Scapegoating
US Diplomats
For Failures In Iraq
By William Fisher
08 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Facing
growing scrutiny of the State Department's shortage of experienced diplomats
in Iraq - and the Department's announced intention to force Foreign
Service Officers to serve in Baghdad against their will -- the leader
of America's diplomatic service is charging that critics, "including
people who urged the 2003 invasion," are seeking to blame the State
Department for their own failures.
"No country's diplomatic
corps has people with many of the skills now needed in Iraq: oil and
gas engineers, electrical grid managers, urban planners, city managers
and transportation planners. If any US defense planner in 2003 thought
that the State Department and other civilian federal agencies had such
people on staff in large numbers (Arabic-speaking or not) ready to rebuild
Iraq, they were wrong," says John Naland, president of the American
Foreign Service Association (AFSA).
AFSA represents America's
11,500 professional diplomats. Of these, 6,500 are Foreign Service Officers
while 5,000 are Foreign Service specialists, including Diplomatic Security
agents. There are another 1,500 or so Foreign Service members at the
US Agency for international Development (USAID), the Commerce Department's
Foreign Commercial Service, the Agriculture Department's Foreign Agricultural
Service and the International Broadcasting Bureau, an independent agency
closely allied with State.
Naland points out that between
the US invasion in 2003 through 2007, all of the more than 2,000 career
Foreign Service members who served at the US mission in Baghdad and
the expanding Provincial Reconstruction Teams around the country "did
so as a volunteer."
Naland termed it "unfortunate"
that late last month the Director General of the Foreign Service, Ambassador
Harry K. Thomas, Jr., declared that "the well of volunteers had
finally run dry." Thomas announced that, if volunteers could not
be found for 48 remaining positions by mid-November, diplomats -- under
threat of dismissal - would be ordered to serve at the embassy in Baghdad
and in so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams in outlying provinces.
If carried out, it would be the largest diplomatic call-up since Vietnam.
AFSA contends that "directed
assignments of Foreign Service members into a war zone would be detrimental
to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole.
AFSA urged the State Department to find ways to increase the pool of
qualified voluntary bidders."
Under the new order, 200-300
diplomats have been identified as "prime candidates" to fill
48 vacancies that will open next year at the Baghdad embassy and in
the provinces. Those notified that they have been selected for a one-year
posting will have 10 days to accept or reject the position. If not enough
say yes, some will be ordered to go. Only those with compelling reasons,
such as a medical condition or extreme personal hardship, will be exempt
from disciplinary action.
Diplomats are also angered
that Thomas's announcement was made to the news media before it was
conveyed to those likely to be deployed under the new policy.
At a 'town hall' meeting
in Washington last week, some 300 US diplomats told Thomas what they
thought of State's decision to force Foreign Service Officers to take
jobs in Iraq.
One attendee, Jack Crotty,
a senior Foreign Service officer who once worked as a political adviser
with NATO forces, told the Associated Press that the new policy was
tantamount to a "potential death sentence." Others expressed
serious concern about the ethics of sending diplomats against their
will to serve in a war zone while a review of the department's use of
private security contractors to protect its staff is under way. Most
Embassy staff works in the so-called 'Green Zone' - itself far from
immune from incoming mortar and other types of attacks. But members
of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are deployed through the country,
including in some of most dangerous provinces. Only Diplomatic Security
agents are permitted to be armed.
The Associated Press quoted
Crotty as telling Ambassador Thomas, "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. 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? You know
that at any other (country) in the world, the embassy would be closed
at this point." His comments drew enthusiastic applause from his
colleagues.
AFSA President Naland said
that a recent survey found that only 12 percent of the union's membership
believed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was "fighting for
them."
He said that some critics
of US failures in Iraq are seeking to shift blame onto the Foreign Service
for their own lack of pre-invasion planning, while others are as basing
their comments on "wildly inflated estimations of the capacities
of civilian agencies to operate in combat zones such as Iraq."
In the run-up to the 2003
invasion of Iraq, the State Department assembled a series of blue-ribbon
task forces to help prepare the Administration for the political, economic,
social, cultural and religious challenges that would likely face the
'Coalition of the Willing' once the Saddam Hussein regime was toppled.
The group, which included Iraqi exiles and some of the world's most
distinguished Middle East scholars, made a series of recommendations.
But the Defense Department, then under the leadership of Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, ignored their advice.
In a website statement, Naland
attempted to put the Foreign Service's involvement in Iraq into perspective.
He said, "Comparisons between the military and the State Department
are often made with complete disregard for the facts relating to scale:
budgets, personnel and capacity for war-zone service."
Naland pointed out that "the
US active-duty military is 119 times larger than the Foreign Service.
The total uniformed military (active and reserve) is 217 times larger.
A typical U.S. Army division is larger than the entire Foreign Service.
The military has more uniformed personnel in Mississippi than the State
Department has diplomats worldwide. The military has more full colonels/Navy
captains than the State Department has diplomats. The military has more
band members than the State Department has diplomats. The Defense Department
has almost as many lawyers as the State Department has diplomats."
He said that, in contrast
to the military, "the vast majority of Foreign Service members
are forward-deployed. Today, in a time of armed conflict, 21 percent
of the active-duty military (290,000 out of 1,373,000) is stationed
abroad (ashore or afloat). That compares to 68 percent of the Foreign
Service currently stationed abroad at 167 U.S. embassies and 100 consulates
and other missions."
Naland noted that more than
20 percent of the Foreign Service has served, or is serving, in Iraq
since 2003. In the PRTs, which comprise up to 600 members, the Foreign
Service component is 10 to 15 percent. There are currently approximately
200 Foreign Service positions at Embassy Baghdad and another 70 or so
at the 25 Provincial Reconstruction Teams.
He said, "Foreign Service
members receive very little preparation before deploying to Iraq --
less than two-weeks of special training to serve in a combat zone. Contrast
that to their predecessors 40 years ago who received four to six months
of training before deploying to South Vietnam...."
Naland added that surveys
have shown that most Foreign Service volunteers in Iraq have been motivated
not by extra pay but by "patriotism and a professional desire to
try to advance the Administration's top foreign policy objective."
One of the most serious challenges
facing the State Department - and every other government agency involved
in Iraq and in the Middle East generally - is the acute shortage of
Arabic speakers. This deficit is in danger of crippling US efforts to
counter terrorist threats, communicate with prisoners, and build bridges
to the Muslim world.
At the State Department,
only 10 of 34,000 employees were rated fully fluent in Arabic as of
2006.
The number of Arabic language
students in US universities has skyrocketed since the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001. But the course still ranks behind classical Greek,
Latin and even American Sign Language in popularity.
The shortage has spurred
an aggressive campaign of recruiting -- including generous sign-on bonuses
-- by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the State
Department, the Defense Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.
One result of the shortage,
according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based
think tank, is that analysts at the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence
Agency and the National Security Agency are "awash in untranslated
gleanings of intelligence" in Arabic. Heritage also said there
are not enough interpreters to handle detainees in Iraq.
The shortage is also having
an effect on US efforts in public diplomacy. Adam Clayton Powell III,
a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public
Diplomacy, says, "There are only a half dozen or so US spokesmen
who have a sufficient grasp of the Arabic language to appear on radio
or television in that part of the world. That means the US is not even
part of the dialogue there."
While the language situation
appears to be improving, it can only improve slowly. One reason is that
Arabic is viewed by many as one of the most difficult languages in the
world.
The State Department rates
Arabic, along with Chinese and Korean, as a "superhard" language.
But aside from language difficulties,
the other key facor relates to policy. As Juan Cole -- professor of
history at the University of Michigan and a fluent Arabic speaker--
put it: "Not everyone studying Arabic is thrilled with US policies
in the Middle East."
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