The Foreign Service Journal, March 2003

It’s a Small World There is just one moon And one golden sun, And a smile means Friendship to everyone. Though the mountains divide, And the oceans are wide, It’s a small world after all. That was the song that we awoke to in the Disneyland Hotel on Jan. 16, 1991, the day the Gulf War was declared. We had just been evacu- ated from Pakistan, and somehow the saccharin-sweet melody and lyrics did not compute with what we had experienced in the months lead- ing up to the war and on our 36- hour flight from Pakistan. Although the government of Pakistan officially supported the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf War, most Pakistanis rallied behind Saddam Hussein. Tensions hovered in the orange zone, and I remember feeling like a potential target because I was American. I would drive a circuitous route to my friend Fran’s house to avoid driving past the Iraqi embassy. Fran decided to take a proactive approach to the Iraqis — she waved at the guards as she drove by, hoping that interna- tional politics would not be played out at the individual level. The evacuation had started with a surreptitious knock on the door by our USAID deputy executive officer at 3 a.m. on Jan. 14. He had been working around-the-clock trying to get all the tickets in order for the chartered flights out of Islamabad. The plane hopscotched from Islamabad to Karachi to Bangkok to Manila to Tokyo, and finally to Los Angeles, where we planned to overnight before my husband departed to Washington, D.C. The boys and I planned to return to Salem, Ore., where our sons had been enrolled in elementary school. Our strategy was to put the boys in a school they were familiar with. We needed a respite from too much reality, so we decided to spoil our- selves with some fantasy before being separated for six months. I remember feeling a disconnect with the 24-hour news coverage from CNN about our enemies, the Iraqis, and the “It’s a Small World” melody blasting from the loudspeak- ers advocating brotherly love. More than oceans divided the allies from the Iraqis. Recent history suggests that a gulf still exists between them and us, but I’m hopeful that com- mon sense can prevail to prevent yet another war in Iraq. As the lyrics go, “There’s so much that we share, that it’s time we’re aware, it’s a small world after all.” Pam Anderson Dhaka, Bangladesh Evacuating Nha Trang, Vietnam April 1, 1975 When the North Vietnamese launched their military offensive in Vietnam’s central highlands in March 1975, we at the consulate general in Nha Trang did not know that within a month, the presence of 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 3 In Saigon, we were greeted by cheerful embassy dependents unaware that they would be going through the same upheaval in short order.