![]() I will never forget those precious moments, even if I can't recall a word of what I said.Īfter graduation, I trained for 24 months and then was deployed to Baghdad Province with my brigade from Kansas's famed First Infantry Division. My memory of the briefing is a complete blur of happiness, nostalgia and pride. 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. And, Judy, we will all miss her mightily.I was a cadet preparing to commission as an active-duty officer. She had close relationships on a bipartisan basis all of her professional life, and she prided herself on that. And even though she was clearly a committed Democrat, big D, as well as small D, she worked across the aisle. She did know how to bring people along and bring people together. These were ex-foreign ministers from other foreign countries that she had worked with, primarily in Europe, but elsewhere, that she had formed close relationships with while she was ambassador and secretary of state.īut they maintained a network that stayed very close and did important policy work together and influenced the decision-making in their respective capitals. When she left office as secretary of state, she formed a group that she called Madeleine and her exes. She had political skills, very well-crafted political skills. She was well-positioned to do that coming out of the U.N., but she was a politician.Īnd she played her - and had - I shouldn't say she was a politician. Well, it's not a surprise that she was our first woman secretary of state. And that was one of the many, many important and unique aspects of her. She formed recently the Albright Institute for Global Affairs at her alma mater, Wellesley College, where her aim was to lift up and support the next generation of women. Not just me but all of her students at Georgetown, all of the many, many people in foreign policy and national security who looked up to her and had the benefit of her wisdom and support, and especially to young women. And there is not a single professional decision I made - I have made thus far in my life without the benefit of her advice and wisdom.Īnd we have heard so much from President Clinton and in your package about her extraordinary accomplishments as a diplomat, as a scholar, as a teacher, as a champion of democracy and human rights.īut one thing I really want to stress is what an incredible mentor she was to so many. And long before she was my boss, she was a role model as a professional woman in a field that I ended up joining in national security.īut she was also just a regular, warm, kind, supportive mother and friend. I was privileged to know Madeleine Albright from the time I was 4 years old. Susan Rice, White House Domestic Policy Adviser: ![]()
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