Former ambassador Peter Galbraith was in Chester

By CLARA ROSE THORNTON

The flurry of spirited rants and exultant feelings of progress over the recent election is still well under way across America, from inner-city schoolyards to tucked-away rural pockets.

The fact that Barack Obama is a president-elect so similar in popular conception to John F. Kennedy and comes to the fore as a “rescuing” liberal force after severe conservative tumult pales, even, in comparison to the intensity of his image as being in closer proximity to normal American citizens than any president in modern memory. Obama coming from a modest immigrant family though achieving what he has, through the sweat of his own brow and determined intelligence, breaking longstanding barriers, initially by becoming the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 and now, of course, making history books again on an unprecedented scale. It is the stuff of dreams and Americans see him as a man with a real ear to the ground who will look at the people’s side of crises, as opposed to the side of capital, and act accordingly.

Yet the cauldron of problems the country is currently embroiled within is not a neatly tied gift for the president-elect, and sweeping promises of positive change will be tough to deliver upon. The complexity of what the current administration has enacted in the world — specifically through aggression — and how to conceptualize its deconstruction is the subject of a new book, “Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies” (Simon & Schuster) by Vermonter and international political strategist Peter Galbraith. Galbraith was Chester in Cehster Sunday as part of Misty Valley Books’ Vermont Voices series, and stands to illuminate the realities at odds with progress, from an authoritative standpoint.

The Townshend resident served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia and is the senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Galbraith is an expert on Middle East and Balkan relations, was a longtime confidante and advisor of late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books. The political behemoth served as chairman of the Vermont Democratic Party from 1977 to 1979, and, to much acclaim, announced in 2008 that he was considering running for governor. “Unintended Consequences” is his second book. His first was “The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End” (Simon & Schuster).

“Former ambassador to the U.N., Richard Holbrooke, called him ‘angry and passionate,’” says Bill Reed, owner of Misty Valley Books and curator of the Vermont Voices series, now in its eighth year. “He said that he hopes the next president will absorb the lessons of Galbraith’s works and act on them. (Both books) are well-reasoned and pragmatic indictments of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. They are very believable. He’s a cogent writer. He has a wonderfully reasonable take on the ethnic differences in Iraq. I don’t want to speak for him, but Iraq never really was a country at all; just Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds thrown together, and that’s fallen entirely apart. And the United States has continued this ‘if we could only show democracy to that part of the world …’ line of thinking with disastrous results. This latest book is about what the consequences of this war have really been, not only in Iraq but in Iran and Syria and Turkey and the rest of the world, and what it’s done to American standing around the globe.”

Galbraith’s timely appearance comes as the grand finale to the monthlong series occurring each November at the Stone Church in Chester.

This year featured a varied roster of local authors speaking on quirky Vermont-based interests, from Gordon Haywood discussing fine painting as an inspiration for garden design to farm writer Chuck Wooster discussing “Living With Pigs.” But with the 2 p.m. Sunday final installment, the series ends with a bang by bringing Galbraith, one of Vermont’s few internationally known writers and respected public personalities, to speak with authority on such a searing political issue. This is his second appearance at Vermont Voices — he appeared in 2006 for his first book — and his presence stands to bring further recognition to the small bookstore putting on the event and further-reaching viability to the regionally anticipated series.

“When my wife, Lynne, and I bought Misty Valley Books eight years ago, we inherited a wonderful series called New Voices,” says Reed, “which takes place in January and has introduced some pretty big names, like Gregor McGuire, Dennis Lane and Arthur Golden reading from their first books.

We wanted to do something to complement that in November, so we started an event called Vermont Voices. We would invite four Vermont writers whose work we admire to come on Sunday afternoons at the Stone Church in Chester and talk about their work. It’s proven to be very successful.”

Misty Valley Books is a 22-year-old independent bookseller on the common in Chester’s quaint downtown. Its homey façade does not point to the cosmopolitan individuals who took over in 2001, the year of the inaugural Vermont Voices.

Reed was a teacher of French in Vermont schools for nearly 30 years and has taught English as a second language in Africa with the Peace Corps, and in France with the Fulbright Program. He has also lived and worked in China. His wife, Lynne, holds a graduate degree in linguistics and headed the English language program at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, and acted as the school’s marketing director in Europe for a time. There is an international perspective at Misty Valley Books.

This makes it easy to see why Galbraith is a natural choice for their event. “Galbraith is this Oxford don, a Harvard type — very sophisticated and well spoken,” muses Reed. “(After the first time he read about Iraq here), who would have known — who would have hoped — that two years later, Peter would have time to write another book about the same thing. He has, and it’s wonderful, and it’s well put together. It will straighten things out in people’s thinking, I feel, if they come to hear from Peter.”