FSO: Mandatory service in Iraq a “pointless waste of talent”

One U.S. foreign service officer, responding to our request for comments on Embassy Baghdad and the mission in Iraq, wants people to know that diplomats are no wimps. They're "more 'forward deployed' than any military force," this State Department official contends:

[W]e are used to being misunderstood and mischaracterized. We are just beginning to see the latest vilification of our people. But we know that our men and women are more 'forward deployed' than any military force, with little or no 'force protection' in some of the most dangerous, unstable, austere environments in the world. We take casualties year in and year out, and per capita our Corps sustains grievously high numbers of deaths from terrorism, assassination and other violence…. We have no equals when it comes to serving in harm’s way in the farthest corners of the earth.

We are called to serve in Iraq in totally unprecedented numbers, and the public should know why. We do. It is because those numbers are artificially inflated, with no justification or reasoning apparent for anyone to see. The requirement for vast numbers of diplomatic officers and specialists is based on the continuation of an ad hoc series of incoherent plans, not on a clear, articulated purpose. This demand for ever-increasing numbers of diplomats is evidently based on a political desire to demonstrate State’s institutional support for an occupation with no articulation of what these numbers will accomplish.

What is most disgraceful about this state of affairs is that the Foreign Service and the rest of the State Department gave this administration an excellent, well-researched and solid set of plans for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, shortly before the invasion. Our work and participation was explicitly and dramatically rejected by the Secretary of Defense and the White House, particularly including then-National Security Advisor Rice…. Now the very actors who refused to hear the inconvenient counsel of the nation’s diplomatic service blame that service for their own mess. Why on earth should we volunteer in constantly increasing numbers to perform assignments that serve no purpose other than to show our institutional loyalty to a disastrous mismanagement of foreign policy that will surely get more of us killed in the process?

The Secretary of State has shown her level of support of the Foreign Service quite clearly by her detached and disdainful attitude towards the concerns recently expressed about this pointless waste of talent…. Sending officers into this failed, hideously violent exercise with no language training, no military liaison training, no arms or means of self-defense, no area training or expertise, no continuity of personnel, no internal support, and no post-deployment assistance of any substance is, in fact, as stupid as it appears to be. I would prefer that we have some senior officers speak out now, rather than begin our own collection of Ricardo Sanchezes who will say years from now, after many more dead and maimed, 'I told you so.'

Read other comments from Foreign Service professionals here and here.