Remembering the Exceptionalism of America

I’m back in Washington, DC this week on business. On my last visit a few weeks ago, my Lyft driver from the airport was Karzan Mahmoud, a Kurdish immigrant who had been a bodyguard to Barham Salih who served as Iraq’s president from 2018 to 2022. He told me about protecting his boss from an assassination attempt, and it was only then that I saw the scars on his arms and the deformities of his skull from the bullets ripping through his body. He told me his story of joining an American security firm and eventually getting sponsorship to come to America. I asked him how he felt growing up in Iraq and now living in America. He told me he has a family here and his kids are “full Americans.” He laughed and said that his kids tell him he “talks funny.” What could be better, he asked, than living in the greatest country on earth and having the opportunities that he and his children have?