By PHK
Diplomat: 1) a representative of a government who conducts relations with another government representing the interests of his (her) own country; 2) a person skilled in dealing with other people.
Soldier: An enlisted man engaged in military service.
Military: 1) Pertaining to soldiers or war. 2) Of, for, fit or done for war.
- Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.
I’m nudging closer and closer to agreeing with Juan Cole’s recommendation that Congress should mandate closure of the US Embassy in Baghdad even if it refuses to end the funding for the US military occupation of Iraq; Or, that the enormous US Embassy there should be reduced to a skeleton staff so that those who are assigned to it are qualified and can be adequately protected; Or that the diplomatic side of the Mission should be moved outside the country to where many Iraqi politicians spend considerable time anyway. Humm . . . Then the US could also forego its yet to be completed Saddam Hussein Palace style Crusader Castle in the Green Zone – a “right-sized mission” simply wouldn’t need to be housed in such a troubled behemoth.
What I completely fail to comprehend, however, is why the numbers of US Foreign Service positions in Iraq continue to rise when the country is - after four years - still a war zone.
Regardless of what Ambassador Ryan Crocker said, or may not have said, to Guardian reporter Ed Pilkerton about Foreign Service Officers being “in the wrong line of business” if they put their personal safety above the interests of the country or that they all “took an oath to serve our nation worldwide when we joined the foreign service, just as the military swore an oath” that’s just not correct.
FSOs swear an oath to defend the US Constitution. They sign a contract agreeing to worldwide availability. At least that’s what I remember doing when I joined the service years ago. This is corroborated elsewhere.
The other side of the agreement
Seems to me, however, that for its side of the grand bargain, the US government also needs to sign and uphold the terms of yet another contract with its Foreign Service employees. This contract should state that the Department will provide the training and security necessary so US diplomats can be diplomats and not also have to masquerade as soldiers - albeit unarmed - in a war zone(see definitions above).
Maybe State should also be required to sign a contract with Ambassadors to the effect that the Department agrees to provide them with personnel who are qualified (and this means language facility, cultural knowledge and on the job experience) to handle the positions to which they are assigned. Crocker's right to be upset about assignments of too many undergrade and underskilled officers - they really can't produce the work needed, no matter how hard they try.
Even in comparison with Vietnam – the way the Foreign Service is being treated vis-à-vis W’s ill-considered Iraq war – has been scandalous for any number of reasons. And, by the by, it’s not just poor treatment of the Foreign Service, I think the National Guard and the US Army are being badly misused as well.
But back to the Foreign Service
As both John Naland, the president of the American Foreign Service Association (the union of which I am a member) and Ambassador Thomas Krajeski, director of career development and assignments at the State Department, stressed on The News Hour Wednesday night, the Foreign Service is desperately short staffed.
In my view far too many of its personnel – experienced or not - have already been threatened, or cajoled into agreeing to year long Iraq assignments over the past four years. Thus far 15 more have reportedly “volunteered” for Iraq for next year, leaving apparently 33 of the 48 still open positions to fill by hook or by crook.
Krajeski too pointed out that staffing Iraq is a State Department priority – 94 percent of its positions are filled as opposed to 79 percent elsewhere in the world. Many of these other posts are not Gardens of Eden either. In fact, very few are.
Maybe staff shortages are part of the reason it took months for the Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs (now being charged by Congress with overcharging) to get the passport issuance mess straightened out: unlike in private business where if a company has the need and the funds, additional employees can be added without an act of God. In the US government, every position needs authorization by the White House and Congress before it can be filled and both – since Colin Powell’s departure – have placed far more demands on the Foreign Service while refusing to increase its numbers. Or maybe this latest late in the week State Department scandal has other roots.
Yet how much more blood can be squeezed out of State’s turnip to support this administration's expensive and staff-intensive Middle East foreign policy that is rotten to the core?