It's a major pain in the tail. I know it's important, but it really makes you lose focus, and takes an immense amount of time. In Britain, it lets them do something with all those otherwise unemployed princes and princesses.
Marilyn had looked over at me while our trip was being reviewed prior to our leaving Washington, and asked, "Just what am I going to do on this trip?"
I shrugged and replied, "Something First Lady-ish, I guess. Whatever you do, try not to get me in trouble."
"You're no help!"
I wasn't overly sympathetic. "So you really didn't want to visit Buckingham Palace and meet the Queen? I mean, we can always send you home..."
"Will you behave!? I never said that!"
I shrugged some more. "I wonder what Charlie and the girls would do over here. Think they might get into any trouble?"
"We'd probably end up with another War of 1812! Maybe that wouldn't be so good.", she laughed.
"So, don't piss anybody off. Just smile and say how everything is wonderful. Sort of like I had to do when campaigning.", I told her.
"Just as long as nobody serves us lutefisk. Your sister told me about that. Even Stormy wouldn't eat that!"
I had to laugh. "Could you imagine Stormy rampaging through Buckingham Palace? God help those poor little Corgis the Queen likes!" Marilyn had to laugh at that vision, too.
So, while Marilyn and everybody else went out the back door, I went out the front, smiling and waving at everybody and went down the stairs. At the bottom I met up with Prince Charles, who shook my hand and led me over to a small podium. Beyond that was a double line of fairly smart looking troops, with a red carpet between them, heading over to the limousine. Off to the side, out of sight of the cameras, were a pair of C-5 Galaxys that had brought in the support. First the Prince made a short speech welcoming me to the United Kingdom, and then I returned the favor, saying thank you and how I looked forward to getting to know the British people better. I simply read something the State Department trotted out every time we did this. I would do the same thing at every stop, and simply change the name of the country I was visiting.
It really was a lot like campaigning for office.
Afterwards I marched down the line of troops, the Prince at my side, and being trailed by a colonel. Nothing was out of place, not that I expected it to be, and I commented positively to the colonel. Then it was time to head out. The Prince got in his Rolls Royce limo and headed back to the Palace, and Colin, Alma, Marilyn, and I got into the Presidential Cadillac and went to the Hyatt Regency. The Ambassador and his wife would meet us there, and accompany Colin and me to meet the Prime Minister.
Marilyn teased me and asked, "So, were the troops up to snuff enough for you?"
I chuckled at that. "You'd probably better ask Colin that one. I never made it past captain, and he was a four star general." Colin smiled and chuckled too, and nodded in response. "Still, they seemed okay. They're ceremonial troops. They are supposed to look clean and shiny. You never know how good they actually are until the bullets start flying."
Colin commented, "That's true enough, but the British are better at that than most. I'm no expert on British medals, but a few of those men have seen action. I'd say they were good troops."
I nodded in agreement. Turning to my wife, I said, "The real test is when they are out in the field. If the troops are dirty but their guns are clean it's usually a much better sign than the reverse."
"Worst of all is when the troops are dirty and the guns are dirty! You see that, just get out of there before somebody does something stupid!", added the Secretary of State. I nodded in agreement.
Marilyn looked over at Colin's wife and said, "He's been out of the Army almost twenty years and he still thinks he's a paratrooper!"
Alma sympathized. "Colin's the exact same way." Both Colin and I snorted at this, and she added, "You two boys are retired now. You can stop acting like little boys playing soldier now."
The Hyatt Regency is a very nice hotel, and I think we were renting damn near every room in the place. For certain we were renting several entire floors. For security reasons, the Secret Service had rooms above and below our suite. Add in the Powells, the guy with the football, Josh Bolten, Ari Fleischer, and the traveling staff, security and communications – we probably had an entourage of a hundred people or more. We would repeat the process three more times before heading home again.
Ambassador Farish and his wife greeted us and ushered us into our suite. He was a Republican businessman and contributor with no previous State Department experience, but he seemed adequate to the task. I assumed he actually had employees at the embassy who did the real work involved. I couldn't recall ever meeting the man, but we moved in different business circles and he was a Texas friend of George's.
I was still piecing together a coherent strategy on foreign relations, and my advisers were shooting holes in it left and right. Vice President McCain didn't completely agree with me on what I was working towards. That was fine with me, because they might just be smarter than me. I certainly hoped so! Maybe I could learn something from them. What I was working towards was some form of containment towards radical Islamics.
The predominant form of foreign policy that America had was formulated shortly after the end of the Second World War, when the true nature of communism and Soviet expansionism became obvious, was containment. Originally articulated by George Kennan, it envisioned that western governments, led by the United States, would enter into alliances that would keep Soviet influence limited to where it was, and prevent it from going further. This was the Cold War, and lasted for roughly fifty years until the Soviet Union collapsed. It wasn't pretty. It was actually fairly messy, and the Cold War had a disturbing tendency to heat up at times, like in Korea and Viet Nam. Regardless, we managed to stabilize the world and keep from going to nuclear war, and to ultimately win.
The biggest threat to civilization now wasn't communism, but radical Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda wasn't so much a specific group of nut jobs as much as it was a philosophy. Why couldn't we in the West figure out a way to contain the nut jobs? For years we had been backing one local strongman after another, to keep the peace. They would take our money and weapons and either use them to start a war, use them on their own population, or use them against us. It might be cold blooded but why bother with trying to keep the peace? As long as they didn't bother us, why should we care how many of each other they killed? In effect, cut them off from the rest of the world. Buy their oil, don't sell them weapons, don't support them with charity and donations, and don't let their fundamentalists loose.
There were problems with actually doing this, of course, and every country had different answers and problems, both in the West and in the Muslim world. The country with the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia, considered itself an Asian country, not an Arab country, and their entire outlook was considerably different than the countries in the Middle East. The fundamentalists varied from country to country, and some countries had them locked down better than others.