The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

Is AP the New ALDAC? The prime candidate exercise for unfilled Iraq positions created an unnecessary black eye for the Foreign Service, never the best-understood segment of our government in any case. I can’t imagine why manage- ment allowed a reporter into the town hall, an internal meeting, and let his report touch off a completely un- justified Foreign Service–bashing free-for-all in the media. Within three weeks, all positions had been filled. But four days before the cable on that subject arrived, I read about it in the Washington Post . We should be able to count on management to communicate with us via cables and e-mails, not via news- paper reports. The exercise itself was not without flaws, but we all knew it was coming. There was a lack of clarity about who was chosen and why. The town hall meeting should have been held the week before bids were due, not after. I don’t personally agree, at all, with the notion that posts in Iraq must all be staffed at 100 percent while other historically difficult-to-fill positions go begging. We are diplomats. Our job is to try to prevent wars, among other things. We are not soldiers. Worldwide avail- ability means being available to con- duct the business of diplomacy around the world, not to fight wars. If anything, this new notion that we’re the same as the military insults us and the men and women in uniform at the same time — quite a feat. What’s happening in Iraq in most cases has nothing to do with foreign relations, protecting American citi- zens or the other functions of the Foreign Service. But in any case, the Service has come through, every sin- gle time, to fill the ever-growing num- ber of positions. I wish someone in a leadership position in the department would have stood up for us in public, instead of generally remaining silent and letting us be pilloried. And in the future, when it comes to personnel actions, I wish management would not confuse the Associated Press with ALDACs in communicating with us. Nikolas Trendowski FSO & AFSA Post Representative Embassy Belgrade Staffing the FS Once again we have fully staffed our missions to Iraq and Afghanistan with volunteers. But if these missions are to grow, if our other posts around the world are to be fully staffed, if our global diplomatic reach is to be maintained and if U.S. interests are to be protected, it is time to fully staff the Foreign Service itself. Call it what you will — “Ameri- ca’s first line of defense” (Secretary Albright), or “America’s first line of offense” (Secretary Powell) — our country requires nothing less than a Foreign Service fully staffed with its most fundamental resource: people. Norman H. Barth FSO Washington, D.C. Salt in the Wound Before anyone attempts to dismiss my opinion with an ad hominem argument that I’m a tea-sipping, cookie-pushing Euro-weenie, let me stipulate that I have served at three overseas posts: one a danger-pay post, another on authorized departure, and my current 20-percent hardship post. My father, brother and sister all served or are serving honorably as members of our armed forces. If ordered, I would go to Iraq without hesitation. So lecture someone else about unwillingness to sacrifice for God and country. Director General Thomas’ hand- ling of the announcement regarding directed assignments was a fiasco, and his performance at the town hall meeting that followed left me slack- jawed. Releasing the cable after COB on a Friday and speaking to the media before breaking the news to his own corps are akin to a consular officer working in an American Citizen Services section talking to a New York Times reporter about the death of an American citizen before notifying the next-of-kin. Such conduct was un- professional, plain and simple. There was a simple answer to Jack Croddy’s comments at the town hall meeting (most of which I agree with): “Not only have we signed up for worldwide availability, we are obli- gated to work our hardest to ensure that the foreign policy objectives of this country are achieved, regardless of our political affiliation or personal opinions about the wisdom and prudence of those policy objectives. If you can no longer do that, then it is, indeed, time to find another line of work. If you choose to leave because you can no longer actively support our Iraq policy, we respect that. To walk away from a career on principle is an act of bravery that we will never denigrate.” The Foreign Service has been pilloried in the media for being a bunch of cowards. I resent that deep- ly. We risk our lives for the United States. We are this country’s foreign policy professionals, and we’re angry for the following reason: Prior to the Iraq invasion, no one with even a tertiary knowledge of the Middle East believed that the occupation of Iraq would end well. Iraq was a conglomerate of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions held in check by a murderous tyrant, its borders drawn according to the interests of former colonial overlords. No one argues otherwise. The subsequent disintegration of “Iraqi society” after the removal of Saddam 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 L E T T E R S