The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

10 FEBRUARY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL a model FSO, I wonder whether a slight touch of “clientitis” might have taken him to Benghazi on that fateful day. Perhaps he loved Libya and the Libyans a bit too much. I realize that this is a delicate ques- tion, but I think it’s worth raising. Guy W. Farmer FSO, retired Carson City, Nev. On My Way out the Door… As I retire from the Foreign Service after more than a quarter-century as a federal employee, let me thank the staff of The Foreign Service Journal for putting out a great product. I always get some- thing useful out of each issue, and look forward to continuing to read it as an ex-FSO. In that spirit, I would like to share a congratulatory note I sent to President Barack Obama this past November on his re-election. “Dear Mr. President, “For the past 16 years I’ve worked for the Department of State, mostly as a finance officer, serving overseas the entire time. One of my first memorable experiences in the Foreign Service was being a gofer when Tom Pickering and Susan Rice came to Abuja, Nigeria, and had the bad fortune to have the impris- oned M.K.O. Abiola suffer a fatal heart attack in front of them. “There were certainly plenty of times during those 16 years when I’ve been proud of my government service—but not so much as I’d like, however. That’s why I wanted to send you this letter, to offer some suggestions for your consider- ation. (Not that I’ve kept them to myself all these years, but from what I can tell, no one’s paid attention.) “The first deals with the principle of universality, which essentially means that the great U.S. of A. needs to have an office in every country in the world. As Vice President Biden might say, that’s malarkey! “Over the years, I’ve asked many senior-level State Department decision- makers to explain why we stick with universality. This year, the answer I got was that we spend peanuts on the smaller missions compared to what goes toward our presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, so closing those other, smaller posts isn’t worth discussing. “I have to disagree, Mr. President. Not only is it wasteful to have missions in all the places we have them, but the size of the staff in most of those mis- sions is ridiculous squared. After the U.S. embassy, the next largest diplomatic facility in most countries is perhaps one- tenth the size of ours. “Why? A combination of mission creep and the lack of incentives to behave any differently. “I’ve sat with countless bureaucrats over the years who have visited posts with the express purpose of ‘right-sizing’ the missions. Never has the process been much more than an excuse for a shop- ping trip for the folks that come out to do it. Only marginal changes, if any, have ever resulted. The same is true of the countless Office of the Inspector General inspections I’ve witnessed and the myriad visits by various groups within the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations. “The truth is that nearly every U.S. government agency wants to have an overseas presence. And Mother State herself is no better, enforcing few if any restraints on growth—particularly of security personnel. “Theoretically, all of these posi- tions need to be approved by the chief of mission, but it’s the exceedingly rare ambassador who will say no. Is this how AFSPA www.afspa.org Clements Worldwide clements.com Diplomatic Automobile www.diplosales.com Embassy Risk Management Embassyrisk.com The Hirshorn Company hirshorn.com/afsa McEnearney www.mcenearney.com ProMax www.promaxrealtors.com Tetratech Tetratech.com WJD wjdpm.com