Governor Kaine's Mideast Journal, cont'd
I met Governors Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, Kenny Guinn of Nevada, and Jim Douglas from Vermont at the Pentagon on a Sunday afternoon for a briefing about current efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We stopped by Secretary Rumsfeld’s house in Washington for an informal and wide-ranging conversation. Secretary Rumsfeld told us that the work of this generation would be to imagine international institutions for the world’s new set of realities. The United Nations, NATO and European Union began in the aftermath of World War II and the onset of the Cold War to deal with a new world order.
That
old order has passed away, and Rumsfeld said we need new structures,
invented or reinvented, to deal with the challenges of terrorism, clashes between
secular and sectarian value systems, rapid global dislocation of capital and
jobs, and other challenges that characterize our world in the 21st century.
After a round of handshakes and best wishes, we then headed to Andrews Air Force base to begin our five-day trip overseas.
We landed early Monday morning at Shannon Airport in Ireland for refueling, and immediately noticed a group of U.S. Marines headed home from Iraq. Due to the strict Islamic laws in Kuwait and Iraq, the soldiers told us, they had not seen or tasted alcohol in seven months. And even though it was early in the morning, the Marines were lining up to down pints of Guinness. Who could begrudge them?
After a second, six-hour flight, we landed in Kuwait and immediately helicoptered to Camp Arifjan, a large military staging base located in southern Kuwait, to spend the night.
We headed to the DFAC (that’s Pentagon-speak for dining facility, or mess hall), to have dinner with a group of troops from our respective states. My table held about a dozen men and women, Army and Navy active duty, who were either native Virginians or were stationed at military bases in the Commonwealth.
The dinner revealed a pattern I would see repeated often in the next few days – meeting Virginians, talking to them about their experiences, fielding questions about matters back home – including very astute questions about the General Assembly session that had ended the day before my trip.