Kabul, August 2021 I’ve been following the news from Afghanistan and Washington. Perspective calls for a few bullets. Here are mine: • How we got into a fight with the Taliban in the first place: The Taliban had been ruling Afghanistan for five years on September 11, 2001 — the day Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda […]
Building in Israel hit by rocket from Gaza The world gives us much cause for outrage. Just this morning, I learned that the illegitimately “re-elected” president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, had his air traffic controllers and his MiGs force a civilian airliner from Ireland, which was crossing Belarussian airspace en route from Greece to Lithuania, […]
Bon voyage! (Courtesy Matson Navigation Company) A few days ago I spotted a funny story on Facebook that reminded me of something a very brave man, Aba Taratuta, told me back in 1978 or thereabouts, when I was on the staff of the U.S. consulate-general in Leningrad (today again known by its original name, St. […]
Mob invades U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021 I am appalled. We should all be appalled. But regrettably, that feeling is not universal. What am I appalled at? Two big unthinkables. Unthinkable No. 1: The mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol. Even worse — the fact that the mob’s Cheerleader-in-Chief was the guy in the White […]
Mayor Bernie Sanders in Yaroslavl, USSR, in 1988 Now that Super Tuesday is behind us, voters in the upcoming Democratic Party primaries will have to choose between the two remaining viable candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. In this post I’d like to make a small contribution to the effort to keep the nomination out […]
Back in the spring of 1968 I had a big job interview — the oral portion of the U.S. Foreign Service exam. It was a long shot, and I was not expecting to pass. Still, I hoped I’d succeed, since work as a U.S. diplomat in embassies and consulates around the world would give me […]
Visualization of Soviet fighters intercepting KAL 902 I’ve begun reading a fascinating book, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, by Jack Matlock, who, as the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, 1987–91, had a bird’s-eye view of history in the making. I’m still in the early chapters of the book, but a few days ago […]
Turkey With Thanksgiving just over the horizon, you can almost taste the turkey. Thanks to my having lived and worked in several countries in the first part of my career, I have a bit of personal history with the word for that bird. Peru It began in 1971 in Brazil. On my first Thanksgiving there […]
Trump’s letter to Erdogan Among the flotsam and jetsam washed up on my computer screen by this week’s deluge1 of Trump-related news was a letter that the U.S. president wrote to his counterpart in Turkey, the bloody-minded, bloody-handed Recep Tayyip Erdogan.2 Much-criticized not only for its threatening content but also for its distinctly unpresidential tone […]
World’s first oil well, drilled in 1859 by Edwin Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania Reflecting on my visit to Pennsylvania1 last month, I had an epiphany — that there is a special connection (though of course not a geographical one) between the Keystone State2 and the Aloha State. Let me begin with the conclusion I’ve reached about the […]
