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 24
... army wanted me , and I was too myopic for officer training school . My love and I got married in June , as soon as I got my M.A. , and we went on a honeymoon paid for by most of my savings . Then I said goodbye to her and , together ...
... army , a private en route to an unknown battalion . I was abroad , for the first time in my life , a traveler in a new country , with new discoveries every minute : new kinds of power lines , new trees , new shapes for farms , an ...
... army . The governor of the Canal Zone was always a major general in the Army Corps of Engineers . We paid Panama not quite two million dollars a year for our position on the isth- mus . That was all we said we could afford ; but we had ...
... Army Mission to Pana- ma . It was the only effective aid element we had in Panama . ( Our embassy contained a large element from the U.S. Agency for International Devel- opment , whose members clearly accomplished little ; many of them ...
... army officers , with an acre of gardens bordered by a former sixteen - inch gun emplacement . The gun em- placement was now inhabited by large parasol ants that periodically invaded the garden and were in turn attacked by Victor with ...
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 |