The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

L E T T E R S Explaining Iraq Thank you so much for the March issue devoted to Iraq. We truly enjoyed it. For the past year, I have been try- ing to explain to friends and acquain- tances my frustration with the pre- emptive attack against Iraq. My first challenge came a year ago when I was asked to speak to a women’s club in South Dade County about life in Saudi Arabia. The date was the night we bombed Baghdad in an attempt to eliminate Saddam Hussein. I tried to explain to the ladies present that this was a sad day for the United States and that it would be hard for me to speak about life in Saudi Arabia know- ing how the Middle East and, indeed, probably much of the world, would be viewing the U.S. for a long time to come. Even now, a year later, it is hard to find persons who understand that this invasion did not increase the security of our country and that, in fact, it probably increased the number of people who wish us ill. Reading the intelligent comments of my Foreign Service colleagues gave me some reassurance that my 30-year Foreign Service career was not a total waste. Elizabeth A. Powers FSO, retired Gainesville, Fla. Iraq Coverage I commend the Journal for its excellent coverage of Iraq in the March edition. The several articles on the subject were perceptive and infor- mative. Talcott W. Seelye FSO, retired Bethesda, Md. A Valuable Issue Your Iraq issue provides what I think is an important record, from within the Coalition Provisional Authority, of the extraordinarily sim- plistic mind-set that seems to have accompanied our effort to establish an imperial presence in Baghdad. The reports you have published constitute a valuable confirmation of, among other things, Dean Acheson’s observa- tion that (as I recall it approximately) “introducing force does not resolve a situation; it creates a new situation.” Costly as this experience may be, I hope it will at least help us to learn this lesson for the future, and remind us that the extraordinary success of the U.S. Cold War policies relied not just on “containment” of the Soviet threat, but also on the other half of George Kennan’s paradigm — that “we remain true to our own goals and principles.” This was also the second half of Paul Nitze’s NSC 68, that we supplement anti-communism with active promotion of a viable world sys- tem of nation-states. In other words, it is not enough to declare what we are against; we have to engage in the far more difficult process of demonstrat- ing what we are for. Bob Willner FSO, retired Rickreall, Ore. 3,000 Years of History Hume Horan, in “Restoring a Shattered Mosaic” (March FSJ ), has elegantly and eloquently picked up some of the shards of the shattered “mosaic” that is Iraq. Horan, from his vantage point on the heights as an ambassador many times over, sees reasons for optimism and for dreaming of “partial success.” Iraq, once touted as the site of the Garden of Eden, may become with luck a sort of Near Eastern guide to nirvana. The views from my vantage point in the depths, as a once-low-level FSO at four Near East posts, differs. For now, a series of puppets, quasi- official, alphabet soup groups and army juntas will seem to rule Iraq. Our efforts to force-feed Iraq with Western “modern” political ideology will bear bitter fruit. Chaos will con- tinue until at last, with American help — or in spite of it — an amoral strongman, standing astride the butchered bodies of his competitors, will anoint himself ruler. In Mesopotamia — the eternal Land Between the Rivers, now Iraq — the living history of strong rulers began with king-priests in Sumer and Ur. Later, for 500 years, the Abbasid caliphs ruled from Baghdad in glory. They made the Arabic language and culture supreme among that “mosaic of peoples” from Persia to the Atlantic. Along the way they pre- served much we claim as ours, and so enriched our “mosaic.” Until today, latter-day Iraqi despots have contin- ued one-man rule: 3,000 years of his- tory cannot be denied. John D. Tinny FSO, retired Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. CAJE Can Work Thank you for the timely April arti- cle on CAJE by Alexis Ludwig. While I could not agree more with Mr. Ludwig’s list of concerns, I also see many reasons to be optimistic. All of the CAJE professionals I have worked with have struck me as total- ly dedicated managers trying hard to solve a technical problem — not a political or financial one. In late 2003, Embassy Cairo requested an exception grade for precisely the kind of “national trea- sure” Foreign Service National described in Mr. Ludwig’s article. Washington replied that the excep- tion grade procedure was unavail- able, but offered to “CAJE” the posi- tion at once. We were as skeptical as Mr. Ludwig about a computer-based system adequately evaluating charac- teristics such as “charm” and “sophis- tication,” so imagine our delight 8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 4