Category Archives: Past as Prologue to Future

Police Reform: Robert Peel’s “Bobbies”

London’s famous police officers, called “bobbies,” are named for Robert Peel, a British statesman who established the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1829. Apparently the idea of an urban police force, bypassing the military or a private force, was a new undertaking.

The three core ideas of Peel’s policies are:

“The goal is preventing crime, not catching criminals. If the police stop crime before it happens, we don’t have to punish citizens or suppress their rights. An effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates.

The key to preventing crime is earning public support. Every community member must share the responsibility of preventing crime, as if they were all volunteer members of the force. They will only accept this responsibility if the community supports and trusts the police.

The police earn public support by respecting community principles. Winning public approval requires hard work to build reputation: enforcing the laws impartially, hiring officers who represent and understand the community, and using force only as a last resort.”

These three core ideas of Peel’s policies found on the the website: https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-policing-principles/

Notice the joining of police and community. Rather than abolishing police, we want to change it to a community supported force for good.

My Grandfather and the Night Riders

My grandfather was the sheriff of a rural Tennessee county in the early part of the twentieth century. During his time in office, a group called the “night riders” terrified local citizens with whom they disagreed, including minorities, attacking and beating them up at night.

They were probably associated with a strand of lawlessness active at the time in the western part of Tennessee. The new century brought changes some didn’t agree with.

I grew up on stories of my grandfather’s attempts to bring to justice those locals responsible for the attacks. My father remembered a time as a young child, waking up and hearing the night riders coming through town, shooting as they went. He remembered his father standing with a pistol, lighted by the lamp just before his father extinguished it.

At least some of the night riders were apprehended and jailed, with help from the Tennessee National Guard, whom my grandfather called in. Some of the local citizens resented his efforts to bring justice and order.

Today’s threats from vigilante groups remind me of those stories my father told. Such groups appear when some feel threatened by changing times. Some resent the calling out of old prejudices, people already uneasy with a world they didn’t create.

Measures instituted to prevent the disease Covid-19 are seen as some kind of attempt against personal liberty, rather than simply ways to save us from suffering and death. Rumors spread, this time with the speed of the internet.

Those of us interested in a safer and saner society can remain patient, even as we act in smaller ways to be kind and compassionate.

Losing Elections in America

The United States has held presidential elections every four years since 1792, frequently switching the winning party. If your candidate loses in an election, you can reasonably assume you will have another chance to vote on a change in four years.

The hope of change “next time,” happening again and again for over two centuries means we settle down and accept whoever is elected, our choice or not.

Except this year the candidate keeps trying to overturn the election results. Despite the most openly scrutinized election in U.S. history, the loser keeps trying to overturn what the vote decided and what the courts upheld.

The U.S. presidential election has worked year in and year out, in depression and prosperity, in war and peace, not because it’s a perfect system but because it overcomes the human tendency to keep power once gained.

Monarchy passes to the royal heir for the rest of the heir’s life span, whether they are qualified or not or whether most of the citizens desire it or not.

Dictators grab power through guns or violence no matter if their citizens favor them or not. They hold power as long as they own enough weapons or means of intimidation.

Representative rule, regularly accountable, means we have hope. It is risky in the sense that it depends on the losers to accept their loss.

To be wedded to a fallible human, whether Donald Trump or another, rather than the rule of law, sets a dangerous precedent.

Those Who Don’t Know History—

Margaret MacMillan has studied the lessons of world history from the 1930’s to the present. In a sober assessment of our current times. (“Which Past is Prologue?” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

MacMillan, a professor of history at Oxford University, writes: “The promise of the 1920’s was cut short by the Great Depression. . . . The result was the growth of extremist parties on both the right and the left.”

Then, she wrote, World War II followed because of “powerful leaders deliberately seeking confrontation.”

U.S. President Trump, MacMillan indicates, is a poor student of history and under him, “the United States has lost much of its moral authority.”

He has renounced arms control, pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic, flattered dictators, and weakened alliances that have benefitted the U.S. since the end of World War II. He attacks the free press and attempts to demean anyone who criticizes him.

Could his dance with dictators mirror the appeasement of Hitler by world leaders, leading eventually to the war?

At the end of her article, MacMillan writes of leaders at a crossroads: “Wise and brave ones may guide the world through the storms. Let us hope the last group has read some history.”

Saving the Churches?

Religion is declining, according to an article in Foreign Affairs (“Giving Up on God; The Global Decline of Religion,” Ronald F. Inglehart).

Among Christians in the United States, church attendance is down. Some churches are closing. Religious schools are cutting staff. Will the Covid-19 pandemic finally sound the death knell on religion, including Christianity?

Inglehart touches on many reasons for religion’s decline including replacement by newer, more inclusive sets of values. He cites “human rights, tolerance of outsiders, environmental protection, gender equality, and freedom of speech.”

Yet, reaching these goals is not a given were religion to become extinct. Plenty of non-religious people fail to practice them.

Perhaps, as G.K. Chesterton is often quoted: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

When we come close to trying Christianity, we may find the results casting doubt on its uselessness or actual harm.

For centuries, the cast down, enslaved, and violated, black Christians found the Christ that their white masters claimed to worship but did not know.

It’s no coincidence that the civil rights movement was led by black preachers. As long as injustices permeate a society, Christianity has the potential to be a worthy opponent.

Religion is not dying. It is reborn in the faith of black churches and all those treated unjustly. They are the ones who revive it.

“Openhanded to the Poor?”

“. . . there should be no poor among you . . . ” the Hebrew leader Moses states in the Christian Old Testament scriptures. (Deuteronomy 15:4 (NIV)).

But, Moses acknowledges, “There will always be poor people in the land.”

That being the case, he says: “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.”

How were the Hebrews to carry out this command?

One way was debt forgiveness. In Old Testament times, land was the primary means of wealth. You grew crops for your family and sometimes to sell. If you accumulated extra money, you might buy the land of your neighbor and use it to obtain more wealth.

None of this was condemned in itself. However, it was understood that too much wealth could lead to unhealthy power for the wealthy. Ordinary citizens would become completely landless and at the mercy of the rich.

The answer was a year of debt forgiveness after every forty-nine years—the “Year of Jubilee.” Land was to be restored to the original families. The wealthy could accumulate more wealth for a time, but then the means of wealth was to be restored to all.

What are equivalents in modern times?

Suppose a financial recession, caused by dubious mortgage lending practices, wipes out the chief means of savings for many in the middle and working classes, the value of their homes? Lenders could be required to renegotiate mortgages into affordable payments for those affected.

When the price of higher education rises beyond the ability of ordinary families to send their children to college, state and federal governments could tax the more wealthy. The tax would subsidize the cost of higher education. After all, the owners of capital benefit from an educated work force.

When an unexpected medical emergency can send an ordinary family into debt for the rest of their lives, the government might consider an affordable health delivery system in which the chief object is healthy citizens, not millions for big pharma.

Unfortunately the ancient Hebrews failed to follow the practices laid on them. The wealthy began to “trample on the poor,” (Amos 5:11), God sent prophets calling them to change: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24)

When the Hebrews did not heed the warnings of Amos and other prophets, they were conquered by an enemy and went into exile for a season. They lost the land they would not share.

Making the Most of This Time

Families, schools, worship services, work places—-these and other communal gatherings have been upended by Covid-19.

In some cases, the results are disastrous—death and sickness, overloaded hospitals, domestic violence, closed businesses, and silent music halls.

Yet despite all the trauma, a few serendipitous sprouts have poked their heads above the misery.

A few families are dealing with closed schools and remote learning for their offspring by banding together to share teaching and child care in small joinings, more easily controlled for the virus.

The number of multi generational households has grown. Not all households profit by coming together—some families have deeply-rooted problems. Nevertheless, more than a few have found unexpected joys as they embrace what was the norm until the past century or so.

New ways of worship emerge from lock downs. No longer tied to services at a particular place and a particular time, some have found they enjoy tuning in to a prerecorded service at a time of their choosing and in whatever casual dress they prefer. Zoom meetings, while not ideal, do allow small groups to share as well, again from the comfort of their homes.

Surveys find a significant number of those able to keep their jobs by working remotely would prefer not to return full time to an office when the pandemic passes. Most say they’d like to spend at least part of the week working at home. Less days at the office might mean less child care problems, not to mention less commuting costs and possibly less pollution.

As so often happens, a crisis is can be an opportunity for creative change. Maybe we’ll discover ways to heal a society whose members have become all too remote from each other.

Living Free for How Long?

We tend to think in terms of our personal experiences, our personal lifetimes. But the short span of the current generation is hardly typical of the world as it has been throughout human history.

“Homo Sapiens has been around for about 8,000 generations, and for most of that time, life has been rather unpleasant,” Stephen D. Krasner, a professor at Stanford University, reminds us. (“Learning to Live with Despots,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020)

Only in the last few centuries have a few nations attempted participatory democracy, rule of law, and other practices we in developed nations tend to think of as normal.

“The experience of people living in wealthy industrialized democracies since the end of World War II, with lives relatively free of violence, is the exception,” writes Krasner.

For that reason, we who still live in such places should not take for granted that they will continue. Quite likely, the only reason for their continuance might be our realizing how precious they are.

We came close to losing our recently-found democracies during the last century. During a time of terrible economic troubles, some nations followed leaders who spoke to prejudice and fear and were allowed too much power.

Especially in a time of fear and confusion, as with Covid-19, we also may be tempted to give in to rumors and plays for power by a selfish few.

Read carefully and wisely. Vote at every opportunity. Support traditional institutions: family, small businesses, local newspapers. Care for your neighbors. Ignore those who would use these times to fan flames of racism or hatred.

Covid-19 and Fear

I was overseas with the U.S. State Department when the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place. My post was in Saudi Arabia.

We suffered confusion, fear, a changed game plan in the time after it happened. After a while, though, those of us at the U.S. mission began to draw closer and pull together. We developed a purpose, a reason for living, tasks to carry out.

I don’t think the fear ever left us, especially after the war with Iraq began, and our posts closer to Iraq began suffering scud attacks. We learned to respect that fear, but our purpose and our friendships helped us deal with it.

The sudden realization accompanying the growth of the Covid-19 virus reminds me of those times. At first, perhaps, a denial, or telling ourselves that it’s all going to be over with soon, no problem.

But, of course, regardless of how long this particular sickness lasts in its current form, our world is changed forever. We will have choices to make, hardships to deal with. We will have to deal with them and with losses, not only of friends but of old ways. We face the fact that we could die—any of us.

Of course, that’s true any day of our lives, but the current pandemic outlines that truth for us.

I think the degree of health of our communities will determine whether we win or lose this challenge. How well we are able to come together with our families, religious gatherings, small governmental bodies, and the like will, I believe, be the key.

capitalism needs consumers

Maybe Karl Marx wasn’t all wrong

For the worker losing his job because his employer moved operations to an undeveloped country for cheaper labor, some of Karl Marx’s ideas might ring true. This worker now understands how much the owners of the capitalist enterprise he worked for concern themselves only with profit, not with their employees or their communities.

A worker losing her job to a robot might also be a candidate for Marxism, if she is not given training for a new job.

Marx predicted that self interest would lead owners (capitalists) to focus solely on profit, turning workers into economic slaves, dependent on the capitalists for their jobs.

After the capitalism of Marx’s time was tamed with laws to protect workers and to oversee their fair share of profits in fair wages, the new capitalism soared. It seemed to prove Marx wrong as the average worker knew a standard of living never before reached in human history.

Within the past few decades, business practices have changed. Obviously, a business can’t exist without profits. However, profit now appears the only goal of many owners. Labor, a cost, is the enemy.

Seeing labor only as a cost illustrates the struggle between what is best for the most and what is best only for me.

One company might gain greater profits for a time by shedding workers, but workers are also consumers. If all businesses see labor only as a cost, over time less people have money to purchase products. All businesses will suffer.

We should not condemn capitalists just because they are capitalists. Capitalism is a very efficient form of production. It works well when a business sees profit as only part of the equation. Capitalism works well when tamed.

Learning About The Green Book

The Green Book was a travel guide for black Americans who wanted to travel–or had to travel for personal or family reasons. It was a guide to lodging places where they could stay—“were allowed”—to stay.

I didn’t learn about The Green Book until a few years ago, but one day as a child, I learned why it was necessary. It was perhaps the beginning of my education about racism.

My family was white. We liked to take trips. At that time, a family could afford modest trips—for us a day’s journey into the Smoky Mountains, for example—at a cost that didn’t break the bank. We stayed in inexpensive cabins and ate picnic lunches to avoid a lot of eating out.

One day we stopped at a gas station. A black family had experienced car trouble. They stood to one side, out of the way, while their car was worked on. No nearby motels or restaurants for them if the car took a while to fix.

I began to notice signs. No Coloreds and Whites Only.

I realized people without white skin couldn’t stay where we stayed. They couldn’t eat where we ate.

Black cooks worked in kitchens of restaurants where only whites were allowed to eat. It seemed so unfair. And it was.

That was only a modest dent in my understanding of white privilege. It didn’t speak to larger issues of voting and jobs and schools. But that day was when I first realized the restrictions on a simple family outing if you weren’t the right color.

From Fall of the Wall to Quid Pro Quo

Thirty years ago, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Country after country of the former Soviet Union took fledgling steps toward democracy.

Writes Louis D. Sell, a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Yugoslavia at the time: “No one who has ever had the opportunity to witness people standing with patient enthusiasm in long lines to vote for the first time in their lives . . . could ever doubt the power of democracy as an ideal.” (“1989: Seen From Yugoslavia,” The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019)

But we in Western democracies couldn’t comprehend the difficulty of people who had no tradition of democracy attempting to make it work.

Western democracies have centuries old traditions of struggle for people power, from at least 1215, when the Magna Carta limited the power of English king. A free press was a unique Western invention.

Many of the former Soviet nations lacked these traditional defenses against tyranny and against powerful oligarchies seizing wealth and power from collapsing regimes. Democratic practices in some of the countries began to reverse, governments coming under the sway of corrupted newly rich.

The United States and its allies began diplomatic policies to support the fight against corruption in these countries.

Imagine what the secret efforts of a U.S. president to bribe officials in one of those countries, Ukraine, for political gain have done to compromise these policies.

Frankenstein News

Some call Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein the first science fiction novel. Her theme is repeated in many later stories. Someone creates a powerful being or force only to see the creation become a weapon of destruction.

The printing press, popularized by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, was an amazing technological advance. It made possible the creation of reading material cheap enough for ordinary people to buy. All sorts of information became available. Everything from the Bible to new scientific theories to incendiary tracts was produced and consumed.

From that time, ordinary people had access to ideas and to the pleasures of reading. Countless lives have been saved through accessible knowledge.

However, cheap printing also made possible the spread of false information like the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax purporting to prove a Jewish plot to dominate the world. This type of easily accessible lying contributed to the murder of millions in World War II.

The digital age has multiplied the Gutenberg effect many times over. Warnings of hurricanes and other disasters wake us from sleep, pinged from our mobiles. Supreme Court decisions and election results are known instantly.

But anyone with an email account or a twitter handle can spread stories, verified or not, sending them off like so much tree pollen in a spring wind.

Efforts at some kind of control over hate material and outright lying are necessary but have limited success.

In truth, the only controls over this digital flood are we the consumers. We can be tempted by Frankenstein rumors or we can choose trusted sources for our information.

 

Fake News circa 1960

Lawrence Martin-Bittman created fake news for the Czech Communist Party in the 1950’s and 60’s. Sharon McConnell tells his story in “The Founding Father of Fake News (Writer’s Digest, March/April 2019).

Martin-Bittman joined the Communist Party in 1954 at age 15. After studying law and journalism in Czechoslovakia, he became an official in the Czech disinformation service. He became a press attaché in the Czech embassy in Vienna, working to distribute false news stories to journalists. His purpose was to poison the relationships between the United States and Western Europe.

In at least one instance, he used blackmail to force an Indonesian diplomat to feed false information about a U.S. “plot” to his home country of Indonesia. As a result, anger against Americans severely damaged American influence in the region.

In another instance, he captured signatures of American diplomats from Christmas cards and placed them on false documents.

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, however, horrified him and led him to change his mind about his communist beliefs. He fled with his wife to the United States.

After a year of debriefing in Washington, D.C., he eventually became a professor of journalism at Boston University.

McConnell writes, “Think about all the damage Martin-Bittman and his cohorts managed to cause before the internet existed. . . . As a reader, it’s important to approach headlines and text with a healthy sense of skepticism . . . considering the source . . . and looking for objective sources.”

Amen.

Thoughts after Reading The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam; From Jihad to Dhimmitude

At some point after living in the Middle East during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I bought the above named book by Bat Ye’or.

Ye’or’s writings have focused on the history of minorities under Islamic rule, which she calls dhimmitude. She also has written and spoken critically against some Europeans for criticism of Israel, accusing them of anti Semitism. Some accuse Ye’or of fostering Islamophobia.

Regardless, at the time I bought the book, I had experienced Middle Eastern cultures for the first time. Previously, I, a Southern Baptist raised in Tennessee, had known them shallowly if at all. Despite having a college minor in history, I was barely conscious of the great Byzantine Empire.

This empire, based in Constantinople (now Istanbul) endured almost a thousand years after the fall of the western Roman empire. Yet I knew relatively little about it or about the eastern Christian faith communities at the heart of this empire.

On a visit to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, I had first visited museums and churches featuring eastern Christian art. (I fictionalized this experience in Searching for Home.)

I began to ask questions. How had Christians became a minority? In a matter of a few centuries, even their Greek language was overtaken by the new language, Arabic.

No doubt the language change played a part in the gradual turning of Christian majority nations into Islamic majority ones. The newer religion used what became the common language. Greek, language of eastern Christian churches, was spoken less and less.

In reading the history of the Middle East before Islam became predominant, perhaps Christianity, as it came to be practiced then, lost its common touch. It became a state religion, beholden to secular leaders for its survival.

Christianity rapidly lost its influence in the Middle East. It was pushed into the backwaters of a place called Europe, the remnants of the old Roman empire fused with the Germanic elements of its conquerors.

Yet eventually Europe became culturally Christian as the Middle East become culturally Islamic. Christians again were tempted to build Christ’s kingdom through worldly power.

Christians, it seems to me, are most likely to endure when they don’t confuse earthly power with the religion of Jesus Christ.

The Marshal versus the Marshall Plan

America has always included an element of “might makes right.” The marshal in the old West meets the villains and defeats them. Order is restored. The good people are able to get on with their lives.

Typically, however, the good comes more slowly but also more peaceably. Child labor is defeated: perhaps by a combination of ballot box and shame. Corrupt political bosses are voted out of office when a free press shines light on their activities.

Nazi Germany was defeated by military might. Yet the structures which have prevented a return to world wide conflict are of a more peaceable sort.

The Marshall plan directed American aid to countries ravaged by World War II (including our enemies) and helped them rebuild. The U.S. used trade and commerce instead of war.

International bodies set rules about fair trading. Scholarships were given to foreign students for study in American universities so they might return and benefit their countries with new knowledge and skills, as well as spread American influence.

Certainly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, called for a military response in Afghanistan. Yet the war in Iraq drew us into a quagmire more because of our desire for cheap oil than anything else. It was might for our own economic benefit rather than a true desire to rid a small nation of a cruel dictator.

War is expensive in both lives and fortune. The United States is still strong enough to win by bolstering its working and middle classes. It can keep alliances with allies, especially democratic allies. It waited out the Soviet Union by such policies. It can do the same now—if it doesn’t yield to the pre-World War II kind of America First syndrome. That was the slogan of Nazi sympathizers before Pearl Harbor silenced them.

Rush to Judgement

William Burns held a leadership position in the U.S. Department of State when terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. In an article in politico.com (March 13, 2019), he speaks of that time when the country, reeling from shock, was deciding on responses to the attacks.

The title of the article is “How we tried to slow the rush to war in Iraq and why the lessons from my time in the Bush administration are relevant today.” It speaks of Burns’ attempts to come to terms with that time and the wrong decisions made.

Even as Burns watched from his office window at the plumes of smoke from the attacked Pentagon, he wrote in a memo: “We could shape a strategy that would not only hit back hard against terrorists and any states who continued to harbor them, but also lay out an affirmative agenda that might eventually help reduce the hopelessness and anger on which extremists preyed.”

In hindsight, we chose to hit back hard but tended to ignore the need to also craft a positive policy to reduce the factors that led to the attacks.

Burns writes: “In the 18 months that followed—that rare hinge point in history between the trauma of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in early 2003—we took a different and ultimately disastrous course. This is a story of the road not taken, of the initial plan of coercive diplomacy in Iraq, which turned out to be long on coercion and short on diplomacy.”

Burns writes of how the campaign in Afghanistan morphed into a tragic focus on Iraq and became quicksand from which we are still trying to free ourselves.

In a memo from the time before the decision to invade Iraq, Burns wrote: “we needed ‘to show that we will finish the job [and] restore order, not just move on to the next Moslem state.’”

We did not finish the job in Afghanistan. While the work was unfinished there (and remains to this day) we moved on to Iraq, then Syria, and now Iran.

The hardliners won after 9/11, and they are continuing to win today in our policies on Iran. “The Iraq invasion was the original sin,” Burns writes. Unfortunately, we are still following the path begun then.

American Reckoning

“The American Civil War was a struggle over two competing ideas of the nation-state. This struggle has never ended; it has just moved around.”

So writes Jill Lepore in “A New Americanism; Why a Nation Needs a National Story.” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2019)

Prior to the Civil War, two ideas pitted themselves against each other. Stephen Douglas said in 1858 that the United States “was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.”

His sparring partner, Abraham Lincoln, challenged Douglas to find a single affirmation in U.S. history that “the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence.”

The Confederates attempted to craft a new country based on ideas like those Douglas held. Though the union defeated them, the battle between competing visions of the nation still continues, according to Lepore.

The victory of the union was eventually overtaken by a kind of schizophrenic nation. One provided a new beginning for immigrants fleeing persecution and oppression and stood in contrast to segregation, Jim Crow laws, and Chinese exclusion acts.

Our current conflicts, mirrored in our views toward “the other,” are a continuation of these old battles.

I grew up a child of the South, proud of my heritage. I still cherish the kinship and unique community spirit of my childhood. Much was good. But a tough love of that place requires me to speak out against the malignancy that festered side by side with our native caring.

As a Christian leader, Jim Wallis, has written, slavery was our original sin. Until we repent, not only of the original sin but of all the insidious descendants we have refused to root out since then, I think we will fail as the nation we were meant to be.

Wealth and the Scrooge Syndrome

“The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away unwept, unhonored, and unsung, no matter to what uses he leave the dross which he cannot take with him.”

The words are those of Andrew Carnegie, the man who built up the American steel industry. After amassing great wealth, he retired and became a philanthropist. As a child, I fed my love for reading in a library founded with his wealth. My family would have found it difficult to buy all the books I was able to read free of charge.

Capitalism is a powerful economic machine. It is unrivaled in its ability to produce goods, but it is neither good nor evil in itself.

Some capitalists pay huge sums to politicians favoring policies allowing more and more wealth and political power to accumulate to fewer and fewer wealthy individuals.

Others support worthy cause like scholarships and homeless shelters and health programs.

As capitalism’s wealth accumulates, the capitalist decides whether to be corrupted by it or to share both wealth and power.

More words from Carnegie: “Of such as these the public verdict will then be: The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor.”

U.S. Embassy: Venezuela: On the Front Lines Again

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the safety of American diplomats in the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. The United States has recognized an opposition leader in that country as the legitimate president. Needless to say, Nicolás Maduro, elected president in a sham election, is not pleased and has made various threats against the embassy.

Pompeo replied as his predecessors have replied for decades in similar situations: The safety of its diplomatic personnel is the highest priority of the State Department. Given the number of American diplomats who have been killed in recent decades, concerns are valid.

A long time ago, after the first Gulf war against the Iraqi invaders of Kuwait in 1991, I knew two people affected by the buildup to that war. One was a junior diplomat in Kuwait on his first assignment. The other was the office manager in Baghdad, staying behind with the few remaining diplomats in that embassy.

The U.S. ambassador in besieged Kuwait, now overrun with Iraqi forces, sent greetings to his colleagues back in Washington: “Your colleagues in Embassy Kuwait are pleased to send you our greetings this evening. All things considered, we would prefer to be with you in person, but you will appreciate that this is not possible.”

When the invading Iraqis cut off utility services, the Americans reportedly used water stored in a swimming pool.

I had a more than passing interest in what was happening in those days. I was on my own first assignment to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a country bordering Kuwait.

Eventually, diplomats in both Iraq and Kuwait were allowed to evacuate before the war began. Families and friends breathed a sigh of relief.

After the end of the war, another colleague, whom I knew in Jeddah during the war, was assigned to accompany the victorious Americans returning to the embassy in Kuwait. I was jealous. I have pictures of her as she and her colleagues watched while the U.S. flag was raised again over the embassy.

Here’s to hoping the situation in Venezuela is resolved peacefully and in the interests of the Venezuelan people.