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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 30
... Canal Street 128 13. Anxieties , Artifacts , and Bases 149 14. Disasters and Arcadias 167 15. To the Horn and Home Again 183 16. Departure , Return , Destruction 199 17. What Comes Next ? 210 Appendix : Somalia through the Ages 217 ...
... Canal Zone ; that there were two military swimming pools we could use in the Zone ; that we would want to join the Fort Amador officers ' club . That was not the stuff of adventure , not what my wife and I wanted to hear on our first ...
... Canal and President Theodore Roosevelt told the world , " I took Panama . " We settled into two high - ceilinged ... Canal Zone , a belt of land ten miles wide , five miles on either side of the Panama Canal , that the United States held ...
... Canal and the Zone were administered by the Panama Canal Company , a corporation with a single stockholder , the secretary of the army . The governor of the Canal Zone was always a major general in the Army Corps of Engineers . We paid ...
... Canal Zone , where our Canal Company insisted that only Old Glory could fly . Castillero was a small , hunchbacked professor who was a fierce nation- alist . Boyd , who owed his surname to an Irish grandfather and was still in his ...
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
13 | |
26 | |
Rome and Prague | 40 |
Long Years at Home | 49 |
The Way to Africa | 57 |
Big Embassy Poor Country | 69 |
From Siad to Canal Street | 128 |
Anxieties Artifacts and Bases | 149 |
Disasters and Arcadias | 167 |
To the Horn and Home Again | 183 |
Departure Return Destruction | 199 |
What Comes Next? | 210 |
Somalia through the Ages | 217 |
bibliography | 223 |