Redstate

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Earlier we commented on a memorandum written by retired General Barry McCaffery analyzing the situation in Iraq. While upbeat in most areas McCaffery made a scathing observation:

The U.S. Inter-Agency Support for our strategy in Iraq is grossly inadequate. …

In Iraq, nothing is possible without carefully managed relationships between the U.S. officials and their Iraqi interlocutors. Trust between people is the prerequisite and basis of progress for this deeply Arab culture. …

The U.S. Departments actually fight over who will pay the $11.00 per day per diem on food. This bureaucratic nonsense is taking place in the context of a war costing the American people $7 billion a month - and a battalion of soldiers and Marines killed or wounded a month.

…The bottom line is that only the CIA and the U.S. Armed Forces are at war. This situation cries out for remedy.

According to the GAO the story may be worse than reported.

Read on.

Dr. Demarche writing at American Future points out that five years into the Global War on Terror the US State Department is still on a peacetime footing with senior diplomats congregating in various bistros and fleshpots of Continental Europe and young, inexperienced foreign service officers on the frontlines of the war.

Europe has long been the bastion of the high-ranking FSO, and once assigned to the region many manage to spend the rest of their careers there. Imagine an army of colonels, with almost no sergeants and few privates and you have a pretty accurate picture of what a rank heavy embassy in the EU looks like. Who, then, does this leave to man the rest of the forts?

I suppose the answer to that depends on who you ask, popular (but oh so cynical) perception within the Foreign Service will tell you that it leaves two types of officers to fill places like Djibouti, Djibouti (so nice they named it twice): those of mid rank or higher who could not find a nicer home, and the newly commissioned on "directed assignments."

Again, referring back to the McCaffery memo:

U.S. consultants of the IRMO [editor: Iraq Reconstruction Management Office] do not live and work with their Iraqi counterparts, are frequently absent on leave or home consultations, are often in-country for short tours of 90 days to six months, and are frequently gapped with no transfer of institutional knowledge…

The State Department actually cannot direct assignment of their officers to serve in Iraq. State frequently cannot staff essential assignments such as the new PRTs [editor: Provincial Reconstruction Teams] which have the potential to produce such huge impact in Iraq.

Admittedly, State is not alone in washing its hands of Iraq. But State stands out front and center because it is entrusted with our public diplomacy effort, it has a direct responsibility to staff PRTs, through USAID it manages US aid money. In this, or in any war, State is a key player. But at this point State is either unable or unwilling to do much in the war on terror other than sit on the bench.