Iraq is not Vietnam and the PRTs are not CORDS

By PHK

I never had to serve in Vietnam - let alone CORDS Vietnam* - although I know any number of Foreign Service Officers who did. Today’s PRTS, or provincial reconstruction teams, are supposedly the Iraq and Afghanistan equivalents of CORDS. But, as David Passage points out in an article in the November 2007 issue of the Foreign Service Journal, that’s where the resemblance ends. The article aptly appears in the magazine’s “Speak Out” section and is entitled “Caution: Iraq is not Vietnam.” Ambassador Passage, who served in CORDS from 1969-70, describes why.

His is a thoughtful piece which should be turned into an oped in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or other major U.S. newspaper. Passage should be being interviewed on the Newshour, the Charlie Rose Show, Democracy Now, Air America, as well as by the various military communications outlets because it’s crystal clear just from reading comments on recent stories in major US newspapers and on various blogs that far too few Americans understand the difference between the US Foreign Service and the US military services and too many associated with the military haven’t a clue as to the basic differences between the jobs, roles and qualifications of civilian diplomats and soldiers.

As for the right wing ideologues whose views are trumpeted in The Weekly Standard by its editor William Kristol and Dean Barnett among others and by right wing columnists published in too many US newspapers today not only do they not understand the fundamental differences between a diplomat and a combatant – but one has to wonder when was the last time – if ever - they personally served in any capacity in a war zone. Or even as an unarmed diplomat in a US Embassy in a country where people who do not like the US use terrorism against US diplomats as a means of expressing their displeasure with this country’s policies. The answer to this second question, at least, is an unequivocal never.

Instead, too many people – including reporters - buy into Condi’s (and the right wing’s) ill-founded, spurious accusations that the Foreign Service is replete with expendable shirkers who refuse to get their hands dirty in Iraq – unlike those brave soldiers who salute and go anywhere at any time in the name of the Stars and Stripes and W – including – as Kristol and Barnett describe - getting themselves ambushed on a roof top.

Let me repeat: diplomats are not combatants. Diplomats are not soldiers. The “not stepping up to the plate” accusation aimed at the Foreign Service is just wrong headed and a dangerous misunderstanding of what diplomacy is all about.

I’m not going to repeat Passage’s article – best for people to read it for themselves – it doesn’t take long – but here are five of his most important points:

• The security environment in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan is so much worse than in Vietnam that it would be impossible to replicate the CORDS program today even if PRT civilians were trained and equipped (which they are not).

• Unlike Vietnam where CORDS members were not the target of the Viet Cong, Americans are prime targets of various insurgent groups in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan – and a place considered safe today may not be tomorrow. This means PRT members “have to be confined to heavily protected forward bases for their own safety, sometimes for months at a time. They can meet with local officials and villagers only when enveloped by overwhelming security forces (which defeats our broader psychological and ideological objectives.) And far too often, any concrete progress they achieve . . . building schools, restoring electricity . . .is promptly destroyed. . . .”

• Training for CORDS lasted 4-6 months and included courses in cultures, civilizations and economies of Vietnam and other SE Asian countries. It included classes on guerilla warfare, basic language instruction plus self protection and self-defense taught by the US military. In comparison, today’s training for FSOs headed for the PRTs – all of two weeks if I remember correctly - is limited and superficial.

• “Foreign Service officers are not combat professionals, and no amount of training in combat skills, weaponry or self-protection will ever” make them more than “hostages to luck in a combat environment. As such they will also never be more than a burden on those military and security forces who have to protect them.”

• Finally, assigning civilian Foreign Service professionals to war zones demonstrates foremost the lack of sound judgment on the part of the US government, it does not demonstrate commitment and it does not send a “signal that this administration intends to win in Iraq and Afghanistan. It merely endangers lives. . . ”

Thank you Ambassador Passage. We've never met, but please, please Speak Out more.

Note: CORDS – Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program.

Comments

[Vigilante]

Thanks for posting this. I will be linking to WhirledView!

[Marshall]

I doubt very much that this argument can be won by getting reporters to understand the difference between diplomatic work and military service. Not only the right-wing, but the so-called MainStreamMedia as well, are far too interested in portrayals of weak-kneed, lilly-livered, cookie-pushing diplomats to pay any attention. I wish we were still in an era where earnest discussions of issues by those who have served would help reporters to understand, but that day seems to be over.

The only aspect of the matter right now is just to keep driving home the point that there is no diplomacy purpose to keep open Embassy Baghdad...I don't know what they DO actually do, but delivering demarches, arranging cultural exchanges, negotiating agreements with, say, the national science agency, reporting what you heard on the street -when you don't speak the language - just ain't it. WHAT ARE THOSE 1000 "diplomats" DOING that they must risk life and limb for - and further risk the deaths of innocent bystanders if they venture out of the Green Zone with their Praetorian Guards?

Going in harm's way in order to pretend that we have a normal diplomatic relationship with a fully independent government????? Nonsense...nonsense on stilts.

[PHK]

Vigilante: most appreciate links. Welcome to WV!

Marshall: beats me what a cast of 1,000 plus is doing in the Green Zone. It's hard to really get a fix on the true Foreign Service numbers in Iraq - but I'll bet the vast majority of the 1,000 work for various other agencies and State admin is primarily playing housekeeper - or as someone else wrote - concierge - holding up the umbrella in a deluge. But then, those who know, won't say but I agree, there's no way we could have normal diplomatic relations with a fully independent government with 130,000 or more US troops occupying the country. (Not to mention the Praetorian Guards.)

[COL Stack Timoney]

Aloha, I commanded a PRT at Ghazni, Afghanistan from 04 to 05. I guess I was one of the fortunate ones who had great DOS and USAID reps. You Staties might know them, John Mongan and AL Nugent. Both brought great resumes to the table. While a semi-tree hugger, John knew the military fairly well. He had been an ROTC cadet at Yale, before he decided to go the DOS route. He knew how to shoot, move, and communicate, and was constantly by my side when we dealt with the Pashtun and Hazara chiefs within Ghazni province. More than once I handed John my M9 when the situation got hairy and we thought the feces would hit the fan. Al was a former Marine and a Vietnam vet as well as a retired foreign service officer who had worked all over south-east Asia in good times and bad. I know that a number of the other DOS and USAID reps on the PRTs were cut from the same cloth. But over the last few years, at least, these guys have been burnt out. The DOS needs to establish a real training program, in conjunction with trhe military, that facilitates the training of Staties for these types of missions. The Army has done this type of training before. We ran DEA agents through a short version of Ranger School, back in the 90s. From my foxhole, it couldn't be much worse than taking guys who were career city cops and putting them in the hills of Georgia and the swamps of Florida to prepare them for missions in Colombia and Thailand. This is a good time to build an institutional training capability for DOS to serve on PRTs and other missions where they will serve along side of soldiers and marines, but it needs to be a comprehensive program that helps the DOS build and maintain a "special operations" capability for future contingencies.

Oh well, that's my two cents.

Aloha,

Stack Timomey
COL, USA
Fort Shafter. Hawaii

[patricia kushlis]

Col Timoney: Thanks for your well considered 2 cents. You make some very valid points. I don't know the State officers you worked with but others who read WV might.

All things being equal, I don't think State Department officers belong on PRTs in hazardous areas like the ones you describe although their political skills and perhaps linguistic and cultural training - if they received any - could be useful to the PRTs as a whole. But they simply don't have the military training to function well in combat situations and the lack of this training is probably much worse today than in the Vietnam era.

Then the men from State would have had at least basic military service because of the draft and we didn't have all that many women in the Foreign Service anyway. That started to change in 1968.

But if the USG is going to insist that FSOs serve on PRTs in hazardous areas then it should, as you suggest, also provide them with adequate military and anti-terrorist training and equipment.