F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

V.P. VOICE: STATE ■ BY STEVE KASHKETT
Open Season for Cheap Shots
Gratuitous, unfounded attacks on the U.S. Foreign Service
are once again in season. A certain segment of the media
who have spent years gleefully and mindlessly bashing the
State Department eagerly awaited the launch of the assignment
cycle for summer 2009 positions in Iraq in order to do the same
hatchet job on us that they did last fall. Their headlines and editorial
comments were written long in advance, all taking up the
same tired theme: “State diplomats unwilling to serve in Iraq,
so Secretary Rice has to order them to go.”
It therefore must have been terribly disappointing to the editors
at Fox News, at the Washington Times, and at the Weekly
Standard when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other
senior department officials, working closely with AFSA, kicked
off the summer 2009 Iraq recruitment drive this past June (2008)
without feeling any need whatsoever
to suggest that directed assignments
might be necessary.
Instead, Director General Harry K.
Thomas and Sec. Rice, after praising
the thousands of courageous, patriotic
Foreign Service members who have
chosen to take Iraq assignments since
2003, simply put out a call for willing
volunteers for next year. The department’s
cable to all diplomatic and consular
posts expressed full confidence
that it will be possible to staff every single
position at Embassy Baghdad and
on the Provincial Reconstruction
Teams with qualified volunteers — as
the Foreign Service has done for the past six years.
Sadly, these simple facts, which speak volumes about the high
caliber and devotion to duty of our members, did nothing to deter
our knee-jerk detractors from deliberately misreporting the story
with their predetermined anti-Foreign Service bias.
A Fox News “Special Report” immediately ran a piece on the
call for volunteers, but focused almost exclusively on last fall’s inhouse
Town Hall meeting, dredging out seven-month-old footage
of the one FS employee — out of 11,400 — who had expressed
personal concerns about the risks of serving in a combat zone.
I provided lengthy quotes to Fox News to try to set the record
straight; but, not surprisingly, those quotes were edited out.
Then, within days of the opening call for volunteers, the
Washington Times published an editorial making the following
astonishingly groundless assertions: “The fact is, too few Foreign
Service officers have volunteered for these challenging and dan-
You might think that conscientious
editors would hesitate to write such
falsehoods, especially when we have
pointed out repeatedly to them that
more than 2,500 Foreign Service members
have volunteered for war-zone postings
in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.
gerous positions. An estimated 300
vacancies remain for 2009 — and
someone needs to fill them. ‘Soldier up.’
Or hit the private sector.”
You might think that honorable,
conscientious editors would hesitate to
write such deliberate falsehoods, especially
when we — and State Department
management — have pointed out repeatedly to them that more
than 2,500 Foreign Service members have volunteered for warzone
postings in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, that we have
filled every single State position at Embassy Baghdad and on the
Iraq PRTs with willing bidders, and that not one single Foreign
Service member has needed to be ordered to serve in Iraq.
You might think that reputable
journalists would care about the utter
dishonesty of decrying that “an estimated
300 vacancies remain for
2009.” Those 300 positions represent
the entire 2009 Embassy Baghdad/PRT
staffing pattern in Iraq, and we have
only just opened up these jobs for bidding
— more than a year in advance.
By all accounts, the response so far has
been enthusiastic, and the likelihood
is high that we will have another crop
of talented, motivated volunteers yet
again for next year.
But this ideologically-driven segment
of the media seems only interested
in scapegoating U.S. diplomats for everything that goes wrong
overseas. These editors do a profound disservice to the brave
men and women of our Foreign Service who today spend most
of their careers in hardship posts representing their country in
conditions featuring daily terrorist threats, political instability and
violence, extreme poverty, harsh climates and unhealthy conditions.
They insult the hundreds of U.S. diplomats separated from
their families right now because they are posted in countries so
dangerous that spouses and children are not allowed. They disrespect
the thousands of U.S. Foreign Service members who have
stepped up to the plate every single year to staff our largest diplomatic
missions, those in the Iraq and Afghanistan combat zones.
We have grown accustomed to these cheap shots from journalists
and editors who themselves would never be willing to live
in the kinds of places where our diplomats spend nearly their entire
professional careers. But it still rankles. It is disgraceful. ❏
JULY-AUGUST 2008/FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 61
A
F
S A
N E
W S