James Stavridis, Retired Admiral, Is Being Vetted as Hillary Clinton’s Running Mate
Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the oldest school in the United States dedicated solely to graduate studies in international affairs.[4] He is also Chairman of the Board of the U.S. Naval Institute.[5][6] Stavridis is a retired United States Navy admiral who served as the 15th Commander, U.S. European Command and NATO’s 16th Supreme Allied Commander Europe.[7][8] He is the first Navy officer to have held these positions. His book “The Accidental Admiral” describing his tenure in these jobs was published on October 1, 2014. Previously, he served as Commander, U.S. Southern Command from October 2006 to June 2009. Adm.
Mr. Stavridis, currently the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and was the head of NATO. In that role he oversaw operations in the Middle East — Afghanistan, Libya and Syria — as well as in the Balkans and piracy off the coast of Africa.
As a swabbee, Mr. Stravidis would be the first swabby, navy guy, to ride to the highest offices in the US. Our previous military have been Army and a rather mixed bag .. form Washington, to Jefferson, Tayloo, Grant, Grant and fnally IKE .. at best a mixed bag.
He would also be the first Greek American since Dukakis tyo seek such an office. Stravidis’s grandparents were raised in northeastern Anatolia, who emigrated to the United States. His 2008 book, Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command, goes into more detail about his Greek refugee origins. He wrote,
In the early 1920’s, my grandfather, a short, stocky Greek schoolteacher named Dimitrios Stavridis, was expelled from Turkey as part of ‘ethnic cleansing‘ (read pogrom) directed against Greeks living in the remains of the Ottoman Empire. He barely escaped with his life in a small boat crossing the Aegean Sea to Athensand thence to Ellis Island. His brother was not so lucky and was killed by the Turks as part of the violence directed at the Greek minority.
A NATO exercise off the coast of modern Turkey was the “most amazing historical irony [he] could imagine,” and prompted Stavridis to write of his grandfather: “His grandson, who speaks barely a few words of Greek, returns in command of a billion-dollar destroyer to the very city – Smyrna, now called İzmir – from which he sailed in a refugee craft all those years ago.”