The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

“Missed Story in Iraq”: We Have It! The Columbia Journalism Review’ s July-August editorial ( www.cjr.org ) notes that “Every March since the war in Iraq began, the Foreign Service Journal … has examined the state of diplomacy and nationbuilding in Iraq. Reading those issues, one thing is apparent: the press has largely ignored an important story about the consequences for thousands of civilian Foreign Service employees of the administration’s disastrous war.” The CJR editorial continues: “The maintenance of America’s largest embassy in an active war zone is a hard case to make. (Even in Vietnam security was never so bad that it prevented diplomats from doing their jobs.) Diplomats in Iraq — in the besieged International Zone in Bagh- dad and out in the perilous Provincial Reconstruction Teams around the country — operate under frequent mortar and rocket attack, or surround- ed by armed guards when they dare venture beyond the wire to meet with wary Iraqis. In the PRTs, they are often forced to do without basic resources, like working phones. To date, three Foreign Service workers have been killed. “The press, meanwhile, has been more interested in the Pentagon’s effort to blame the State Department for the bungled nationbuilding effort — that somehow the lack of civil engineers, electricity-grid experts, and other specialists is due to State’s failure to, as President Bush said, ‘step up.’ But this is not what diplomats do. They talk to people, negotiate, build relationships, and the like. “Here are two basic questions that reporters need to unpack: Is it possible to perform effective diplomacy under such circumstances? And if not, then why is our government risking so many lives this way?” — Susan Maitra, Senior Editor Senate Hearing Throws Spotlight on Foreign Assistance Reform “I believe this new foreign assistance process is seriously flawed and may be in serious trouble,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., in his opening statement at a June 12 hearing to assess the Bush admini- stration’s 18-month-old initiative to reform the U.S. foreign assistance process ( http://foreign.senate.gov/ hearings/2007/hrg070612p.html ). Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs and International Environmental Protection that sponsored the hearing, charged that the process so far had been carried out in a secretive man- ner, excluding valuable input from the field. As a result, USAID is being decimated and the development agen- da shortchanged in the service of short-term foreign policy goals. Menendez made it clear that he expects the administration to collabo- rate with Congress and demonstrate transparency in the process from here on out. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., rank- ing minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee, announced that, in view of the importance of the issue, the Republican committee staff are now carrying out a field-based study, examining assistance funded by the full range of government agencies in more than 20 countries. They are paying particular attention to the new coordination process to see whether and how it is mirrored in the field. Acting USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance Henri- etta Fore, the principal government witness, heard a good deal of blunt talk at the hearing. Besides remarks from Sens. Menendez and Lugar, three development experts testified. Brookings Institute Fellow Lael Brainard cited the administration’s Fiscal Year 2008 budget request to reduce the Development Assistance account by $468 million, while corres- pondingly increasing the Economic Support Funds account by $703 mil- C YBERNOTES 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 T he fact of the matter is this Foreign Service of ours needs more dissenters, not fewer. And it needs to encourage them, not discourage them. If there were more of that, maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now. — Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, June 28, speaking at the AFSA Awards Ceremony, http://www.npr.org