Tag Archives: first Gulf War

Stepping Out

The Pan American Boeing 747 taxied down a runway of the JFK airport around 9 p.m. on December 4, 1990, and lifted off. I watched the New York City metropolitan area spreading out in a vast sea of lights. It was the first international plane trip of my life. I was beginning my first assignment as a U.S. Foreign Service officer.

The takeoff began my trip to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a change of planes in Frankfurt, Germany, then to Riyadh. In Riyadh, I was to change planes again for a final short flight to Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah.

Looking back, I have to laugh at all the mistakes a hyped up newbie Foreign Service officer could make. I had packed my suitcase too full, and it was obvious, once I landed in New York City for consultations, that it wasn’t going to last out the trip.

Fortunately, a kind officer in the New York office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service took me to a luggage store for a better suitcase.

Of course, the new suitcase was possibly the reason I identified the wrong one when I, seriously jet lagged, changed planes in Riyadh. Eventually, the luggage was sent back to the right person in Riyadh, and mine returned to me in a day or so.

However, due to the fact that I had no luggage for my first evening in Jeddah, I had to attend a welcoming reception wearing the travel-stained outfit I’d worn for several days. I also developed a blister on my foot from walking around in my travel shoes.

My first assignment began a few weeks before the the start of the First Gulf War. It pitted Iraq against Saudi Arabia, with the United States and other allies supporting Saudi Arabia.

Due to new assignments and training, the former officer had been transferred to another job before I arrived, so I missed training with the one I was replacing. I fell into my visa services job with no overlap as the war began.

After daytime duties in the visa section (overflowing with foreign nationals seeking visas to leave the country now coveted by Saddam Hussein), I worked in the control room in the evenings. This operation was a command center overseeing American wartime activities, including supervising high level U.S. officials coming to confer with Saudi Arabian officials on the war efforts.

I not only survived but treasured that first foreign assignment as a time of comradery with fellow Americans seeking to serve our country in a time of crisis.

I had joined the Foreign Service with the hope of living in other countries and enjoying an exciting and meaningful vocation. I was not disappointed.

Christmas: Jeddah Saudi Arabia 1990

Other than a few hours in Mexico and a few days in Canada, I lived my entire life in the United States until December 1990.

Exactly one year before that date, I was happily living in north Georgia, working as a historic preservation planner. Then in the spring, I received a telephone call from the U.S. State Department. A position was available in a State Department’s orientation class for the U.S. Foreign Service. I had applied a couple of years before, but lawsuits within the State Department over hiring practices had put most applications on hold. I had gone on to other interests. Now hiring was beginning again.

After thinking it over a few days, I accepted and spent several months in primary training in Washington, D.C.  Then, in August, 1990, as I went into the second phase of my training, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein conquered the country of Kuwait and threatened the nearby oils fields of Saudi Arabia.

I completed my training in December as the United States considered sending troops to protect Saudi Arabia, our oil ally, and I began the journey to my first foreign assignment. I found myself wheels down in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, just as the Christmas season began back home.

I was jet lagged, had picked up the wrong luggage while exchanging planes in Riyadh, and was soon to come down with a throat infection. Nevertheless, I immediately became part of U.S. consulate Jeddah’s team. What can I say? It was physically taxing but the most marvelously exciting time of my life.

I found friends in neighborly get-to-gathers and home church services. I was tossed into adjudicating visas of those wishing to go to the U.S., my official job, but the buildup to the war effort for what would be the first Gulf war thrust me into other positions.

The consulate organized a 24-hour control center in a nearby major hotel. I worked night shifts and performed other duties, including laying out briefing materials for news people arriving from major U.S. networks. I watched senior U.S. officials welcomed in the hotel lobby.

We, the working stiffs, established rapport known only to those joining together in crisis conditions.

Unfortunately, peace efforts failed, and war would come, though quickly over as Saddam was pushed back into Iraq. Eventually, a whole new age would begin, known as the post Soviet era, with its own difficulties and shortcomings.

Nevertheless, that Christmas, thrust into instant dependence and friendship with people I had never known before, remains possibly the best Christmas I have ever had.

Pledge of Allegiance in Saudi Arabia 1991

The first Gulf War, forgotten by most Americans by now, ended when Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein were pushed out of the small country of Kuwait in February,1991. U.S. President George H. W. Bush chose not to send U.S. forces further north into Iraq but to end the war with Kuwait’s liberation.

Saddam’s forces had taken over Kuwait in August, 1990. The reason for U.S. entry into this regional conflict was fear that Saddam would continue his southern march and send his troops into Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. The Iraqi dictator would end up controlling much of the world’s oil, as well as a country we considered an ally.

I had arrived at my first diplomatic posting in December, 1990, at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. push into Kuwait began a few weeks later. To say this time was an exciting introduction to working abroad in my chosen profession is an understatement.

No one knew the outcome, of course, when I arrived in Jeddah. Understandibly, Americans, Saudis, and other nationalities greeted our victory—after a short, anxious-ridden few weeks—with jubilation.

That spring, Americans working at the consulate gathered for a Memorial Day ceremony before the consulate flag. I don’t think I’ve ever joined with fellow Americans in a more heartfelt Pledge of Allegiance.

I think about that time in our quibbling over whether some meeting or other opens with the Pledge, or whether this person or that one is patriotic enough. I see such arguments as childish quibbling. Whether one does or does not say the Pledge should be a heartfelt personal choice. We are not, I hope, some dictatorship that requires mouthing loyalty oaths.

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.

Hiring Bank Presidents to Perform Appendectomies

When we need surgery, we don’t ask a bank president to perform the operation. To lead soldiers into battle, we don’t assign data engineers.

Yet, in assigning leaders for our foreign policy teams in U.S. embassies, we sometimes appoint those with no experience in foreign affairs. Instead, the criteria used for ambassadors to some of our embassies, is how much the candidate has contributed to the election of the president.

Both political parties have used the appointment of ambassadors to reward political donors and party apparatchiks. Around thirty percent of our ambassadors have been political appointees. Some talented and conscientious appointees use their career staff and function well. Others are more interested in refurbishing the ambassador’s residence than in meaningful work.

American men and women enter the U.S. Foreign Service, our diplomatic corps, after rigorous exams and vetting. Once appointed, they study foreign languages, statecraft, relevant computer applications, leadership training, and the regions where they will be assigned. They advance through the diplomatic ranks according to an up or out system like the military, gaining experience in the foreign countries where they begin at the lowest levels.

Yet when ambassadors are assigned to our largest embassies, career Foreign Service officers often are ignored for the positions.

My first assignment as a new Foreign Service officer was to Saudi Arabia, shortly before the first Gulf War began in 1991. As the war progressed to victory for the American led alliance against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, we worked under a competent team. Charles Freeman was the U.S. career ambassador working with the Saudi government, as General “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf directed the military operation.

Since then, although U.S. military leadership in the Middle East is still entrusted to career soldiers, all ambassadorial appointments to Saudi Arabia have been political appointees. Perhaps that’s one reason we so often seem to win the war but lose the peace.

The Russian Bear and the American Eagle

In the early 1990’s in Saudi Arabia, during my assignment at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, the Saudis and the Russians opened diplomatic relations. The U.S. and its allies, officially including Russia, had just won the first Gulf war to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation. The days were full of optimism and enthusiasm. Russia had emerged on the world stage shorn of the Soviets, and we believed democracy had won the Cold War.

For a while, it looked as if a glorious new age was born, when the countries of the former Soviet Union would be overtaken by democracy and capitalism. A Russian official visited our U.S. consulate in Jeddah, and we all basked in cooperative civility.

Alas, it was not to be. Today, Russia and western nations, including the United States, back client conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, like the old days of the Cold War.

U.S. intelligence about Russian hacks interfering with the American election have opened a frontier of grave concern.

Raymond Smith, a U.S. diplomat in Moscow during that early time, writes in a recent issue of The Foreign Service Journal (December 2016), “The Russian people, giddy from the collapse of the corrupt, oppressive regime under which they had labored for generations, hungered for a normal relationship with the rest of the world and believed that the result would be quick and dramatic improvement in their lives. . . . I wrote that these expectations could not be met, and that a period of disillusionment would inevitably follow.”

It did, indeed. For one thing, the golden age desired by the Russians did not materialize. Instead, “Russians saw criminality, disorder, poverty and the emergence of a new, corrupt and astronomically wealthy class of oligarchs.”

Former European nations of the Soviet Union desired the expansion of NATO as a guard against the reestablishment of any future Russian dominance over them. Russia saw the expansion of NATO as a humiliating attempt to force on them an international system managed by the United States, with Russia no longer allowed a role on the world stage.

How to avoid these adversarial roles? Smith suggests coming together on common causes, such the defeat of ISIS. If we have reasons for defeating the terrorist group, Russia has even more: they wish to defeat the groups before they begin attacking the Russian homeland.

The trick is to find those areas of common interest while we stand firm on issues important to us. Foreign interference in our elections is not open for negotiation. We will fight it. Other issues. like the brutal bloodletting of the Assad regime, must be recognized as evil.

Nevertheless, Smith ends on a positive note: “Unlike during the Soviet era, the two countries are not ideological opponents. There will be areas where our interests conflict. Resolving those conflicts constructively will require both countries to understand the limits of their interests.”