The LuLac Edition #4, 706, March 30th, 2022

 

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

Our “Write On Wednesday” logo.

This past week Shamrock Communications did a wonderful editorial on the life and times of the first female Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. Here it is for this week’s Writer Om Wednesday.

ALBRIGHT'S AMERICAN DREAM

Madeleine Albright embodied the American principles she so ably spoke for as secretary of state. She made history as the first woman to hold that office, but lived turbulent mid-20th-century history in a way that made her even more unique.

Albright, 84, who died Wednesday of cancer, was born in Czechoslovakia. She and her family became refugees from Nazi oppression and later, from Soviet oppression that blanketed Eastern Europe. Many of her relatives, including three of her grandparents, died in Nazi death camps.

That experience steeled her against illusions about dictators, caused her to embrace American freedom and values with an immigrants’ ardor, and instilled in her a hawkish view of projecting U.S. power and promoting American values around the world. She said that she was drawn to public service to “repay the fact that I was a free person.”

President Bill Clinton made her the first female secretary of state, but resisted her counsel to act aggressively against emerging dictators in the Balkans until Serbian units under the command of Ratko Mladić murdered 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrinica. She could not convince Clinton to act aggressively, however, against what became the massive Rwandan genocide.

And most recently, Albright spoke forcefully in furtherance of U.S., NATO and European support for Ukraine as it stands against the Russian invasion.

Albright also championed women’s rights around the world, giving added emphasis to her role as the first female secretary of state. That also had a deep impact. As her 7-year granddaughter once put it about Albright’s pioneering role, after Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice also had been secretary of state: “Girls always are secretary of state.”