[NYTr] Condi Increases Pressure on Diplos to Serve in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Juan Cole is continuing his campaign to get readers to support a
closure of the Mother of All Embassies in Baghdad.  The latest ploy by
the US is to claim that Foreign Service Officers "swear an oath" to
serve anywhere. Untrue, just as it's untrue that government
appointees swear a loyalty oath to Bush.  They all swear to
uphold the Constitution. See Juan Cole's continuing campaign
here: http://www.juancole.com - There is interesting material about
how the diplomats can't even function in Baghdad. They don't dare
meet with their contacts, lest the contacts be endangered by being
seen with the Yanquis. And most of them don't even speak the language.
(Still -- 6 years after 9/11, 28 years after the Islamic Revolution in
Iran was going to make the provincial Amerikans beef up their language
skills.)

For ourselves, we can't see how "saving the diplomats" means "saving
the world."  These lads and ladies are serving the Bush Reich. Let our
concern go first to the victims of US policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
a dozen other places.  The Foreign Service officeers can be (and should
be, and apparently are) taking care of themselves... loudly and
publicly.

We agree with Crocker that they are "in the wrong line of business" --
but not for the same reasons Crocker thinks they are. Time for a mass
walk-out, diplos. -NY Transfer]

The Guardian - Nov 3, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2204599,00.html

US increases pressure on diplomats to serve in Iraq

· Prospect of first forced postings since Vietnam
· Only one-third of positions in Baghdad embassy filled

by Ed Pilkington

The Bush administration took a hard line yesterday on US diplomats
resisting postings to Iraq, when secretary of state Condoleezza Rice
and the US ambassador in Baghdad issued blunt reminders of their duty
to serve anywhere in the world.

In an escalating dispute over the first forced deployment of diplomats
since the Vietnam war, the ambassador, Ryan Crocker, made the thinly
veiled threat that officials who put their own personal safety before
the interests of their country were "in the wrong line of business".

Any qualms individuals might have about the war in Iraq were
irrelevant, he said, adding: "It is good for all our colleagues to
remember that we took an oath to serve our nation worldwide when we
joined the foreign service, just as the military swore an oath."

As she boarded a plane for Turkey for a weekend conference, Ms Rice
added her weight to the top-down pressure on rank-and-file US
diplomats, saying: "We are one foreign service and people need to serve
where they are needed."

The row flared up on Wednesday at a meeting between state department
officials and their managers at which individual employees likened a
tour of Iraq to a "potential death sentence". The department's
hierarchy countered that only three foreign service personnel had been
killed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The confrontation is the culmination of a tense period in the state
department since Ms Rice took over at the start of the second Bush
administration in January 2005. She vowed to shake up the antiquated
bureaucracy and introduce "transformational diplomacy".

Preparations for the opening of the new US embassy in Baghdad next year
have also begun to add great strain, with more than 1,200 of the 11,500
officials already having served in the country and more being
earmarked. On Monday up to 300 were told they were "prime candidates"
to fill 48 posts in the new embassy, and that they would be forced to
go should any of the positions remain unfilled voluntarily. So far only
15 officials have volunteered.

This would be the first mass mobilisation of diplomats imposed upon
employees against their will since 1969, when recruits entering the
service were told they would not be given jobs unless they agreed to go
to Vietnam as their first posting. Some officials were required to work
in west African embassies in the 1970s and 80s, but on a much smaller
scale.

James Collins, a former US ambassador to Moscow who runs the
Russian-Eurasian programme of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington,
told the Guardian the return to directed assignments, as they are
known, was an unfortunate step. "The management of the state department
has a big problem if they have to resort to 1960s rules in order to do
21st-century work."

In Mr Collins's view, any official refusing to serve in Iraq in breach
of his or her oath should resign, but he added that the foreign service
"was squandering its main strength if it just sends out people with
skills and experience to fill slots".

Mr Crocker has been calling for extra firepower among the foreign staff
in Iraq since he became ambassador this year. In May he wrote to the
secretary of state calling for more and better political and economic
officers. "The issue is whether we are a department and a service at
war. If we are we need to organise and prioritise in a way that
reflects this."

Officials sent to Iraq are given almost double pay as compensation and
to allow for long hours. They are also given five breaks from the job
in the course of the year, as well as being given preference when
choosing their next posting.

Against that, they have to leave their families and face the risk of
shelling in the fortified Green Zone. Their union, the American Foreign
Service Association, argues that civilians who are untrained for combat
or for survival in war situations should not be obliged to serve.