SCARED BUT NOT ABANDONED

If you’re like me, these past few weeks have been hard as I watched a disaster unfold in Afghanistan. Today, my son asked me why I cared so much about this instance when there are atrocities going on around the world. Here is my answer.

I worked as a political consultant for twenty years. During my career I was fortunate to work not only in my own country but in several around the world, including the Middle East. I get globalism and how we all need to work together to achieve better living standards for those less fortunate. However, being in the Middle East only reinforced my belief that we don’t understand their regional politics half as much as we think we do. It’s a messy situation and I’m not sure anyone has the diplomatic cure for it.

When the dust settles there will be a lot of blame and finger pointing on where we went wrong. It won’t be a productive discussion. Both sides will bury into their talking points and blame the guy before them. It’s how politics works, unfortunately. It’s more important to score political points to win elections than to find common ground so that we can achieve more together. It’s partly why I left politics behind to study archaeology. What does that say that I’d rather study dead people than work with politicians? (BTW, I don’t think all politicians are bad. Most are actually good. On both sides.)

So, why am I so upset this time? Why has my heart been pounding and my head near explosion? Because a long time ago I was one of those Americans overseas who needed to rely on my…