US diplomats refuse Iraq postings

[subsuelo]

Source: BBC

Hundreds of US diplomats have protested against a government move to force them to accept postings in war-torn Iraq.

About 300 angry diplomats attended a meeting at the state department, at which one labelled the decision a "potential death sentence".

If too few volunteer, some will be forced to go to Iraq - or risk dismissal, except those exempted for medical or personal hardship reasons.

Iraq postings have previously been filled on a voluntary basis.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7072047.stm

[Demeter]

1. It Would Be Worth Quitting

After all, either Bush will be out in 14 months, and they can reapply, or he won't, in which case, it's time to find a diffferent way to pay the mortgage anyway.

[Hekate]

25. It's not always easy finding another job; & if you try to return you lose seniority big-time

I only base this on my cousin's experience, so it's anecdotal. He was offered a choice of Baghdad or Nigeria -- for some reason he chose Nigeria, but at least he had a choice.

Hekate

[peacebird]

2. can't say I blame the diplomats at all.... I certainly wouldn't want to be "volunteered" to Iraq

[LiberalFighter]

14. "Volunteered" like the troops that have been given a "stop loss" order

[mallard]

35. Re: can't blame them

Crisis at the State Department over Bush's war in Iraq is good news for international diplomacy.

[subsuelo]

3. Juan Cole: Time to close the US Embassy

http://www.juancole.com/2007/11/time-to-close-us-embassy.html

Now is that time for all Americans to stand up for the diplomats who serve this country ably and courageously throughout the world, for decades on end. Foreign service officers risk disease and death, and many of them see their marriages destroyed when spouses decline to follow them to a series of remote places. They are the ones who represent America abroad, who know languages and cultures and do their best to convince the world that we're basically a good people.

The Jesse Helms Right always hated the State Department, because it is about compromise and finding peaceful solutions, whereas the US Right is about war, violence and imposing its will on people. But is is the State Department that, despite some lapses over the decades, generally embodies the best of what America is abroad.

The guerrillas in Iraq constantly target the Green Zone and US diplomatic personnel there with mortar and rocket fire. State Department personnel sleep in trailers that are completely unprotected from such incoming fire. At several points in the past year, they have been forbidden to go outside without protective gear (as if outside were more dangerous). The Bush administration has consistently lied about the danger they are in and tried to cover up these severe security precautions.

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Some sort of rump mission of hardy volunteers could be maintained. But kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed).

[me b zola]

13. Cole is asking for internet assistance.

For those who didn't read the link, Juan Cole is asking for our help:

Thursday, November 01, 2007
Time to Close the US Embassy

I don't try to start an internet campaign very often, because the blogosphere has its own priorities and logic that are democratic and should not be forced. But here is a plea for everyone in the blogging world to help force congress to save our diplomats.

[Xipe Totec]

4. Good for them.

They are fortunate in that they can resign.

Our indentured soldiers are not so lucky.

Let's bring them all home.

[Exultant Democracy]

9. Thats just what I was thinking, too bad the troops don't get the same chance.

[katty]

26. yes, they can-NOBODY wants to be go Iraq

[Squatch]

5. It's easy sending somebody else's son or daughter, isn't it?

[Bonobo]

6. Hardee fucking har har, motherfucking killers!

Let the criminals go themselves.

[billyoc]

7. Man, they can't even bribe them anymore with plum postings

to Paris, London, Munich, etc.

[MetaTrope]

8. "A potential death sentence"

Literally, if this ultimately goes to the International Criminal Court...

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

10. go ahead and fire them - they will make a killing in the private sector

Our international law/trade department is full of ex-State Department and foreign equivalent people, unless a diplomat thinks they are personally saving the world hiring them away is pretty easy.

We have a lawyer from the state department who was making $80,000 a year with the fed a few years later and we are paying her $280,000.

[eridani]

11. Too bad that jackass Russert didn't ask the candidates about the embassy n/t

[subsuelo]

28. ufos sightings are a more pressing concern I guess n/t

[enid602]

12. direction

If the diplomats were merely afraid for their safety, they would just quit and not make a stink. No, I think they're protesting the imperial aspect of this huge new mission in Iraq, and the change in direction it represents.

[LiberalFighter]

15. Let all of the bush cronies volunteer their service in Iraq

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. Alternate Headline: State Purges Non-Believers

Subtract 300
Add 300


2nd alternate title: How To Plant Cronies Without Seeming To


Heckuva job, State!

[drm604]

17. Yep.

Exactly what I was thinking when I was reading this. They'll find some true believers, maybe Regent U graduates, or maybe Blackwater will start providing "diplomatic" services.

[jeff30997]

18. There's one "Diplomat" that I would love to send there:

Henry Kissinger.I'm sure he could do miracle over there.After all he stopped the Vietnam War isn't it?:sarcasm:

[sjdnb]

19. Is anyone shocked or awed by the fact that

no one is anxious to enter into Bush's F-UP'd Iraq mess? Sheez, if the military, even when throwing thousands of dollars in bonuses, to potential recruits, can't make their goals -- who thinks anyone with a college education under their belt and an ounce of sense is going to set on foot in Iraq.

[EFerrari]

20. Good. It's a good thing to stay alive. n/t

[bjobotts]

21. So the Draft begins in the State Department. Who in their right mind

would wanna work for Rice. I've heard "will work for food...just not Rice"

[puebloknot]

22. How sweet it would be if they all resigned en masse! nt

[Botany]

23. Why are they upset?

Go to Baghdad, be seen as the enemy by the locals, and work with Blackwater.
Two words ..... Sweet Deal.

[Vinca]

24. I say they order only the Bush appointees to the Baghdad embassy.

It's only fair. Maybe Rummy and Brownie could be called back into service, too.

[Supersedeas]

27. Obviously, Condi is having troubling filling these positions with volunteers

[kskiska]

29. Aren't these diplomats Bush "Pioneers," appointed by Preznit Junior himself?

Most of them don't even speak the language of the country they're posted to, much less are familiar with the culture. They're wealthy in their own right, and will most likely call it quits.

[Contrary1]

30. And the armchair warriors speak:

"It’s one thing if someone believes in what’s going on over there and volunteers, but it’s another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment,” said Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service officer. “I’m sorry, but basically that’s a potential death sentence and you know it. ... Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?"

:patriot: Suck it up tough guys. :patriot:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21580523/page/2/

[iverglas]

31. I wouldn't think so

I would think the "diplomats" in question are professional foreign service officers, such as most highly developed countries have. Civil servants.

In Canada, I think the Professional Association of Foreign Services Officers -- the union -- would be having something to say about this:

http://pafso.com/index2.cfm

The Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) is both the bargaining agent and the professional association for Canadian Foreign Service Officers representing 1,544 active and retired Foreign Service employees. It is pleased to welcome you to its web site.

The aims of the Association are: to further the interests of its members, to protect the status and standards of their profession and to maintain and promote the effective functioning of the foreign service of Canada; to act as the bargaining agent on behalf of its ordinary members; and to formulate and express the corporate view of the members on matters affecting them.

... but I gather you don't have such things down there ...

[mainer]

32. Absolutely right. They aren't Bush cronies.

the State Department was the only agency that urged post-war planning. They weren't pushing for the war. Their job is diplomacy, and for the most part, diplomats tend toward liberal beliefs.

No wonder they're rebelling.

I have a relative who's a career diplomat in the State Department. He served in Baghdad soon after the war started. He was against the war then, and he's even more negative now on the whole mess. He told me when he came home what a disaster was brewing, and that the biggest scandals had to do with military contractors.

Don't blame the diplomats for this war. Their job is to AVOID war, good for them.

[Penndems]

36. The diplomatic corps is in the Foreign Service

Employees based stateside in D.C. and around the country are Civil Service.

[iverglas]

37. pardon me

I was using a generic term: civil servants. Servants of the people.

I'm in Canada, where we have a Public Service these days, not a civil service, with government employees, regardless of where they work, called public servants. I just thought "civil servant" was a rather universally understood concept. I used "professional foreign service officers" in the same sense -- generic, "foreign service" being another generally recognizable concept. No capital letters in either case.

I think we'll agree on my actual point, which was that the people in question are not generally wealthy dilettantes hanging around cafés and salons in foreign parts where they don't speak the language. Those more senior positions are handed out as plums, and not by competition / on the merit principle as I imagine foreign service positions in the US are.

[Penndems]

39. Wealthy dilettantes? I can hear the peels of laughter at State!

Commo, Diplomatic Security, Consular Officers are just your basic working stiffs. Yes, during the Clinton Administration, there were Ambassadorial positions given to friends and donors, but they at least had the expertise and knowledge of the countries they were posted to - which is more than I can say for Bush 41 and 43 appointees.

P.S.: Your embassy here in D.C. throws great parties. ;)

[iverglas]

40. heh, never been to the Embassy

Had some good lunch with a couple of our guys at a local resto in Georgia once, though. Indigenous cuisine being a disappearing feature of the US landscape in general, sadly.

Your embassy in Ottawa throws, um, a lot of shit around. ;) Which party bagman have we got these days, anyhow?

(Just wanted to point out that my initial post was in response to post 29, with which you obviously take issue as well.)

[JBoy]

43. US Ambassador to Canada is this guy

David Wilkins. Chaired the Bush/Cheney '04 South Carolina campaign, which is how he got the job. Prior to being appointed ambassador he had been to Canada only once, several decades earlier (which makes him eminently qualified) :sarcasm:

[superconnected]

33. See the answer isn't to draft american kids, it's to draft diplomats.

I LIKE that answer.

[moondust]

34. These people are not soldiers.

They did not sign up to work in a war zone nor have they been properly trained to live and work under the constant threat of mortar barrage and suicide bombers.

They all should up and quit.

[Penndems]

38. "They all should up and quit."

They enjoy serving this country in a civilian capacity.

These diplomats took the Foreign Service exam, one of the toughest employment tests you could ever imagine, and have been posted to embassies and consulates in the most deplorable of circumstances.
Ask Ambassador Joe Wilson!

You're right, of course - they didn't sign up to work in a war zone, but that's where our folks end up sooner or later. A Foreign Service Officer can be posted to a country a day, a week or a year and a coup d'etat erupts. You just never know.

Iraq, however, is different: We invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses, and now Rice and Company want to send our diplomats over there to what is truly certain death.

During the run-up to the war, Bush overshot the State Department and went straight to the Pentagon. He wanted diplomacy dispensed from the barrel of a rifle. Yet, now that Junior finds himself in this never-ending quagmire, he pressures and berates employees to serve their country and accept a posting at Embassy Baghdad.

Department employees, no doubt, are hating this Administration's collective guts.

[moondust]

41. Olbermann had a former FS officer on tonight.

According to her, "embassies are closed if there is even a threat of an attack."

Nobody in the real world expects these people to stay and try to work in a combat zone. I believe the embassy in Saigon was kept open but I don't recall it being under constant attack as is the Green Zone.

There's no good answer. If they resign they're out of a career at least temporarily and Bush is liable to replace them with pizza delivery drivers. The U.S. would lose some invaluable veteran FS personnel with Arabic language skills any one of whom is likely worth far more to the country than Bush will ever be, and most of whom, according to Olbermann's guest, did not support the Iraq invasion in the first place. If they stay it's the "death sentence."

What a f'ing mess...

[Up2Late]

42. NPR did a good report on this today too: "Diplomats Face Forced Assignment to Iraq"

Diplomats Face Forced Assignment to Iraq

Listen to this story...
by Michele Kelemen

All Things Considered, November 1, 2007 · This week, more than 200 Foreign Service officers
received word that they might be directed to serve in Iraq.

The State Department is making one last effort to get volunteers for 48 positions.
It offered all sorts of incentives but still fell short, so it notified "prime candidates"
that they should consider volunteering.

If too few sign up for service by Nov. 12, the State Department will have to make
forced assignments — something it hasn't done since the Vietnam War.

At a State Department "town hall" meeting to discuss the move, diplomats said they
felt as if they were being forced into a potential death sentence by being pressured
to "volunteer" for an Iraq post.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15858171>