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.