By PHK
“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble” - Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1
The State Department’s cable to the field regarding forced assignments of Foreign Service Officers to Iraq for 2008-9 was transmitted on Saturday. The number of potential forced assignments on the list is 48, not 50 as The Washington Post reported over the weekend but the effect on the service will be the same. On the one hand, officers on the hit list will have two weeks to respond – either to “volunteer” or to try to find some reason that will wash so they can opt out for another year. On the other hand, they apparently still don’t know who is to be tapped – the “knock on the door in the middle of the night,” or the e-mail from personnel, has yet to arrive. And the cable does not say how many people are likely to receive the notice overall.
At this point, criteria don’t appear to be well spelled out, rumors are swirling at typhoon four strength and the 48 forced assignments apply only to one of three Foreign Service categories – the generalist officers who are in classes 1 and below (equivalent of GS-15 or Colonel and lower). The highest ranks – Ambassadors and Deputy Chief of Mission – and the 5, 000 Foreign Service Specialists (security, telecommunications, medical, secretaries, and administrative assistants) – are not included. This does not mean that similar directives will not be sent to them – it just means that hasn’t happened yet.
But if service in Iraq, or at other hardship posts, is truly valued, maybe by-the-by, State could rethink how it hands out awards. Why, for instance, was the Deputy Chief of Mission (second in command of the embassy) in the US Embassy in Rome anointed DCM of the year? Great hardship post that it is.
Despite the Department’s claim that the forced assignments selection process occurred in full consultation with the union, the American Foreign Service Association, it’s clear that the decision does not reflect AFSA’s position. As the accompanying AFSA cable states: “We have reaffirmed to the Department our conviction that Iraq assignments of FS civilians into a war zone would be detrimental to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole.” And as AFSA has pointed out yet again: well over 2,000 members have volunteered to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan over the past four years. For a total service of 11,500 members this is a large number.
Of the 11,500 total, 6,500 are Foreign Service Officers the other 5,000 are Foreign Service Specialists and the Service is so short-staffed – thanks to the Bush administration and a recalcitrant Congress that have been unwilling to increase the size of the service - the 270 officers and specialists or so assigned to Iraq mean positions elsewhere go begging. Oh, my gosh, it might cost $50 million a year more to begin to right-size. How does that equate to the amount thrown away in Bush’s Iraq folly every minute of every day?
DipNote on the story? Not
Meanwhile, you’d think everything is hunky-dory at State, if the contents of the Public Affairs Bureau’s Dipnote “blog” are to be believed. When I scanned its current posts earlier today (which are now in correct, chronological blog order), you will read Tara Foley lecturing us about understanding cultural differences after spending time in Saudi Arabia, Frederick Jones asking the question of the week as to whether the UN fulfills its mission, and Karen Hughes (who else but) gushing over “Welcome: Portraits of America” the latest Disney movie she saw. Too bad the shots of Niagara Falls were, as a Canadian commenter pointed out, of the Canadian side.
Frankly, this whole blog endeavor is Disneyesque. It fits more with an everything’s coming-up-roses fantasyland than providing a realistic view of the inside - a role I thought it was supposed to fulfill.
I suppose I should also be complaining that WV is not on Dipnote’s Blog Roll since Eccentric Star, a small public diplomacy blog that has not been updated since March, is.
But then, we’re in good company: I don’t see the USC public diplomacy site, the US Public Diplomacy Council, the Public Diplomacy Organization, Beacon or Mountain Runner either. Not to mention any number of other really thoughtful foreign policy blogs. Maybe Dipnote (or as a friend calls it “Dopenote”) should eschew the Blogroll entirely since most of what’s on it are links to resources – like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy - not real blogs.
And also on the brighter side: It’s better, however, I suppose to be ignored by State than dogged by its anti-terrorist blogger team. I’d forgotten about these people, until Mountain Runner asked about this aspect of State’s public affairs/diplomacy operation recently. I shortly thereafter stumbled-upon the evidence of their existence on a Palestinian blogger’s site when I Googled for “Dipnote” yesterday. Now there was a peculiar exchange on the nature of terrorism which I don’t think will change anyone’s “heart or mind” about US policy towards the Palestinians – but I have now seen evidence of our taxpayers’ dollars at work - at least as of last February.