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King’s Shilling

Here’s one ointment-embedded fly from the TOL package referenced below. Apparently unwilling to get in on an Iraq on the upswing, maybe influenced by all the good news they aren’t hearing, people who draw pay at the State Department rebel against directed assignment to Baghdad:  

“Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone,” said Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with Nato forces. He and others confronted Harry Thomas, the Foreign Service Director General, who approved the move to “directed assignments”.

“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,” Mr Croddy said, to loud and sustained applause from the audience. “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?”

That’s a little rough at a time when hundreds of thousands of other government employees have been facing directed assignment to war zones and dying at considerably higher numbers.  Tragic, how people whose business is callously manipulating and meddling with the lives of others don’t want their lives callously manipulated and meddled with. Here’s three words for foreign service officers who find it inconvenient to serve their country overseas in wartime. Dreaded Private Sector.* Get a job. Meanwhile, anyone know whether the State Department’s terms of employment allow mutiny and insubordination? 

Here’s someone who’s angry at State … because they haven’t started lifting helicopters full of Iraqis off the embassy roof yet. George Packer is concerned about abandoning Iraqis to death.  I agree.  That’s why we need to keep fighting.  Those interpreters he wants to pull out of there could be useful.

* phrase shamelessly stolen from the Boston Herald’s great Howie Carr.

Topics: Iraq, hacks

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:04 am on Saturday, November 3, 2007

6 Responses to “King’s Shilling”

1. Banjo Says:
   November 3rd, 2007 at 10:44 am

   It might be they need to adjust the requirements for entering the Foreign Service. A little less emphasis on academics, a little more on balls.

2. RebeccaH Says:
   November 3rd, 2007 at 1:15 pm

   Would it be crude of me to borrow from the left’s “chickenhawk” meme and call these people “chickenshits”?

3. saltydog Says:
   November 3rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm

   Rebecca, sometimes the truth is crude.

   I’ve never said this before, but these people are our employees, hired to do a specific job. If they are too chickenshit to do it, they need to be tossed out on their applauding collective asses, and be sued fraud against the American people for taking a salary under false pretenses.

   They have no character, no honor, and no guts. But they have degrees from some of our “best” universities, which is a grievous indictment of our universities.

4. linearthinker Says:
   November 3rd, 2007 at 4:15 pm

   Use of the dreaded directed reassignments is probably too late in this administration, but might be worth noting for future presidents and cabinet officials of contrary bureaucracies. Along with some other thoughts, like don’t trust the opposition and pay no attention to the media. The bureaucracy can be a quagmire for trying to weed out malingerers. Due process takes time, and may backfire. Still, ya gotta start someplace. Better late than never.

   Thanks for revealing this.

5. Consul-At-Arms Says:
   November 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm

   The headline you’re not seeing is that every FSO job in Iraq has, through this year, been filled by FSOs who volunteered specifically for that job. Over 2,000 FSOs, a third of the total 6,500 FS generalist corps, has either already served or is presently there.

   For 2008, there are 252 jobs that need qualfied FSOs to fill them, at the embassy in Baghdad and on the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). Some 204 qualified volunteers had already stepped forward, leaving only 48 positions requiring “directed assignments” to fill them. As of yesterday morning, an additional 15 officers have volunteered, so only 33 (and counting) positions will require someone to be ordered.

   Nobody’s refused to go, nobody’s even faced the choice yet. Nobody’s resigned, and it’s hardly as if anybody needs to be fired or executed for “mutiny.”

   One guys mouths off at a Town Hall meeting called expressly to allow people to vent and give their feedback, gripes, and concerns about a change to personnel assignments policy, and shockingly the media coverage is inciting backbiting and disharmony between the uniformed and diplomatic services. And the blogosphere (with Prof. Cole’s help) falls for it.

   Who benefits? Not the American people.

6. saltydog Says:
   November 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 pm

   If that one guy hadn’t been loudly applauded, and that I heard for myself, I might be more understanding. If he had put his complaints in other words than, “It’s one thing to volunteer…,” It is the nature of the complaint.

   I have no doubt that we have good and bad people in this bureaucracy, just as we do throughout government–including the military. But to make such a statement before a media eager for any hint of trouble within the administration doesn’t show the kind of judgment required for sensitive jobs.

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