Our letters slowly came to a stop after I returned safely stateside and was eventually discharged from active duty. It was the same as I had grown accustomed to do in my correspondence with my family. I cried, alone in the windowless shack that served as my bedroom at Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah.īetween missions, I would scrawl out a few sentences, always telling her I was fine, even when I wasn't. "Stay in touch so that I know you are ok," she wrote. I had - and have to this day - never felt the enormity of my responsibility more than that moment. It was the week I took command of my platoon of 40 specialized scouts and snipers. "Dear Hal," she wrote in her first letter in February 2009. She wrote frequently to wish me well, letting me know she was thinking of me and praying for my safety. But perhaps the most surprising aspect of that year was the role Dr. My year in Iraq is without question the most formative of my life. 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. There was incredible warmth in her heart.įormer Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with Hal Brewster in 2014. 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. She engaged - always honestly, and often emotionally - about the hardest decisions she faced while at the helm of the U.S. Every class was part meticulous lecture, part class conversation. The class was capped at about 30 students, which made for an intimate atmosphere. In spring 2006, my final semester of college, I won the lottery for a seat in her seminar, American National Security Toolbox. She was my professor, then my mentor, then my pen pal during my deployment to Iraq, and always, my friend.Īfter Secretary Albright left her storied career in government service, she returned to her home in academia and became a professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Madeleine Albright, the world-famous diplomat with an equally famously wit, played an outsized role in my younger life. My husband called to break the news gently. When I learned of Secretary Albright's death, I was driving on a remote stretch of highway in Kansas. In this personal essay, attorney and Iraq war veteran Hal Brewster reflects on the impact Albright had as a leader, teacher, mentor and friend. Secretary of State, died last month of cancer at the age of 84 and is being honored today in a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral, with President Biden delivering the eulogy. Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S.
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