Hell, no, they won’t go

November 1, 2007

After staffing key diplomatic roles for years with inexperienced ideologues, the U.S. embassy in Iraq, and Amb. Ryan Crocker in particular, are desperate to have competent State Department officials in Iraq. Not surprisingly, State employees are, shall we say, reluctant to go.

A few days ago, the State Department, left with too few volunteers, announced it would to stop asking employees to go to Iraq and start ordering them to go.

Yesterday, State Department officials started pushing back.

Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.

At a town hall meeting in the department’s main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign Service officers, some of them criticized fundamental aspects of State’s personnel policies in Iraq. They took issue with the size of the embassy — the biggest in U.S. history — and the inadequate training they received before being sent to serve in a war zone. One woman said she returned from a tour in Basra with post-traumatic stress disorder only to find that the State Department would not authorize medical treatment. […]

Service in Iraq is “a potential death sentence,” said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran. “Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now,” he said to sustained applause.

It appears the Bush administration lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis, and is close to losing the hearts and minds of State Department diplomats, too.

Indeed, Condoleezza Rice — the first modern Secretary of State to get the job without any previous diplomatic experience — seems to have lost the confidence of the Foreign Service officers whom she ostensibly leads.

A poll conducted this month by the American Foreign Service Association found that only 12 percent of officers “believe that . . . Rice is fighting for them,” union president John K. Naland said at yesterday’s meeting, which was first reported by the Associated Press.

“That’s their right. But they’re wrong,” said [Harry K. Thomas Jr., the director general of the Foreign Service], who appeared to grow increasingly agitated as the questioning became more pointed.

“Sometimes, if it’s 88 to 12, maybe the 88 percent are correct,” Naland said.

What’s more, during yesterday’s “discussion,” diplomats noted that even if they were dispatched to Iraq against their will, it’s not even clear what kind of diplomatic work they could do. As the WaPo put it, “Some participants asked how diplomacy could be practiced when the embassy itself, inside the fortified Green Zone, is under frequent fire and officials can travel outside only under heavy guard.”

Nevertheless, Foreign Service officers swear an oath to serve wherever the secretary of state sends them, and Rice has about 50 slots to fill from about 250 eligible envoys. The result, I suspect, is not a bunch of unhappy State Department diplomats going to Iraq against their will, but rather, a bunch of unhappy State Department diplomats resigning all at once.

As for yesterday’s meeting, after one Foreign Service veteran referred to Iraq service as “a potential death sentence,” the meeting abruptly ended. I think Rice’s team may need to start exercising some diplomacy within the State Department.

The State Department is in a really tough position.

The BOSS, wants the embassy to be staffed and the staff doesn’t want to go.

The military is solving the problem by giving bigger bonuses and using stop-loss orders and the ready reserve to keep people around when the soldier would rather get out of the army.

The State Department tried to bribe people but the bribes weren’t big enough. Now, they are using the only stick they have. they are going to fire people who won’t go.

The State Department doesn’t have the ability of the military to force people to go so …..

It seems to me the only realistic solution is to give bigger, MASSIVE bonuses to the people who go to Iraq.

Of course, the only reasonable solution is to draw down our troops and our diplomats as quickly as possible.

  • Why can’t just round up some patriotic Neo-cons and send them to Baghdad.

    William Krystal – your country is calling – it needs your help. Time for the Weekly Standard to put out the call for volunteers.

  • “The result, I suspect, is not a bunch of unhappy State Department diplomats going to Iraq against their will, but rather, a bunch of unhappy State Department diplomats resigning all at once.”

    and like everything else bush has touched, it will take the grownups years to rebuild the state department.

  • Well, clearly this opens up a new opportunity for outsourcing – perhaps Blackwater can start a diplomatic department?

  • To those who are suggesting people like Krystal and LImbaugh be sent, as long as we are dreaming here, the role they would be best suited for is humping a pack out on patrol looking for the terrorists they keep using as justification for this crappy Iraq war.

    Draft the lot of them, give them the rack of E-1 and put them in the infantry.

  • err, that should be “rank of E-1.”

    (A job in the dimplomatic corp is too good for that bunch.)

  • Why does the State Department hate America? Don’t they know that the “cause of freedom” is over in Iraq?

    Hang ’em for treason!

  • I don’t understand this at all, I obviously haven’t done the math but it seems like even massive bonuses would be cheaper than having to train replacements for thousands of fired/resigned foreign service officers, and it would be less of a PR hit as well. Doing it this way just highlights what a disaster Iraq is. Unless the idea is to clear out the foreign service so a new generation of Liberty University graduates can fill the spots.

  • Massive bonuses MAY be cheaper, but it seems like they just don’t WANT to go. Money doesn’t always solve the problem. Some people have principles and can’t be bought. Some people just don’t want to get shot at. I can understand both those stands….

    Send the limbaugh brigade, they have no principles and can be bought as well.

  • Why should those cowards serve ? They’re more than happy to let women fight their wars for them .

  • I agree with Brian. Why not send all those twits who staffed the CPA and those from the “Think” tanks? They have Iraqi experience (albeit not good experience, but who cares?)

    Let’s see them deal with what they created.

    Perhaps Blackwater could create a “Diplomatic” Division.

  • It’s the biggest embassy in the world, let’s just move the entire West Wing there and we won’t need any diplomats, the Prez can have face-to-face talks with whomever it is he thinks he can negotiate with;>

  • “It appears the Bush administration lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis.”

    Not to mention their own minds.

    What use is a diplomatic corp in this situation anyway? Martin @ 14 has a good idea for staffing, though.

  • What? Of all the psychophantinc, knuckledragging, koolaid-quaffing, imbecilic cretins hired by the Bushylvanian National Zoo over the past six years—they can’t find a mere fifty who are intellectually challenged enough to buy into a cushy, overpaid Foreign Service job in a shiny new Embassy?

    Note to Rice: “Shiny Thing” doesn’t seem to be working anymore. Better tell your boss….

  • I “love” how they haven’t done this since the late 1960’s for duty in Viet Nam. I also “love” how the training to go to Viet Nam was months, while the traing to go to Iraq is weeks. And still there still seems to be an unspoken – “things aren’t broken” coming from the administration.

  • Somehow “Here’s a bunch of money. Go die violently in a foreign land.” doesn’t have the attraction it once did.

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  • Oops! Another little problem not foreseen by the architects of the Iraq debacle. They built the largest embassy in the world, and now they can’t find people willing to work there.

    There is a good article in the November issue of Vanity Fair, also available online:

    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/11/langewiesche200711

    I recommend the article highly. It makes the point that as American embassies have become more like fortresses, they have become less able to do the work of diplomacy for which they were intended in the first place.

  • U.S. diplomats serve in difficult, dangerous, unhealthy, and isolated posts around the world: Lagos, Freetown, Jakarta, Islamabad, Caracas, Rangoon, Beijing, Ulan Bator, to name a few. At any time, they and their families could be in mortal danger due to civil war or terrorism directed against official Americans. This is accepted as part of the “conditions of service.” What they are not accustomed to doing is serving in a fortress embassy from which no one can depart and into which no one can enter. The essence of diplomacy is communication and that cannot take place in a bunker. This call-up is purely political and meant to show the Administration’s “resolve” to continue muddling through the mess it has created. We are breaking our Army in Iraq and now we seem set on breaking our diplomatic corps as well. Full disclosure: I am retired State Department Foreign Service Officer who served in six countries overseas, not all of them tourist destinations by a long shot.

  • LOL @ Anne.

    I wonder if we’ll see protests? Hundreds of navy blue suited Dips burning their security access cards and staging die-ins.

    Code Pink, meet Code Blue.

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  • Well doesn’t this shoot a hole in the “surge is working” argument. Even more telling was Condi’s recent testimony in front of Waxman concerning the whole Blackwater Gone Wild mess. Condi was telling Waxman that the Green Zone should be considered a war zone, much to Henry Waxman’s surprise. I have the feeling these diplomats may also have some information about how well the new embassy was built by the folks at First Kuwaiti Construction with all their impressed slave laborers. According to the diplomatic corps, it looks like the Bushies just built the world’s biggest, most expensive mausoleum.

  • If I had been one of the participants, I would have said to Harry K. Thomas Jr., the director general of the Foreign Service, “Sure, I’ll be glad to go to Iraq if you’re on the same plane with me. And I’ll be glad to stay for exactly as long as you do.”

    Just watching his head explode would be worth the price of admission.

  • Conspiracy theory du jour…

    Much like how the Pat Tillmans who speak out against the war while still fighting it find themselves with more holes at the end of the day than they did in the beginning, so, too, will the most vocal opponents of the war within the State Department find themselves being forced to go to Iraq (where, again, more holes in ’em), or being forced to resign, where they will be replaced with sheep who are more prone to believe in Bush’s ideology. Those new sheep won’t then have to go to Iraq, though, Heaven forbid. Rice will move on to the next most vocal opponents of the war within the State Department, then the next most vocal opponents, then the NON-vocal opponents, then the people who are for the war…but not for it enough! The less you rah-rah, the more likely you are to be stationed there. Until the State Department is filled with Limbaugh wannabes Thunderdoming each other to prove just WHO is in love with Bush more, because the loser will have to go to Iraq.

    I believe this in much the same way as, if the draft ever gets reinstated while Bush or another Republican is in office, those who join the Young Republicans will get a pass, and the non-affiliated minority athletes and those involved in the arts will be the first to go. Even with a seemingly random Draft Number, the new system will not pull out lots of draft numbers but specific numbers, and the numbers who are pulled should surprise no one.

    Sure, it seems to make sense that anyone who believes we’re doing the right thing in Iraq should be the first to go. But we all know how the Bushies have created their own reality, and that’s how they roll.

  • It’s great news if Bush administration diplomats have to sleep in the bed their boss has made. Next we need to start drafting children of Republican lawmakers. After a couple body bags come back with silver spoons inside, you’ll see how important it is really is to die for Bush’s fabrications.

  • Wasn’t it the State Department’s intellegence department that was the sole voice speaking out agains the rest that there wasn’t credible evidence for WMDs in Iraq? Are they being made to walk the plank for earlier truth-telling?

    I guess I think of our American diplomats’ jobs to prevent wars and settle them after the fact — not be participants in them. What good does it do to have fifty more highly-trained Arabic-speakers cooped up in a place where they can’t talk to Iraqis — basically acting as wooden ducks? It’s garbage to question foreign service officers’ patriotism, on this one. Sure, they’re an easy target, and people don’t understand what they do, but they’ve got a point about the value of shipping them out to a place where they can’t do their jobs properly at huge personal risk.

  • Let’s put the size of the Foreign Service in perspective. The U.S. active- duty military is 119 times larger than the Foreign Service. The total uniformed military (active and reserve) is 217 times larger. A typical U.S. Army division is larger than the entire Foreign Service. The military has more uniformed personnel in Mississippi than the State Department has diplomats worldwide. The military has more full colonels/Navy captains than the State Department has diplomats. The military has more band members than the State Department has diplomats. The Defense Department has almost as many lawyers as the State Department has diplomats. Then there’s the obvious huge disparities in operating budgets, which are widely known.

    The key point — especially for observers who think in terms of the myriad capabilities of our nation’s large military — is that the Foreign Service has a relatively small corps of officers who do not receive the funding and resources they need to do their jobs. Moreover, in contrast to the military, the vast majority of Foreign Service members are forward deployed (thus the word “foreign” in Foreign Service). Today, in a time of armed conflict, 21.1 percent of the active-duty military (290,000 out of 1,373,000) is stationed abroad (ashore or afloat). That compares to 68 percent of the Foreign Service currently stationed abroad at 167 U.S. embassies and 100 consulates and other missions.

    There is nothing new about this high percentage of Foreign Service forward deployment. The percentages have not noticeably changed in the past four decades. Thus, the typical Foreign Service member serves 60 percent of his or her career abroad. Over a 30-year career, that adds up to 20 years spent stationed overseas.

    Where are these overseas Foreign Service members? Nearly 60 percent are at posts categorized by the U.S. government as “hardship” due to difficult living conditions (for example, violent crime, harsh climate, social isolation, unhealthy air, and/or terrorist threats). Of those hardship posts, half are rated at or above the 15-percent differential level that constitutes great hardship. Thus, unlike the old stereotype seeing most Foreign Service members serving in comfortable Western European capitals, only one third of overseas posts are non-hardship — and the majority of people at such posts are decompressing after serving at a hardship post.

    Again, the contrast with the military is instructive. As previously mentioned, 78.9 percent of the active-duty military is stationed stateside (including 36,000 personnel in Hawaii). Of those serving abroad, there are more U.S. military personnel serving in the United Kingdom, Germany, or Japan than the State Department has diplomats worldwide.

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