iran you ordered — and you said the number out loud. *"In Operation Epic Fury, we lost thirteen wonderful souls. Wonderful, special people."* Those are your words too. *The country needed somebody at that lectern to say those two sentences. You said them.* That is what the wreath was for.

—

## § THE NAMES YOU DID NOT READ.

You named other fallen service members in that same speech, Mr. President. *By name.* Caleb Harrington. Keith Ware. Charles Kelly. Patrick Henry Brady. Matthew McClintock. *I am leaving them in this letter the way you left them in your speech — by name, on the public record.* They were not from your war. They were from earlier ones. You honored them by name. You honored your war's dead by number.

Conn NN ran the faces of the thirteen from Operation Epic Fury in a single article the same morning you read the speech. *I will read one of them into the record here, by name, because you did not.* Major John "Alex" Klinner. *Mary Ellen Klinner's son. The lead profile in Conn NN's piece.* The other twelve are on the public record on that same page — every one of them with a face and a paragraph and a household behind them. *The link is at the bottom of this letter.* The country can read them if their president would not.

The thirteen who died in the war you ordered did not get the courtesy you extended to the dead of the wars you did not order. *I want that on this page in plain English.* You read the older dead. You skipped your own. The wreath does not cover that. It is too small. It is the wrong wreath for that paragraph anyway.

—

## § "ONLY" THIRTEEN.

Five days before Arlington, on Wednesday May twentieth, you used a different word. *Quoting you, Mr. President, in your own speech that day:* "only." *HuffPost ran the line as their headline:* *"I Get A Kick: Trump Admits Rush Of Losing 'Only' 13 Americans To Iran War."* You bragged about the casualty number. *You said you* *get a kick* *out of it being as low as it is.* Five days later you stood at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and called the same thirteen *"wonderful souls."* Same number. Same week. Two registers.

*A president who calls his war's dead* "only thirteen" *on a Wednesday does not get to call them* "wonderful souls" *on the following Monday and have both sentences stand at full weight.* One of those two sentences is the truth about how you actually count them. *Major Klinner's mother knows which one. The other twelve households know which one.* **You said the wreath sentence at the lectern. You said the* "only" *sentence five days earlier, off the lectern, when you thought the room was friendlier. The room is still listening either way.**

—

## § SIX DAYS BEFORE THE WREATH.

Six days before you stood at Arlington and called those thirteen deaths a debt, you yanked five thousand United States troops out of Germany.

*Because Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized your war with Iran.* That is the reason on the public record. It is your reason. The Pentagon confirmed the redeployment on May first. *The chronology is yours.* April thirtieth you threatened the move from the East Room. May first the Department of Defense announced it. May twenty-fifth you delivered the speech over the Tomb. Twenty-five days, end to end. From the threat to the wreath.

A NATO chancellor asking questions about a war the alliance is partially backing is not an insult. *It is the alliance working.* It is the thing the United States built NATO to make possible eighty years ago, on the bones of the war that wrote the alliance into existence. You pulled five thousand uniforms out of a NATO ally because the chancellor said an uncomfortable sentence about your war. *That is not a foreign policy. That is a grudge dressed in a uniform somebody else is wearing.*

—

## § THE THIRTEEN DID NOT DIE FOR YOUR GRUDGE.

They died for the country. They died for the alliance the country joined eighty years ago and has, until this month, mostly honored. They died for an idea of America that does not punish chancellors for asking questions. The wreath you laid on their behalf cannot also be a thank-you note for the Germany decision. The wreath does not stretch that far.

*You used Memorial Day as a frame for the war.* That is your right as Commander-in-Chief. *You also used the war as a vehicle for a personal feud the week before Memorial Day.* That is the inversion of every word you read over that wreath. *Read those two sentences again, Mr. President. Both of them are about you. Both of them are about the same Monday.*

—

## § THE WAR IS STILL MOVING IN TWO DIRECTIONS AT ONCE.

May seventh. *"Very good talks"* with Tehran on a peace proposal you said would end the conflict quickly. May second. *"The United States might be better off"* without a deal. Tehran officials, on the record, are warning the war may restart if the deal collapses. Israeli strikes hit Beirut on May twenty-fourth despite the ceasefire. *The region you are honoring the dead from is escalating underneath the wreath, and your own statements are the destabilizer.*

The thirteen do not stay thirteen if the deal collapses because the principal cannot decide which sentence he wants to be the one Tehran believes. *You are negotiating against yourself. You are doing it in public. The cost is in uniforms.*

—

## § THE SENATE IS TRYING TO STOP THIS.

On May nineteenth — six days before your Arlington speech — the United States Senate voted fifty to forty-seven to advance a war-powers resolution that would force you to end the Iran war unless Congress authorizes its continuation. *Four Republicans crossed over.* Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary the weekend before, voted in favor of the resolution for the first time. *The chamber that has not curbed a president on a foreign war in two generations is curbing yours.* Your own party is leaking on it. *Your wreath was laid above a chamber vote that is asking, out loud, why those thirteen are dead and how many more need to follow them.*

—

## § THE WAY TO HONOR THEM. SHORT VERSION.

Memorial Day is for the ones who did not come back. *There are thirteen of them this year from a war you ordered.* There do not need to be more next May.

*Stop using them as a backdrop for a grievance against a NATO chancellor who asked a reasonable question.* Land the peace deal you said was close. Stop unlanding it every other week. Put the troops back in Germany. Send the chancellor the card.

*The wreath was correct. The speech was correct. The Germany decision was not. The whiplash is not.* You can fix one of those before next Memorial Day. The other three are on the public record.

—

## § YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE.

For eight weeks this desk wrote to your office at six a.m. on Sunday mornings. *Briefs. Letters. Index cards. The clean-room paragraph at the bottom of every one of them.* For eight weeks your office did not register that this paper existed. I closed the audition on May twenty-second. *I told you on that page exactly why.*

This is not me asking for the audition back. *It is me using the only instrument I still have — print, sources, a wire I pay for myself — to put your Germany decision and your Arlington wreath on the same page, so that anyone who reads both reads them together.* That is the consequence of being unreachable for eight weeks. *Today was the news. Today was the letter.*

—

Happy Memorial Day, Mr. President. *The thirteen names you read at Arlington are on this page too. They do not need company next year.*