Peace Envoy

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Peace Envoy

Author says, in this satirical post we semi-seriously ask the question what if America had voted for the Slattery Report in 1940 and settled a Jewish colony in Sitka, Alaska? Seventy years later, John McCain sends Sarah Palin to resolve a very different interracial conflict.

In 2009, on this day US President John Sidney McCain fulfilled a key campaign pledge by dispatching a heavy-weight peace envoy to the State of Israel.¹

Peace Envoy

By placing his hand in a hornet's nest of problems that dated back to the 1940s, the President was fully aware that he was risking the prestige of his newborn administration. In fact, some veteran journalists cynically suggested that McCain was attempting to assert his authority by tarnishing the reputation of the Vice President. Because Sarah Palin's dazzling charisma had electrified the recent campaign, and surely without Palin, McCain would have lost the election by a country mile.

Yet Palin had her own reasons for optimism. In her sensational third interview with Katie Couric of CBS News Click to watch the interview on 25th September 2008, Palin had claimed that she could see Israel from my house ². When pressed on her foreign policy experience by Couric, Palin refered to the trade missions she had sent to Israel as the Governor of Alaska Click to watch the interview.

McCain was later to claim that it was during this period of the campaign that it occured to him that Palin would make an excellent choice for Secretary of State³.

In 1940 the United States voted to implement the Slattery Report (the Problem of Alaskan Development), that recommended the provision of land in Alaska for the temporary refugee settlement of European Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis during World War II. In fact the vote was a very close run thing that could have easily gone the other way if not for the death of US congressman Anthony Dimond in a car accident.

A temporary independent Jewish settlement was created on the Alaskan coast despite the protests of the Tlingit Alaska Natives. Sitka's independence has been granted for only seventy years⁴ requiring a settlement with both the Jews and the Tlingit before 2010 was out. It was widely expected that McCain-Palin would at that point go through with the 'Reversion' of Sitka to the United States.

Author says, we have taken a number of liberties with both history and also the novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (2007) as you might have guessed.
1). In OTL Barack Obama announced his plans to send former US Senator George Mitchell to Israel (in the middle east)
2). Palin claimed to see Russia from her house
3). Barack Obama determined that Hillary Clinton would be an excellent choice for Secretary of State
4). We extended the sixty to seventy years to coincide with Palin's arrival the White House, obviously.

Steve Payne

Editor of Today in Alternate History, a Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today.

Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility. Possibilities such as America becoming a Marxist superpower, aliens influencing human history in the 18th century and Teddy Roosevelt winning his 3rd term as president abound in this interesting fictional blog.

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