The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

A Welcome Policy I have been a special agent in State’s Diplomatic Security Service for an eventful two years and will be considering overseas bids in the next year. As an employee with a non-tra- ditional family, I am faced with addi- tional stresses related to overseas assignment. I was considering leaving my life partner here in the States to fulfill my overseas requirement and feeling marginalized in having to make this sacrifice, given the danger and demands already placed upon me in the course of my duties. Until recently, I was not aware of the Members of Household policy. The coverage of it in your June issue was welcome news, indeed. While I have not yet had the opportunity to put the policy to use, its very existence is a boost to morale. While it does not afford all of the rights that others enjoy, I can at least find comfort in the policy as a means to remaining with my family, and I see it as a step in the right direction. I sincerely appreciate the steps taken on behalf of Foreign Service employees. Jennifer A. Franklin Special Agent, Diplomatic Security Service Office of Mobile Security Deployments Africa Plays Cupid I enjoyed the articles on Africa so much ( FSJ , May), I am inspired to tell you my story of how Africa played Cupid. I served in Dakar from December 1999 to October 2001 as office man- agement specialist for the deputy chief of mission. In March 2000, I took a trip to New York via Air Afrique. After two days, I was ready to leave New York and return to Senegal. At the airport, there were long lines and short tempers. After 12 hours waiting (some spent at a nearby hotel), I saw a gentleman arguing (he says he was “discussing”) with the woman at the counter. I was thinking, “Hey, give her a break, back off, and sit here like the rest of us.” Twelve hours turned into 15, and we finally took off. When we arrived in Dakar, I heard this voice, and it was “him,” the man who had argued with the ticket- counter woman. He started chatting with me and I thought, “Please, lug- gage, come fast; I just want to go home.” The luggage arrived and I headed home. The following day at work, I told my co-worker about my trip and mentioned this man from the airport, telling her how annoying he was. Then he showed up at the com- mercial office describing me to one of the FSNs in the office. She identified me, and then I received a phone call from him. I turned to my co-worker, “Help, it’s him! I don’t want to talk to him.” But I did the unthinkable, and met him outside of the lobby area. We talked and the next thing I knew, I’d agreed to have lunch with him the next day, and the next, and so on. The “him” was Alan Guimond. His three-week trip turned into a two- month stay and then a long-distance relationship. In October 2001, we were married. Paula P. Guimond OMS Embassy Beijing In Defense of U.S. Policy As I read Louis Janowski’s article, “Neo-Imperialism and U.S. Foreign Policy” ( FSJ , May), I found myself remembering an old line: This isn’t right; it isn’t even wrong. Janowski argues that the narcotics situation in Afghanistan is worse with- out the Taliban in power. The Taliban was up to its eyeballs in the narcotics trade, running it as a monopoly. Now it is a free-for-all, but we have a much better chance of fighting its corrosive effects with a friendly government in Kabul, greater U.S. engagement in the region, and with terrorist training camps shut down. Janowski uses pejorative buzz- words without definition. He asserts that U.S. policy is being reoriented “along neoconservative lines.” What is a “neoconservative”? Does Janow- ski know? It seems that every month, someone rushes into print with a new breathless explanation of some secret cabal behind the policies of the Bush administration (the idea that the Bush administration is behind the policies of the Bush administration is appar- ently too prosaic). They are all Straussians, we are told, or Trotskyites, or neoconservatives, or Texas oilmen, or Bible-thumping fun- damentalist Christians, or a bunch of J-E-W-S. We need to be debating L ETTERS 6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4