The Foreign Service Journal, December 2007

F our interrelated things happened at nearly the same time when I was preparing to write this column, all of which reminded me pointedly that the Foreign Service is getting a flagrantly unfair and uninformed raw deal in the media these days, and that we are increasingly being turned into the whip- ping boy for problems in Iraq. First, we all witnessed the gratuitous State-bashing in thenow- famous “nightmare with no end in sight” speech by retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, who suggested that the military was doing its part, but that the State Department bore the blame for failing to send its people to fix everythingwrong in Iraq. Second, I recently testifiedbefore a dozenmembers of theHouseArmed Services Committee who mainly wanted to know just why the Foreign Service has been “utterly absent” in Iraq since 2003. Third, we learned that thedepartment is in theprocess of dou- bling the number of Provincial ReconstructionTeams in Iraq— the dangerousRed-Zone outpostswherenearly 100of ourmem- bers are serving—despite the recent report issuedby the Special InspectorGeneral for IraqReconstruction concluding that secu- rity conditions have crippled the efforts of PRTs, which “have shown little progress in promoting economic development, the rule of lawor political reconciliation.” Last came thewildly erro- neous misinterpretations by the media of the director general’s announcement of the Iraq “prime candidate” identification exer- cise, whichwas portrayed as proof that State diplomats have been refusing to serve in Iraq and will now have to be forced to go. How did we get tagged as slackers who have allowed Iraq to deteriorate to its current state? How have we allowed so many military colleagues and right-wing pundits to get away with the spurious allegation that it was somehow State’s job to come in and fix Iraq after themilitary-led occupation started going sour? How have we failed to make the public understand the limita- tions on what even hundreds of unarmed diplomats can realis- tically accomplish in the middle of a combat zone wracked by civil war? We at AFSAwill keepdoing our best to set the record straight in the publicmind. At every opportunity, we have drawn atten- tion to the numbers: • Since 2003, more than 2,000 State Department Foreign Service members (out of a total pool of only 11,000) have vol- unteered for war-zone assignments in Iraq or Afghanistan; • The total Foreign Service is less than one-half of 1 percent of the size of the U.S. military, and our members are already stretched thin staffing all the other 260 embassies and consulates worldwide, a majority of which are hardship posts; • Until now, wehave filledeverypositionat EmbassyBaghdad and the PRTswithwilling volunteers; not a single personhas had to be ordered to go. The facts tell of a tough, dedicated, patriotic corps of skilled foreign-affairs professionalswhohave steppedup to the plate in Iraq, yetwe continue to take the heat for lack of progress there. The undignified and unwarranted finger- pointing by certain people at the Pentagon eager to lay the blame at the feet of the State Department Foreign Service is becoming more and more overt. Maybe it is time for a can- did public discussion of the limitations onwhat diplomats assigned toabesiegedembassy or toprovincial teams embed- dedwithU.S.militaryunits in the middle of an active com- bat zone can realistically be expected to accomplish. After my recent testimony, one member of Congress pulled me aside and asked why on earth State has not sent thousands of ForeignService officers to Iraq tooversee the “postwar” recon- struction and establishment of a democratic government, “aswe did afterWorldWar II” inGermany and Japan. This often-cited descriptionof the post-WorldWar II period is utterly false. First, wedidnot send thousands of FSOs toGermany and Japan; rather, the reconstruction/rebuilding was supervised by generals, logis- tics officers, engineeringofficers andcivil affairs officers of theU.S. military occupation. Second, the reconstruction and develop- ment of democratic institutions inGermany and Japanonly took place once the war was over and hostilities had ended. This is obviously not the case in Iraq. In addition, where would we get thousands of FSOswithout leavingmost of our other 260 diplo- matic missions around the world significantly understaffed or vacant? Our Foreign Servicemembers have courageously volunteered to staff the embassy and PRTs and lend their diplomatic skills to the U.S. effort there over the past four years. They are doing their best under extremely adverse conditions. But, as the SIGIR report noted, their ability to succeed depends on the security situation and on progress of the overall war effort led by the military. We all recognize that both themilitary and the ForeignService have been handed a daunting task in Iraq. Castigating the ded- icatedpeople of the Foreign Service for the current impasse is an appalling attempt to play the blame game. V.P. VOICE: STATE BY STEVE KASHKETT Iraq: The Blame Game DE C EMB E R 2 0 0 7 / F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L 55 A F S A N E W S How did we get tagged as slackers who have allowed Iraq to deteriorate to its current state?