The Foreign Service Journal, February 2008

Home Suite Home The next time you’re going to be in DC for an extended stay, make yourself at home at Georgetown Suites. With our discounted monthly rates and large, comfortable suites, you’ll feel right at home. Plus we’re near the State Department. Call today! Georgetown Suites the fun place to stay in DC 1-800-348-7203 www.georgetownsuites.com sales@georgetownsuites.com 8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8 L E T T E R S for all four entities. I invite AFSA to team up with those of us in State who are charged with outreach. That relationship could then mark the beginning of a beautiful alliance for the benefit of all American diplomacy. Gregory L. Garland Bureau of African Affairs Washington, D.C. Making the Case The recent meltdown in State management’s handling of potential directed assignments still rankles weeks later. The upshot is a black mark on the image of the Foreign Service that will take time to eradicate. I have been confronted with the results of this blunder during my almost daily public appearances representing the department as a Diplomat in Residence. I make the ever-strong case for our Foreign and Civil Service careers and State’s custodianship of U.S. diplomacy. But it sure hasn’t been easy lately. Here are my recommendations: First, Embassy Baghdad needs to address honest questions potential volunteers might have and not self- righteously wrap itself in patriotic cant. Neither I nor most colleagues I talk to can fathom, for example, what 45 reporting officers can usefully do in a garrison embassy. It is not a lack of courage or patriotism that afflicts us. It’s a lack of straight communi- cation about the specific work that needs doing in Baghdad and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. There is a time-honored way to address this problem. AFSA needs to urge the embassy to provide capsule descriptions of these billets. I am convinced that such descriptions would attract more volunteers, even in the current environment at State. Second, the comparison to the extensive training officers directed to Vietnam assignments received is meaningful. The lack of support for Iraq FS returnees with Post-Trau- matic Stress Disorder is similarly telling and should be at the forefront of AFSA issues in this regard. Peter Kovach Diplomat in Residence, UCLA Los Angeles, Calif. Send your letter to the editor to journal@afsa.org . Note that all submissions are subject to editing for style, format and length.

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=