The Foreign Service Journal, November 2003

It seems appro- priate to devote my first column as your new AFSA president to a few words of introduction. First, I would like to thank my predecessor John Naland and State VP Louise Crane, who led AFSA so ably between John’s departure and my arrival. I started work at AFSA headquarters on Sept. 8, 2003, after spending three years as chief of mission at a maximum- hardship SEP post (Nouakchott, Mauritania), including a two-month side trip to Kuwait and Baghdad to work on General Jay Garner’s Iraq reconstruction team. I have been anFSO for 30 years, with service mostly in the Middle East (Algiers, Jeddah, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Tehran) and Africa (Djibouti, Conakry and Nouakchott). In Washington, I’ve served on three State promotion boards, worked in the department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism (S/CT) and been the chief of new- employee orientation at FSI. What have I seen in my recent postings? Above all, I am more con- vinced than ever that ours is a proud profession. In Baghdad, for example, our Foreign Service team from many agencies — including both active-duty and retired employees — has been performing magnificently in a setting that resembles the bar in “Star Wars.” Iraq was hot, dangerous, anarchic, tangled, and absolutely unpredictable. Our working and living conditions, especially in the earliest days, were from the “hunter-gatherer” phase. Working alongside a talented group of Civil Service and military colleagues, we never knew from one day to the next what we would face as we sought to understand and come to terms with Kurds, Shi’ites, Ba’athists masquerad- ing as born-again democrats, and local militias (which, with all their faults, did provide a measure of security in a setting of chaos). We can all take pride in what our colleagues have done, and are doing, there. The same was true during my three years in Nouakchott. I could not have been prouder of how our people were performing under very adverse and austere conditions. No sooner had I returned there from Baghdad than a group of disgruntled military officers from theMauritanian armored brigade turned their tank cannons against the president and the government. Everyone in the U.S. mission family — communications personnel, our securi- ty officer, spouses and children, and our wonderful FSN community — responded with professionalism and courage in the best traditions of our Service. I would make special mention of our newly-hired specialists and generalists (who made up a large proportion of our staff). Whatever the Board of Examiners and FSI are doing to recruit and train the folks coming into the Service via the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative, they are doing it very well: our new colleagues are outstanding. Special kudos should also go to our retired colleagues, whose knowledge and willingness to help in the most unpromising settings are keeping our posts secure, healthy and functioning through some very difficult times. At various times in Mauritania, for example, our RSO, our management officer, our information specialist, our office manager, and even our desk officer back in the department, were retirees working as WAEs. No one needs to give the Foreign Service lessons in courage and patrio- tism. We should never give any ground to those who would, for example, take cheap shots at our consular employees — the same consular employees who ensured the well-being of hundreds of American citizens during times of civil strife in Liberia, Mauritania and the Ivory Coast. Most of the places we work are dangerous and difficult, and the recent efforts of terrorists have left employees and their families with fewer and fewer safe havens. Far from making any apologies for doing what we do, we have every right to feel proud of how well we use our experience, our skills in foreign languages, and our knowledge of personal relations and foreign cultures to defendU.S. interests around the globe and look after individual Americans living abroad. TheForeignService—all of it — is serving the American people very well indeed. I will ensure that AFSA serves the members of the Foreign Service. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS A Proud Profession B Y J OHN L IMBERT N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 John Limbert is the president of the American Foreign Service Association.