Madam Secretary by Madeleine K. Albright

I was to lay out the group's proposed course of action. The position came with the honor of being the sole briefer to 'President Albright' at the very end of the exercise. Albright assigned me to serve as National Security Advisor.

During my semester, we had 48 hours to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.ĭr. Albright's class was a two-day simulation in which students were assigned roles in the Cabinet or foreign ministries and had to solve one of the world's most intractable problems in a weekend. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with Hal Brewster in 2014. There was incredible warmth in her heart. Once, she placed her hand on my shoulder to comfort me when I got choked up. In those quiet, personal moments, I was shocked that an individual who had shaped the world throughout the 1990s reacted to me only as a concerned parent would. I had no choice.Īfter class discussions in which I vocalized my hesitations, Dr. I felt a little hoodwinked by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but my hands were tied at that point: deploy or pay back an exorbitant sum to refund my scholarship. I had applied for ROTC scholarships then out of a patriotic pull to give of myself to my nation.

This was not the war I had signed up for when - during September of my senior year of high school - the planes destroyed the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon. It seemed an impossible mission, even for a military as powerful as ours. I was anxious about deploying to fight the war in Iraq. I was a cadet preparing to commission as an active-duty officer.

Madam Secretary by Madeleine K. Albright