Ars Longa Vita Brevis

Five years on, I thought it would be useful to recall the following interview, which captures well my thoughts on the importance of public service and U.S. engagement in the world, a message we have never needed more than now. It appeared on p. 22 of the Fall 2017 edition of Bowdoin magazine. That was the first year after my departure from government service and return to Maine:

Ambassador David Pearce ’72 • A Life of Meaning

With storied careers in journalism and the Foreign Service, David Pearce has traversed the globe. Today, he spends most of his time in Yarmouth, Maine—not far from where he was raised—with his wife, Leyla.

"Bowdoin’s impact on my life has been profound. I gained a portal to wider worlds—first, through the Twelve College Exchange Program. I went to Smith for one semester and to Rome during another. I realized then what I liked about living abroadwas that it made you more alive to everyday things because you have to actively think about it when you’re operating in another language and culture. That experience set me on a course to journalism and then to the Foreign Service.

"Most of us yearn to have a life of meaning. There are many paths to do that, but I firmly believe public service is one of the very best. I know of no greater honor than to represent and serve your country overseas. To do it in difficult and dangerous conditions is to have the privilege of working on an important enterprise, as part of a dedicated team with many honest-to-goodness heros, usually unsung.

"I have lived a lot of history. As a reporter from 1975–1979, I covered the Portuguese “Revolution of the Carnations,” the death of Franco in Spain, the Lebanese civil war, Israel’s “Litani” invasion of Lebanon, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s bombshell opening to Israel. The hardest thing was often to report what you knew to be most accurate, and resist competitive pressures to “needle” the story, i.e., go with the most dramatic angle.

"As a diplomat, I was like Forrest Gump—studying Arabic in Tunis when President Bourguiba was overthrown in 1987; political section chief in Kuwait before, during, and after Saddam’s 1990 invasion; deputy chief of mission in Damascus when Hafez al-Assad died and his son Bashar came to power; flying into New York City from Washington on the morning of 9/11 between the time the first and second planes hit the towers; running the State Department task force the night we initiated hostilities in Afghanistan; Iran/Iraq office director at the State Department from 2001 to 2003 in the run-up to war in Iraq; in Baghdad with the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003; consul general in Jerusalem (i.e., US representative to the Palestinian Authority) from 2003 to 2005 when Yasser Arafat died and Mahmoud Abbas was first elected president; back in Iraq for the surge of 2007–2008; ambassador to Algeria during the Arab Spring; in Afghanistan for the surge of 2011–2012; and ambassador in Greece from 2013 to 2016 during a destabilizing economic crisis, the rise to power of a radical left-wing government, and mass refugee flows.

"We need to be engaged in the world. We learned this the hard way after World War I, when we attempted to turn our backs, and got the rise of Nazi Germany, Japan, and World War II as a result. We learned it again, when we fought with regional allies for ten years to end the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Then, when they finally left, we again turned away. Not only that, we cut all aid to one of those allies, Pakistan. What followed was a horrendous Afghan civil war, the rise of the Taliban, Al-qaeda, and 9/11. And then, we were back in Afghanistan; again, needing Pakistan’s help.

"The fact is we need allies and partners, and they need us. This is a lesson of World War II. NATO has kept the peace in Europe for over seventy years. But like a garden, important relationships need tending and nothing good happens if they are neglected. That constant gardening is diplomacy.

"For over forty years, I have been a fan of the BBC. I also listen to NPR and watch PBS regularly. I think US cable TV news and network news have lost their way in the era of social media. So I tend to channel surf a lot.I have a Twitter feed (@daviddpearce) with over 4,000 followers. Via Twitter, I follow current Greek affairs and a variety of international outlets, news agencies, and Washington-based political sources.

"Consider a career of public service. We need the best for our national security work, whether it’s the Foreign Service, or the CIA, or the military, or the Agency for International Development, or the Foreign Commercial Service, or the Foreign Agricultural Service, or the law enforcement agencies—all of which have major international law enforcement operations.

"I have been painting watercolors since 2008 in Algeria when security restrictions limited my weekend activities. I began a program of self-study then that I am still continuing. I particularly like the Zen of painting. You get so absorbed it drives every political thought out of your head. The painting behind me [in this photo] is one of my watercolors. While in Greece, my favorite subject was the Acropolis, which is in so many ways the presiding numen of Athens. I call this one the Red Acropolis. To me, it represents the intellectual power and the raw emotion that did so much to shape both ancient and modern Greece. I have begun to load some of my watercolors up to a website: daviddpearce.com."