A Tuesday New York Times article called “ U.S. Planning to Slash Iraq Embassy Staff by as Much as Half ” purported to describe the plight of U.S. State Department employees in Iraq, whose diplomatic efforts are being rebuffed by a host nation and government that has little use for them. According to the Times , the 16,000 employees (including 2,000 diplomats) at “the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by what they see as Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag.” Times reporter Tim Arango goes on to describe the hardships being suffered by State employees at the hands of the Iraqis (emphasis added): After the American troops departed in December, life became more difficult for the thousands of diplomats and contractors left behind. Convoys of food that had been escorted by the United States military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings as Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing… At every turn, the Americans say, the Iraqi government has interfered with the activities of the diplomatic mission, one they grant that the Iraqis never asked for or agreed upon . Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s office — and sometimes even the prime minister himself — now must approve visas for all Americans, resulting in lengthy delays. American diplomats have had trouble setting up meetings with Iraqi officials. For their part, the Iraqis say they are simply enforcing their laws and protecting their sovereignty in the absence of a working agreement with the Americans on the embassy . While the bolded lines above should demonstrate how ill-advised (and poorly thought through) the State buildup was in the first place, this paragraph jammed into the middle of the article shows just how sensitive our vaunted State employees are to the hardships of “deployed” life: Within days, the salad bar at the embassy dining hall ran low. Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken-wing night, wings were rationed at six per person. Over the holidays, housing units were stocked with Meals Ready to Eat, the prepared food for soldiers in the field. Emphasis added once again, of course. You know who I’m sure is full of sympathy for these poor State employees? Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, many of whom were deployed to Iraq multiple times, had roughly zero of the niceties the embassy staff enjoys on a daily basis, and would have gladly accepted a half-dozen chicken wings at meal time (not to mention a dip in the embassy pool). Lest we forget, many of these same diplomats who are complaining to the public through the New York Times about the criminally torturous delay in the delivery of their precious Splenda fought tooth and nail to avoid being posted in Baghdad in the first place. As Bill Kristol and the late Dean Barnett wrote , in 2007: the State Department found itself enmeshed in a surprisingly intense internal dust-up. Not enough career diplomats at Foggy Bottom were volunteering to serve in Baghdad. To remedy this situation, the State Department announced its intention to assign some foreign service officers to Baghdad, whether they volunteered or not. This announcement triggered an urgent State Department “town hall” meeting that took place October 31, where one Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service officer, spoke out. “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,” Croddy carped. “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?” What has happened to any sense of decency and propriety when a senior foreign service officer can say such a thing in public? Or when the State Department countenances a meeting that invites such a public display of petulance? Do the foreign service officers in Washington feel no sense of solidarity, if not with our soldiers, at least with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and their colleagues serving in Baghdad? Serving in Iraq is hazardous duty. It seems that three State Department employees have died there since 2004, among some 1,500 who have served or are now serving in Iraq. At the same time, more State Department employees have been killed by al Qaeda and allied groups outside Iraq, in East Africa and Jordan and elsewhere, in recent years. Does their sacrifice count for nothing? Is the State Department not also involved in fighting these brutal terrorists? Are timidity and grievance-mongering appropriate for senior U.S. government officials engaged in the conduct of the nation’s foreign policy? It’s certainly the prerogative of government employees not to “believe in what’s going on over there.” But until they resign, they are still supposed to help carry out U.S. government policy. Now the poor diplomats assigned to the Baghdad embassy have been sentenced not to death, as one predicted five years ago, but to a life with occasionally delayed deliveries of Splenda. The horror. Back to the Times article. Arango writes (emphasis added): The swift realization among some top officials that the diplomatic buildup may have been ill advised represents a remarkable pivot for the State Department, in that officials spent more than a year planning the expansion and that many of the thousands of additional personnel have only recently arrived. So the wizards at State has suddenly realized that constructing a 104-acre, $750,000,000.00 embassy complex and building up the embassy staff to 16,000 people (including 2,000 diplomats and several times more contractors), without running either by the Iraqis first, “may have been ill advised.” Ya think?
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The State Department Staff at the Baghdad Embassy is Embarrassing Itself
As a theory of war fighting, “just war” is historically understood as a cluster of restrictions and expectations: what is acceptable and unacceptable when deciding to wage war, during the execution of conflict and after the hostilities have ceased.
Despite being completely overshadowed by the developing Israel-Palestine histrionics, President Jalal Talabani of Iraq, took the podium before the assembled United Nations General Assembly last Friday. His speech detailed a sanguine vision of Iraqi democracy anchored in peace and the rule of law. He extolled the need for a post-sectarian state, unencumbered by ethnic or factional affiliations. “This is the basis for the path which we are moving on and continually implementing,” Talabani told the annual general debate. Emphasizing Iraq’s successful elimination of sanctions imposed as a consequence of Saddam Hussein’s misadventure in Kuwait, Talabani implored the international community to seek investment opportunities in the country’s rich hydrocarbon reserves. Touting Iraq’s security gains, the Iraqi president remarked that the military is capable of combating terrorism when the United States withdraws its troops at the end of the year. Talabani ended his address with a note of good neighborliness, stating his respect for international obligations and liberal institutionalism. Moreover, he urged Turkey and Iran to resort to diplomacy and dialogue to settle their dispute with the Kurdish community. Both states are currently shelling the semi-autonomous Iraqi region with heavy ordnance. All told, it was a relatively cheerful, optimistic, and ambitious speech on the part of Talabani. Sadly, it was altogether dishonest. Besides the fact that America may not be leaving at theend of the year, noble overtures to neighbors who are currently bombing your sovereign domain ring hollow. Iraq does enjoy a wealthy reserve of oil and natural gas, but the state still lacks the infrastructure to effectively capitalize on its buried fortune. Sectarian violence is reaching hysteric proportions. If soccer really can help us explain the world, then FIFA’s announcement barring Iraq from hosting soccer matches — including qualifiers for the upcoming 2012 Olympics and 2014 World Cup — due to security concerns is instructive. The prohibition came on the same day as Talabani’s cheerful address. Iraq had previously hosted games at the Francois Hariri Stadium in the northern Iraqicity of Arbil, most recently on Sept. 2 when the hosts and 2007 Asian champions lost 2-0 to Jordan. That was at the height of the American military surge. Things have obviously deteriorated since that time. Recent violence has been glossed over, but General Assembly hyperbole aside, it’s alarming. But what does this really mean? It’s important to understand that for Iraqis, soccer is more than a game. It is, perhaps, the one unifying aspect within a fractious society, brutally delineated by decades of violence and bloodshed. FIFA, soccer’s governing body, has determined — on the same dayas their official UN address — that security in the Iraq has deteriorated to point that home games cannot be played. It’s a shame…the 2007 Asia Cup win gave Iraqis something to cheer about for the first time in years. As opposed to corrupt and greedy politicians, the national squad showed that Iraqis could come together to produce a positive result for the people. For a brief moment, the world caught a glimpse of a unified nation. It’s a sad fact that the people won’t be able to see their heroes, together on the pitch, for years to come.
Astonishingly to some, the Schumer-Weiner Congressman-for-Life seat in Brooklyn, New York, has been won by a Republican named Turner running on Michele Bachmann’s platform of small government, passionate backing of Israel, and principled opposition to gay marriage. Furthermore, this is the first time ever that being unreservedly pro-Israel provided a cudgel for a non-Jew against a squishy liberal Jew from the crowd that loves Israel like a sister but worships the Democrat Party like an idol. In a little-noted subtext to this amazing result, Bob Turner’s victory provided vindication for the man who managed the campaign of Robert L. Verga, the Republican candidate for that very seat in 1996. The name of that long-forgotten campaign manager was none other than… Jay D. Homnick. As regular readers of this column know from articles over the years, I grew up in that district. At the age of sixteen in 1974, I accompanied my father to a meeting of Orthodox Jewish power brokers who were being introduced to Charles Schumer as a candidate for New York State Assembly. I recall vividly the crass horse-trading atmosphere of that event and I have described some of its more repugnant particulars elsewhere . Suffice it to say that the aesthetic trauma of this experience served as an epiphany about the proper role of Jews in politics and governance which continues in large measure to animate my consciousness to this day. When Schumer went from the State Assembly to the U.S. Congress (bitterly accused by the late Steven Solarz of corruptly redistricting to guarantee his victory) in the 1980s, I was haunted even more profoundly than I had been earlier. Lucky for me no mental-health professional was on the case as I wrote obsessively about the tragedy of this man representing my family and neighbors in the halls of power. Finally, I voted with my feet, moving out of the neighborhood in 1985, never to return. By 1996, it was an open secret that Schumer was gearing up to challenge Alfonse D’Amato for his Senate seat in 1998. This was the last chance to blindside him with a local defeat before he took his act statewide. I was living in Cincinnati but I flew in for an interview with Verga to work for the campaign. He hired me to be the actual Campaign Manager. The listed Manager was Guy Molinari, who was the supreme Republican power broker for Staten Island and Brooklyn (and father of Congresswoman Susan Molinari, who won his seat when he tired of it), but that was titular and not substantive. He had no involvement in either policy or execution. My strategy for victory was multi-pronged and included a lot of what eventually worked for Turner fifteen years later. First, I argued that the Republicans winning a sizable majority in the House of Representatives in 1994 meant that keeping the seat in Democrat hands would cost the neighborhood much of its clout. I wanted to paint Schumer as one of the holdovers from the repudiated pre-1994 era by linking him with names like Rostenkowski and Wright and Foley. Mario Cuomo had also lost his governorship by then, so I designed a campaign poster featuring four dinosaurs with politicians’ faces. Three of them were keeled over, looking awfully extinct — the Cuomosaurus, the Rostenkosaurus and the Foleyciraptor. Only the Schumosaurus could be seen clinging to life but fading fast. Second, I maintained that Schumer’s vocal pro-Israel song-and-dance was vulnerable because when partisan goals posed a conflict, he took the party favors and gave Israel the door prize. The proof was in his vote against the Gulf War in 1991. That was a popular war which had been admired by Jews and non-Jews alike for putting down a tyrant, undoing a naked land grab in Kuwait and protecting Israel. In that vein, I created a campaign poster headlined: IF CHARLES SCHUMER HAD HIS WAY… The images depicted were of Saddam Hussein standing astride a map of the Middle East like the ultimate conquistador. This concept garnered kudos from several sitting and former Congressmen I consulted. Third, I targeted the serious Jews and Catholics in the area to hammer home Schumer’s votes for abortion, including the partial-birth variety which Democrats of conscience like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Richard Gephardt had opposed. His outspoken support for gay rights — although gay marriage had not even proposed yet — would also offend these groups. They key was in convincing them that he could be defeated and that voting against him was not a waste of time. Fourth, I had the advantage of an Italian candidate in a district with more Italians than Jews. I had a picture of the candidate’s father shown against maps of Italy and the United States connected by an arrow. He spoke of the American dream and how proud he was to see his son running for high office. Then I had a poster design which showed my candidate taking a pizza out of an oven. On the pizza we did the pie graph of what government outlays should look like. Below that we had Schumer’s face on the man taking out the pizza; that one had a chart which showed what government was actually wasting its money spending. The overt message appealed to the smaller-government instincts; the covert message was that the Italian would do a better job than the non-Italian. (Why did we not win? Well may you ask, and that is a fascinating story for another day. Stay tuned to this station.) Much of my strategy survives in Turner’s winning approach. They said back then that it could not be done, but although I was not the man to lead the troops to victory on D-Day, I can still take pride that I stood once on that battlefield and envisioned that this day would come…
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Bachmann-Turner Nostalgia
The Obama administration is going where no White House has gone before: directly accusing Iran of supporting al Qaeda. This long overdue move to get tough on Tehran deserves to be applauded. On Thursday, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on six al Qaeda operatives based in Kuwait, Qatar, Pakistan and …
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EDITORIAL: Obama gets tough on Tehran
