Safirka: An American EnvoyKent State University Press, 2000 - 241 pages Peter S. Bridges's service as an American ambassador to Somalia capped his three decades as a career officer in the American Foreign Service. Safirka, a frank description of his experiences in Somalia and elsewhere, offers pointed assessments of American foreign policy and policymakers. Bridges recounts his service in Panama during a time of turmoil over the Canal; in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis; in Prague for bleak years after the Soviet invasion; in Rome when Italian terrorists first began to target Americans; and in key positions in three Washington agencies. In Somalia Bridges managed the largest American aid program in sub-Sahara Africa. He dealt with a postcolonial regime, hobbled both by traditional clan rivalries and by a leader who cared far less about Somalia's people and progress than about maintaining his control over that poverty-stricken, strategic - which soon erupted in civil war. |
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... wife said , “ I don't care where they send us , just so it's not the tropics ! " Two evenings later I came home with our assignment : Panama . Well , we de- cided , it could hardly be worse than this . We outfitted ourselves for the ...
... wife and I , who had rented a hillside apartment with a view over the sea , found it easy to make friends in Panama ... wife had lately had my wife and me to dinner , and now we offered dinner to them on his birthday , inviting also ...
... wife remembers hearing the first nightingales of the year . After three years in Rome , I was made number - two in ... wife had packed up our fur- nishings at Morlupo and driven the four children to the mountains in the VW wagon . We ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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