"We're Behind You All The Way!"
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
So, Ryan Crocker, the Ambassador to Iraq, needs personnel:
Ryan C. Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, bluntly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a cable dated May 31 that the embassy in Baghdad -- the largest and most expensive U.S. embassy -- lacks enough well-qualified staff members and that its security rules are too restrictive for Foreign Service officers to do their jobs.
"Simply put, we cannot do the nation's most important work if we do not have the Department's best people," Crocker said in the memo.
The unclassified cable underscores the State Department's struggle to find its role in the turmoil in Iraq. With a 2007 budget of more than $1 billion and a staff that has expanded to more than 1,000 Americans and 4,000 third-country nationals, the embassy has become the center of a bureaucratic battle between Crocker, who wants to strengthen the staff, and some members of Congress, who are increasingly skeptical about the diplomatic mission's rising costs.
"In essence, the issue is whether we are a Department and a Service at war," Crocker wrote. "If we are, we need to organize and prioritize in a way that reflects this, something we have not done thus far." In the memo, Crocker drew upon the recommendations of a management review he requested for the embassy shortly after arriving in Baghdad two months ago.
"He's panicking," said one government official who recently returned from Baghdad, adding that Crocker is carrying a heavy workload as the United States presses the Iraqi government to meet political benchmarks.
"You could use a well-managed political section of 50 people" who know what they are doing, the official said, but Crocker does not have it because many staffers assigned to the embassy are "too young for the job," or are not qualified and are "trying to save their careers" by taking an urgent assignment in Iraq.
"They need a cohesive, coherent effort on all fronts," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "It's just overwhelming."
And the Congressional majority--or at least one of its members--appears to respond with contempt.
Read on . . .
But some lawmakers have balked at what they consider the unbridled expansion of the embassy. "Having said over and over again that we don't want to be seen as an occupying force in Iraq, we're building the largest embassy that we have. . . . And it just seems to grow and grow and grow," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said to Rice during a hearing last month. "Can we just review who we really need and send the rest of the people home?"
So now, not only are certain members of Congress angling to cut the military mission short, they are angling as well to cut the diplomatic mission short and overwork the diplomats there.
This is incomprehensible. It's not as if having an embassy in Baghdad is a sign of imperialism. I had thought that those who emphasized that we ought to cut short the reconstruction project were in favor of "political solutions" to the problems still afflicting Iraq.
"Political solutions," of course, require diplomats to bring them about. And even the presence of diplomats, in the eyes of some, is objectionable in Iraq.
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...that I wasn't around last week to throw your religiously bigoted rear off of my nice, clean website.
Blam.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
personnel there because they do not want this to work. We all know that to win it must be militarily and politically and to the Dem's September is coming and then the "we lost" drumbeat will be more expansive and will include more then just Reid and Pelosi. I for the life of me cannot fathom how not doing everything possible in a "surge" to win would not be in the best interest of both parties and of course America and I suppose I will never understand a loser's (Democrats) mentality.
....but let's face it, there is an entire subculture in the Department of State who don't want Rice to succeed and don't support the Iraq policy because it's "Bush's War". She's had few takers for the PRT'S, to be blunt, and it's not a Department where you can dragoon people into PRT's.
Were Hillary Clinton in office, they'd be lining up. This despite the fact that Rice has brought real, serious increases in State Department appropriations to the Department over the past three years. She's had good top people in Baghdad, but let's face it, the heavy lifting will always be done by the War Department. The people around Petraeus are top flight and are doing all the serious work and most of the serious negotiating on the ground.
Out in Anbar, it's young captains and colonels who are negotiating with the tribes and building relationships with former enemies such as the 1920 Brigades people who these officers have been able to flip against Qaeda. State isn't even involved. PRT's have to wait for escorts to even go outside the Green Zone. I suspect that too many senior people see this as a dead end job and are marking time until a Democrat gets in office.
Condi's people have been superb in North Korea and India, and in general I support her patient encirclement approach to Iran, but she has been undermined by her own Department in Iraq, and it shows. Meantime, the attitude of Congress speaks for itself.
Condi would have done better to have hired Blackwater Guys. I'm serious.
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"-Winston Churchill
anywhere in the federal government these days, you'd be hard pressed to get me to do anything! Anybody who does anything noticable to further this administration's agendae is dead meat if the Ds take the WH. Even between now and '08, the Ds will torture any manager who sticks his head up; budget cuts, committee hearings, IG reports, audits, the whole tool bag. Even on things as fundamental as border security or law enforcement will go to stasis. A Border Patrol supervisor would be out of his mind to be agressive when he knows that La Raza may pick his next boss. Likewise, and AAG or an FBI supervisor is looking at his/her new boss being picked by the ACLU. I've been there when you got a new boss who wanted to but couldn't legally fire you; you don't have any duties, your office doesn't have windows, and your seat flushes. Ain't fun!
In Vino Veritas
I think that the main problem here is that not a whole lot of folks in the State Department volunteer for Iraqi duty and unlike those in the military the government can't force them to go.