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Foreign Service Whiners and So-called Success

By Larry Johnson on November 3, 2007 at 3:51 PM in Current Affairs

I received a couple of inquiries regarding my take on the State Department uproar about Foreign Service officers whining about being coerced to take posts in Iraq. Melissa asked:

I am curious of your opinion about the State Department Field Service employees refusing to serve in Iraq. It is an interesting happening as the White House has a serious media blitz about Iraq being safer and more controlled. Don’t you find it very interesting that Condi’s employees who have first hand knowledge of the daily happenings in Iraq don’t find Iraq safer and controlled enough to serve positions in Iraq?

And then there is Hans Binnendijk’s piece in today’s Washington Post, At War but Not War Ready.

I am not without empathy with the plight of the Foreign Service Officers, but they were not promised cushy assignments in Paris or Rome.

They do have a right to insist that the Department provide them with robust pre-deployment training appropriate for a combat zone. They are entitled to full medical expenses for all ailments acquired as a consequence of serving in a combat zone. And the Department really needs to take a hard look at the job requirements. Creating this behemoth of an embassy in Baghdad does not make a lot of sense when one considers that the ability of diplomats to travel outside the Green Zone remains highly constrained.

Which brings me to the broader point of the so-called success in the surge. No matter how you look at the stats, the number of fatalities–US and Iraqi–have declined significantly in the last six months. While this is a promising trend, it has not been accompanied by a comparable political opening. To the contrary, the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad continues, and the sectarian rifts dividing Iraq remain veritable chasms.

Will the media celebrating the “success” of the surge today still be popping champagne corks in December if the number of U.S. soldiers killed in attacks doubles the forty killed in October? I doubt it. We need to recognize that the number killed and wounded, looked at in isolation, tells us little about the progress in the war. We have to look at other “metrics”. So in the coming weeks let’s see what happens to refugee numbers, legislative action, and integration of Sunnis and Shias in the national police force. Declining violence while refugees continue to flee, while the legislature remains deadlocked in sectarian strife, and the police continue to be a front of Shia militias means little of note. Keep this in mind as you hear the silly claim that the surge is working. So far, it ain’t.

http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

While I empathized with the foreign service speakers at the hearing — and found the gentleman at the podium to be less than reasonable or understanding — I could not help but think of our U.S. military soldiers who are throughout Iraq and in far less safe places than the Green Zone and would probably be THRILLED to serve their time in Iraq inside the Green Zone.

I’m not familiar with the salaries of foreign service officers, but figure I can safely guess that they get paid a hell of a lot more than soldiers do. Do they get extra pay for hazardous duty?

I’m glad you’re calling for comprehensive pre-deployment training and for full medical coverage for PTSD, etc. That is critical, and should help allay some of the worries.

I think of some of the spots that Joe Wilson served in. My god, his time in Iraq was so dangerous and risky, and he did it with the greatest bravery, dignity, and savoir faire– that incident with the noose was so classic! And he risked a lot to help the hostages and other Americans stuck in Iraq.

I’d also be interested in what Joe thinks of this week’s meeting.

Delia

Susan, if I remember what my son has told me, there are three levels of pay for various levels of inconvenience. Iraq is at level three but is way off the scale compared to other places that rate at level three, such as many parts of Africa, or even parts of China.
Shirin

Of course, Joe Wilson did not serve in an imperial command and control center thinly disguised as an embassy, and he served in a genuinely diplomatic role, not as part of an occupation regime thinly disguised as diplomacy. Further, I have been in the old American ambassador’s residence, and unlike the so-called “diplomats” now in Iraq, he was not isolated from the actual country in an enormous, self-contained, highly fortified American Zone.

I may have told this here before, but for a year or two our next door neighbors in Iraq were an American working for the embassy and his family. They were living in an Iraqi neighborhood and were the only foreign family in the area. Like all the other diplomatic personnel in Iraq, including the ambassador, they used the same water supply, the same electricity system, the same telephone system, and bought much of their food from the same markets Iraqis did. The wife gave birth to a baby boy in the same private Iraqi maternity hospital used by our family, her doctor was an Iraqi doctor, the midwife an Iraqi midwife, the nurses all Iraqi nurses.

What they are calling an embassy in Baghdad is not an embassy, and the so-called diplomats there will not be doing diplomacy.

Delia

Exactly, Shirin. That’s why the real diplomats don’t want to do it. Might as well just outsource the job to Blackwater.

http://thumbsnap.com/v/78mn2yFc.jpg 1Watt

Juan Cole is calling for the closure of the embassy in Baghdad:

http://www.juancole.com/2007/11/time-to-close-us-embassy.html

Has made additional comments since.
Delia

Here is an excerpt from an email that a retired diplomat sent Juan Cole which he published in his post today, and which I’m lifting, since I think the arguments made in it are a propos to this discussion.

‘ I am also a retired Foreign Service Officer, and strongly second the view of the anonymous FSO (retired) whom you cited in your column today. The issue really is not the commitment to world-wide service undertaken by FSOs. The decision by the Bush Administration to not only keep an embassy open in a war zone, but INCREASE its size to make it one of the largest in the world, is simply testimony to the madness of the entire Iraq “adventure,” and the fraudulent nature of the expressed rationale for our being there. Most of the staff in this “embassy” do not speak the language and cannot act effectively as diplomats, even if that were the purpose in sending them there. But that is not the purpose….

The willingness of Secretary Rice, or Dr. Ferragamo as she is known on one satirical website, to continue supporting this war of occupation through this “embassy” and more broadly through her declaration of a new order known as “transformational diplomacy” simply confirms that she is not a “moderate” voice for diplomacy against the likes of Dick Cheney. Diplomats do not “transform” other countries. They represent the interests of the US to the governments and citizens of other, independent, countries. ‘

http://www.juancole.com/2007/11/oaths-constitution-and-us-embassy-in.html

It’s not simply a matter of diplomats not being willing to take on the risk. It’s a matter of them being willing to take on risk. It’s a matter of the way they’re being used. Why does this bloated embassy need 250 officers in a war zone where nobody can even get out? As Cole says, it’s serving not as traditional diplomacy, but as an outpost of neo-imperialism.

Here is another good article, from TIME Magazine about why the diplomats don’t want to go to Iraq. it’s a lot more than just not wanting to get hurt. It’s more not wanting to get hurt for no reason or for bad reasons.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1679818,00.html

Full disclosure: I have a dog in this fight. My son, in his late twenties, is a junior Foreign Service Officer, just preparing for his second tour. He says he’s not likely to get ordered to Iraq because he he doesn’t have the language skills or expertise for that part of the world. In his first posting he spent a lot of time getting to know people in the country in which he was posted and it contributed to him being very successful. You don’t do that if you’re hunkered down in a bunker or having Blackwater goons driving you from place to place. The Foreign Service depends on having a lot of independent-minded, intelligent people who can make decisions on their own at the same time that their representing the US government. If the government is going to force them into the gunboat diplomacy role, it’s not going to attract the same calibre of of people.

My son tells me that a lot of the younger people are starting to look into MBA programs that they can do on the side. The fact is, the Bush Administration is changing the terms of the understanding under which diplomats entered into their life’s work. They’re wrecking the military, the Justice Department, the intelligence service. Why should the Foreign Service be exempt? But just be clear that the diplomats are not whining about nothing.
cruzdelsur

What about the argument that has been made, that elsewhere, under similar circumstances, the embassy would have been closed?

cruzdelsur

After giving it a little thought, it came to me: the State Department wants its diplomats and foreign service to quit, so then we can have diplomatic contractors. Imagine what a great buisness: Blackwater gets us the diplomats who are going to be protected by Blackwater at 10 times the price!!!

Delia

OT: who do I complain to if I’ve made a lengthy comment that’s been eaten by the spam filter?
Delia

Here is an excerpt from an email that a retired diplomat sent Juan Cole which he published in his post today, and which I’m lifting, since I think the arguments made in it are a propos to this discussion.

‘ I am also a retired Foreign Service Officer, and strongly second the view of the anonymous FSO (retired) whom you cited in your column today. The issue really is not the commitment to world-wide service undertaken by FSOs. The decision by the Bush Administration to not only keep an embassy open in a war zone, but INCREASE its size to make it one of the largest in the world, is simply testimony to the madness of the entire Iraq “adventure,” and the fraudulent nature of the expressed rationale for our being there. Most of the staff in this “embassy” do not speak the language and cannot act effectively as diplomats, even if that were the purpose in sending them there. But that is not the purpose….

The willingness of Secretary Rice, or Dr. Ferragamo as she is known on one satirical website, to continue supporting this war of occupation through this “embassy” and more broadly through her declaration of a new order known as “transformational diplomacy” simply confirms that she is not a “moderate” voice for diplomacy against the likes of Dick Cheney. Diplomats do not “transform” other countries. They represent the interests of the US to the governments and citizens of other, independent, countries. ‘

http://www.juancole.com/2007/11/oaths-constitution-and-us-embassy-in.html
Delia

(And now I’m adding the second part of my post since the spam filter apparently doesn’t like long ones.)

It’s not simply a matter of diplomats not being willing to take on the risk. It’s a matter of them being willing to take on risk. It’s a matter of the way they’re being used. Why does this bloated embassy need 250 officers in a war zone where nobody can even get out? As Cole says, it’s serving not as traditional diplomacy, but as an outpost of neo-imperialism.

Here is another good article, from TIME Magazine about why the diplomats don’t want to go to Iraq. it’s a lot more than just not wanting to get hurt. It’s more not wanting to get hurt for no reason or for bad reasons.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1679818,00.html

Full disclosure: I have a dog in this fight. My son, in his late twenties, is a junior Foreign Service Officer, just preparing for his second tour. He says he’s not likely to get ordered to Iraq because he he doesn’t have the language skills or expertise for that part of the world. In his first posting he spent a lot of time getting to know people in the country in which he was posted and it contributed to him being very successful. You don’t do that if you’re hunkered down in a bunker or having Blackwater goons driving you from place to place. The Foreign Service depends on having a lot of independent-minded, intelligent people who can make decisions on their own at the same time that their representing the US government. If the government is going to force them into the gunboat diplomacy role, it’s not going to attract the same calibre of of people.

My son tells me that a lot of the younger people are starting to look into MBA programs that they can do on the side. The fact is, the Bush Administration is changing the terms of the understanding under which diplomats entered into their life’s work. They’re wrecking the military, the Justice Department, the intelligence service. Why should the Foreign Service be exempt? But just be clear that the diplomats are not whining about nothing.
Delia

It’s not simply a matter of diplomats not being willing to take on the risk. It’s a matter of them being willing to take on risk. It’s a matter of the way they’re being used. Why does this bloated embassy need 250 officers in a war zone where nobody can even get out? As Cole says, it’s serving not as traditional diplomacy, but as an outpost of neo-imperialism.

Full disclosure: I have a dog in this fight. My son, in his late twenties, is a junior Foreign Service Officer, just preparing for his second tour. He says he’s not likely to get ordered to Iraq because he he doesn’t have the language skills or expertise for that part of the world. In his first posting he spent a lot of time getting to know people in the country in which he was posted and it contributed to him being very successful. You don’t do that if you’re hunkered down in a bunker or having Blackwater goons driving you from place to place. The Foreign Service depends on having a lot of independent-minded, intelligent people who can make decisions on their own at the same time that their representing the US government. If the government is going to force them into the gunboat diplomacy role, it’s not going to attract the same calibre of of people.

My son tells me that a lot of the younger people are starting to look into MBA programs that they can do on the side. The fact is, the Bush Administration is changing the terms of the understanding under which diplomats entered into their life’s work. They’re wrecking the military, the Justice Department, the intelligence service. Why should the Foreign Service be exempt? But just be clear that the diplomats are not whining about nothing.

Shirin

“He says he’s not likely to get ordered to Iraq because he he doesn’t have the language skills or expertise for that part of the world.”

That has never been a requirement for posting to Iraq, and in any case, no one who works with this “embassy” is going to have a lot of contact with Iraqi people.

Delia

Well, apparently (and this is the inside dope) they’ve had plenty of volunteers among the inexperienced, gung-ho junior officers who don’t have the language and don’t know what they’re doing. What they’re looking for are experienced officers who know the Middle East (language and culture) and basically know what they’re doing. The problem is that by and large, these are the very people who thought that the whole idea of invading Iraq was batshit insane and/or morally wrong to begin with, and that it’s only gotten worse as the years have pressed on. So to lend any aid and comfort to what Juan Cole calls this “neo-imperial” enterprise at this point, especially when the chances are going up by the day that it could get you killed, well, it just doesn’t sound too appealing on any number of accounts.

Knowing the Bushies, they’ll probably just follow Duncan Hunter’s admonition, fire the whole diplomatic core, and replace them with wounded vets. Who needs diplomats anyway when you’re not interested in negotiating anything?

Shirin

“they’ve had plenty of volunteers among the inexperienced, gung-ho junior officers who don’t have the language and don’t know what they’re doing.”

Sounds like the American Occupation Administration (aka CPA) all over again!

And of course anyone who really knew anything about the Middle east, and Iraq in particular, should have opposed the whole venture from the start, and if they have any moral consistency at all, let alone any degree of good sense, they would prefer to open up a MacDonald’s franchise rather than accept to be posted there.

Fred C. Dobbs

>>> Sounds like the American Occupation Administration (aka CPA) all over again!

Jump in, crank up the Way-Back Machine, and it also sounds like MACV.

Shirin

MACV?

Fred C. Dobbs

Military Assitance Command, Vietnam

Charles

Two things:

First of all, exactly what diplomatic purpose is served by diplomats in a country occupied by their employer? There is no need to negotiate anything with the Iraqis, we aren’t about to grant visas to any Iraqis and there seems to be no other compelling reasons to ask our foreign service officers to risk their lives.

Second, the Bush administration despises competent civil servants. They abhor effectiveness and efficiency in government because it undermines their central argument. They are the political progeny of those who argued that the State Department was full of Communists and fellow-travelers and they would probably like nothing better than to clean house in Foggy Bottom and create more careers for the graduates of Patrick Henry College and Regent University.
Delia

BTW, I’ve had to break my post up to get it past the spam filter. There’s one more part I’m trying to post, a link to a new TIME article on why the diplomats don’t want to go to Iraq. I’ll try one more time

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1679818,00.html
Neil

Every person who does a job for the government or private employ has the right to discuss the terms of their service. You call it it whining… how prejudicial. Sometimes the terms are “shutup and do it or leave” and that’s fine but when employees can speak and request different assignments why shouldn’t they?

I don’t think everybody has an obligation to put their life on the line for their job or country. I think that is a choice each individual can make for themselves.

Here is another thought: If you can’t trust the people who are responsible to protect you while you’re doing your job, don’t you have the right to object and inquire about how you will be protected?

http://NoQuarterUSA.net Larry Johnson

Sure. But Foreign Service officers know going in that they are going to work overseas and frequently will be in dangerous posts. I know folks who would rather be posted to Baghdad than Niger, for example. To be an FSO is to accept the fact that they are going to work in dangerous environments.

Neil

Thank you for your comment Larry.

Do Foriegn Service officers receive the kind of training that would prepare them and give them some confidence they could defend themselves? Say like the trainnig CIA agents receive on the farm? I have no firsthand knowledge, I just heard Valerie Plame answer a question about CIA agent training in coverage of her book release.

Anyway, maybe it’s whining if they’ve been given the tools, training and resources to defend themsleves (or even if they’ve overestimated the level of threat) but anything less than that, I think they have a case.

What can State do to mitigate their biggest concerns?

Melissa

Thanks, Larry, for responding so quickly. I am impressed. Thanks for the article by Hans Binnendijk. I find it very interesting that basically diplomacy has never been a priority with this administration and now Condi is experiencing revolt as a result. The Field Service employees have a very stressful job, are underpayed in my opinion, and basically don’t feel Iraq is worth the risk. Can you blame them especially when their job isn’t held as a priority by this administration?
Donovan Fraser

The surge is a silly term that implies a new “winning stategy”. In any other time “the surge ” would have been called what it is, an overwhelming force designed to keep a hostile population subdued. It is not new or the brain child of Petrayus, it’s common sense that general shinseki ( sorry about spelling) warned about in the run up to this cluster fuck. he said we need at least a few hundred thousand troops to keep an area from spiraling into chaos.They should have listened…

also…If i was these guys in the state department, I would tender my resignation before being sent into the meat grinder for God knows what? they can always waiting tables, at least your still above ground and not room temperature.
http://neufneuf.blogspot.com 99

OT, sorry, but Larry! Have you heard about this?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380718519&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Shirin

Oh yeah – Syria had a nuclear site. Riiiiight! And Saddam had WMD’s, drones capable of delivering them to Cleveland, was best pals with bin Laden, and was about to nuke Tel Aviv. And Ahmadi Najad, who has no authority whatsoever over much of anything, and hasn’t actually said most of what he allegedly said, is going to wipe Israel off the map with the nuclear weapons Iran is, by all evidence, has no program to develop. Oh yeah, and Iran, which has no history of aggression against other countries, is the greatest threat to peace and world security the planet has ever known.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me – ummmmm – can’t get fooled again.

Delia

Well . . . they seem to be fooling about 52% of the American public, which is about all they want to fool with this crap.

Shirin

To be honest, Delia, the willingness of Americans to be fooled in the same terribly dangerous ways over and over and over and over and over and over again is one of the reasons I decided after the 2004 election that I needed to get ready to leave this country. It was not as much that Bush was president again as it was that the American people were – I don’t know the word – enough to elect him again. I felt at that time that there was little hope that the situation in the U.S. would not get steadily worse over time, and I began to prepare my exit plan.

Delia

Well, I have to say I think you’re wise to have a back-up plan. It’s this latest poll on Iran that has me most discouraged. That, and the refusal of Congressional Dems to stand up. I’ve done serious historical research on the national socialist era in Germany. The majority of the German people did not support Hitler when he first seized power. It was the steady drumbeat of propaganda and terror over many years, and the slow erosion of civil liberties that did in the Germans and increased their levels of fear and prejudice. And that’s what I see happening here, at a somewhat slower rate.

Shirin

You know, when I first heard that I dismissed it as Chicken Little hysteria, but more and more it begins to look like a very real possibility, and these days I am only hoping I can have myself prepared to exit before it is too late. I am trying to arrange things so that nothing I do is irrevocable, but the situation here looks scarier and scarier by the day. The most frightening thing is that the majority of the people here seem to continue to go along believing whatever they are told no matter how many times they find out they have been lied to.

Teaeopy

Pollster John Zogby should, when summarizing poll results, state what the
poll questions were verbatim. According to one of his audio clips, #1 at
http://interactive.zogby.com/mediaclips/, the “will strike” and “should strike” questions are “always prefaced with, if Iran is developing nuclear weapons.” That qualification was not included in Zogby’s widely-referenced text summary
found at http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1379 .

Teaeopy

Nearly every time I don’t edit with a text editor I mess up something.
Teaeopy

After a browser crash (I again should have been using a text editor)—

To clarify what I meant, the Zogby summary’s phrase “to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon” can be taken to apply to strikes pre-empting any possibility of developing nuclear weapons; that’s what a number of blog and news commentators interpreted the 52% of poll respondents to mean, but I doubt that 52% of respondents meant that. “If Iran is developing nuclear weapons” suggests that there would be credible evidence of a nuclear weapons development program; 52% might, it seems to me, approve of strikes against Iran were there such evidence.

http://www.petgazette-pets.com OleHippieChick

Why would “we” bomb our extraordinary renderers? Seems counterproductive.

PrchrLady

isn’t this just about like everything these a clowns do??? unless of course, it is by design to fail…
Shirin

Syria has been one of the neocon/Bush regime target countries from the beginning – that has been obvious from the rhetoric, and the attempts to include Syria in the Iraq blame game. And you can be sure that Israel did not bomb deep inside Syrian sovereign territory (a clear act of aggression, which would have justified immediate defensive action on the part of Syria) without at least the approval of the United States government.

Cee

Duncan Hunter said wounded vets should replace the diplomats. Amazing.
oldtree

I am sure this is simplistic, but it is rather like a draft. You don’t get to choose where you are assigned, but you may be assigned a task you have been trained. maybe.
we don’t have a draft, why? Would that bring a lot more attention to the people chosen to go to war? of course. Would it bring 50% of the rotten apples in congress in line, of course.
But having this many people say no to assignments that they know they are required to do, gives you a pretty good idea of how bad it is. Anyone that knows won’t go. They seem far happier staying here letting us know how well it is going. And that is a sad commentary. Only vocal when it affects me?
Does anyone have the basics of character remaining? I agree with anyone that protests a war, particularly one like this that is now exercising a police force in training. I agree that state employees should be able to say no because it is a combat danger zone where they are targeted by anyone in the country. I agree because perhaps this will add enough fuel to the fire that will burn washington to the ground. A Phoenix must evolve or perish. This country needs serious help with only a few thousand entities, whether corporations or crippled politicos, calling all the shots. a fraction of 1 percent.
But do the people care? I wonder?

Fred C. Dobbs

Good point. If you don’t want to do your assigned work at the assigned workplace, feel free to pick up your check and go convince some other check-issuing entity that your MALD from Tufts justifies compensation at a level which keeps you in Black Forest-mobiles and ski weekends.

Because, at the end of the day, all the jobs skills you have can subsumed under the heading, “Suckling at the Public Teat.”

Maybe a gig teaching American History at a public high school?

We all see the vast array of BMW’s parked in the faculty spaces at public high schools, don’t we?

And, wait until you pay REAL taxes on ALL your earnings (not just the amount over 65K), as you discover that few US businesses pay all the spiffs and differentials appurtenant to a DoS foreign posting.

I hear that the Postal Service is hiring…

::::::::::::::

So, boo-fucking-hoo. Poor babies. They don’t wanna go.

News Flash, spoiled pissants: I didn’t wanna go to a dangerous place (Vietnam) to support an idiotic policy (Stop them dominoes from fallin’!) promulgated by a nest of vipers, fools, and Liars (LBJ, Dean Rusk, McNamara, Westmoreland: then Nixon and his crew of “Rat F*****s”, real estate hustlers and crooks), requiring me to kill individuals by knife, gunfire and explosive ordnance with whom I had no absolutely no quarrel for SUBSTANTIALLY less than Minimum Wage, while my wife and 5 month-old child had to live in her parents’ basement because my Career Path was interrupted.

My choice was: Go to Vietnam or Go to Prison.

What I wanted, or thought just or equitable were not factors in the equation.

So, in my view, either Suck it Up and do your jobs, or go find another job to do.

Either way, STFU. You probably voted for Shit-For-Brains, anyway.
Delia

No. It’s not like a draft. For a foreign officer’s first two postings, the entire class receives a list of about 200 jobs all over the world. Each person bids on 50 jobs of their choosing in the order of their preference. They will be offered any job on their list, even if it’s number 50. There’s always an element of individual choice. And there are consequences. If you only choose cushy assignments, say in Western Europe, your career will probably be stuck on the low level functionary level. After the first two postings, the officers are on their own for negotiating assignments. The assumption is that by then they’ll have enough contacts to take care of themselves.

This is NOT the military. This is a career path that depends on people who can be independent actors within the sphere of government service. And that’s what the Bushies are trying to change, apparently. They want more drones.

And no, Fred. They didn’t all vote for Bush. I don’t know about today’s entering class, but there’s never been any political litmus test. The fact that the majority of Middle East expert DON’T support the war then or now should be an important clue for you here.

The Oracle

Everything the Bush administration does is political, so my first thought upon hearing about this “pool of U.S. diplomats” from which Green Zone assignments will be drawn involved the question of how many of these people in this forced conscription pool are “loyal Bushies”?

I doubt if many, if any, of the career people “selected” for this State Department pool are “loyal Bushies,” which means that the schemers in the Bush administration are just using this as a means of weeding out any “malcontents,” who will then be replaced with properly-vetted “loyal Bushies.”

The Bush legacy, the legacy of the most corrupt, devious and vile administration in American history, will be a packed State Department, a packed Supreme Court, a packed federal judiciary, a packed Justice Department, and every other federal agency that they can pack with their corrupt crony pals, thus wrecking our government for years to come.

So, I look at this latest State Department action as part of this overall scheme.

“Selected” State Department employees are given a choice: “volunteer” for duty over in the Green Zone, which is being shelled daily and faces the threat of infiltration by suicide bombers…or resign, or be fired.

And if the corrupt Bush administration doesn’t get at least 50 “volunteers” from this diplomatic pool, then they will fire the several hundred career diplomats in the pool, thus opening up several hundred career State Department positions for “loyal Bushies,” packing the State Department with ideological neo-con perverts for decades to come.

In Bush World, in their corrupted neo-con bubble, this makes perfect sense, even though it involves wrecking the State Department over the short-term and the long-term.
Claire Hanley

Back in the day, when occupation by a white colonial power was still considered the inevitable fate of any “brown” or “yellow” or “red” culture, the Green Zone/Embassy complex would have been named for its true function: Fort (here insert the name of a Western General, whose deeds in subduing “native” populations we wish to immortalize.)