The Foreign Service Journal, February 2008

maneuvers to fill unattractive slots with even marginally qualified can- didates — there is an underlying reality that we must appreciate. Frankly, many FSOs believe that they are the equivalent of finely honed daggers being used to chop wood. Despite the fact that worldwide availability is a prerequisite for joining the Foreign Service, we want to take the government’s shilling but spend it in places of our choosing. It isn’t news that individuals want to eat their cake and have it, too. Nor is it a case of “man bites dog” that few people will blithely go into harm’s way if a detour is available. But what is news is that an ostensibly disciplined profession has so com- prehensively rejected its leadership. In the end, the Foreign Service reflects U.S. society and does so now far more than in the past. Even the armed forces are expressing barely muted resentments over the systemic and individual stress of repeated Iraq assignments. We all need to ap- preciate the stringent new limits on our nation’s ability to project power and endure punishment under am- biguous circumstances. Our losses in armed forces and diplomatic personnel are less than a tenth of those who died in Vietnam. If our practical societal limits are now approximately 4,000 military person- nel killed in action (albeit all volun- teers) and three Foreign Service personnel (likewise, all volunteers), we will have to re-tailor our foreign affairs objectives to meet the cloth that is available. But so far as the Foreign Service is concerned, the Vietnam past is not the Iraq prologue. David T. Jones, a retired Senior Foreign Service officer, is a frequent contributor to the Journal . 14 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 S P E A K I N G O U T Iraq is not Vietnam, but one can readily identify bitter parallels between the two.