The Foreign Service Journal, May 2005

and the currently biased American media). I can think of no better approach to winning back trust in America and undercutting al-Qaida’s meretricious appeal to Islamic youth. David Timmins FSO, retired Salt Lake City, Utah History Repeats My wife and I read with great interest Barbara Furst’s article on Gertrude Bell in the January issue of the Journal , but we were disappointed that the author omitted any reference to the insightful political analyses that Bell prepared for Sir Percy Cox when they served together in Baghdad. The omission is particularly sur- prising since Janet Wallach, in the biography that Furst recommends ( Desert Queen ) quotes several of Bell’s candid comments on the politi- cal situation in Mesopotamia — com- ments that seem equally applicable to the situation we face in Iraq today. One example stands out: “… It’s not the immediate war problems here I think of most; it’s the problems after the war, and I don’t know what sort of hand we shall be able to take in solving them” ( Desert Queen , p. 183). Wallach adds her own summary of Gertrude Bell’s views, in which substi- tuting “America” for “India” and leav- ing out “business community” would bring the quote right up to the pre- sent: “… the Sunni nationalists wanted an Arab kingdom; the Shiites wanted an Islamic religious state; the Kurds in the north sought an independent Kurdish entity; the business communi- ty that had prospered under the Sultan wanted a return to the Turks. … The one thing made instantly clear was that no one wanted to be under the tute- lage of India” ( Desert Queen , p. 216). Some countries — or at least some administrations — seem not to learn from history and thus appear con- demned to repeat it. Andrew L. Steigman Ambassador, retired Bethesda, Md. Reality and Ideology Let me try to get this straight. According to our apparently right- wing colleagues Farmer and Burson, the following type of person should not and could not be elected presi- dent in contemporary America: • Anyone who wishes to provide gay partners with equality in and before the law by way of civil union rights and responsibilities. • Anyone who has ever voted against bloated defense budgets and wasteful, unsuitable weapons systems or has been skeptical of the Pentagon’s often skillfully exaggerated threat scenario presentations. • Anyone who believes that Ameri- ca’s post-Taliban security is best served by a robust series of alliances and the full use of diplomacy backed by the threat of force and its use as a last resort. • Anyone who believes that the pragmatic use of government to assure and promote the general wel- fare is not well served by choked-off revenues and endless deficits. • Anyone who believes that moral values have much more to do with education, health care, decent wages, equal opportunities, secure retire- ment and compassion for his fellow creatures than with abortion or wardrobe malfunctions. I could go on ad infinitum, but another question comes to mind: Did Reagan win the Cold War alone? Never mind Greece-Turkey, Point IV, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, NATO, Korea and a containment pol- icy essentially based on the correct assumption that the Soviet system would implode over time. It finally did so during Reagan’s watch. Rea- gan, to his great credit, dealt effec- tively with the rise of Gorbachev, despite the opposition from the “neo- cons” of the time (led by Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, CIA Director William Casey, Richard Perle and company) to Secretary of State George Shultz and the policy of engagement. I like to think that those of us who labored around the world for 40-some postwar years to assure the ultimate triumph of the “Free World” had a bit to do with it all as well. The administration is clearly mov- ing to embrace all the key points of John Kerry’s campaign position: returning policy primacy from Pentagon to State, boosting alliances, seeking United Nations assistance, engaging in multilateral diplomacy. Reality has finally trumped ideology, at least in foreign affairs. We can only cheer that on. Gunther K. Rosinus Senior FSO, retired Potomac, Md. Consular Days I agree with many of the observa- tions made by my former consular colleague, Fred Purdy, in his article “The Good Old Days” ( FSJ , January). On too many occasions, consular offi- cers were not taken seriously enough and merely used as tools in the trenches for meeting and greeting visa applicants. This exercise too often took place far away from the chancery, where the “real” diplomat was providing his daily quota of news- paper clippings. But I digress. I disagree with the notion that we are somehow “shutting the world out” because we are charg- ing $100 for a visa application. True, it is a large sum to most, but it cer- tainly will not prevent or inconve- nience too many eligible applicants from obtaining a visa to the United 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 5 L E T T E R S