Avuncular American

L'Ennemi Intime - France in Algeria

Florent-Emilio Siri's 2007 film "L'Ennemi Intime" (The Intimate Enemy) has been referred to by more than one reviewer as "the French 'Platoon.'"  While it happens to be an excellent Vietnam film and one of Oliver Stone's best, I wouldn't rate "Platoon" in quite the same historical category as "L'Ennemi Intime."

The main difference?  Siri's film is written by French historian and documentary film maker Patrick Rotman, who himself made a three part documentary by the same title in 2002.  "L'Ennemi Intime," whether the Siri/Rotman feature film or the Rotman documentary, transports the audience into the hell that was France's war in Algeria from 1954 to Algerian independence in 1962.

For those whose sole reference for cinematic treatment of the Algerian war is the timeless "Battle of Algiers," I highly recommend "L'Ennemi Intime" (for an excellent resume of the Algerian war oeuvre - in French - see DVDtoile.com and this in the Herald Tribune).  Siri and Rotman, while trying to make this tough subject accessible to the film-going public, obviously had both education and posterity in mind when they created the film's official website.  Few film makers have exhibited such a serious approach to educating their public: there's a teaching guide, bibliography, interactive map, lexicon...

But what about the film, you're asking?  Steel yourself for: the aftereffects of napalm (not only used in Vietnam); torture of captured Algerians by French soldiers; collective punishment of civilians by both sides; and the "sourire Kabyle" (throat-slitting by FLN of French soldiers or suspected sympathizers)... It's a tough film, but portrays this "sale guerre" with true attention to historical detail.

The casting is first rate: just compare Rotman's documentary to Siri's film, and you see how much lead actors Benoit Magimel and Albert Dupontel look like the real conscripts sent off to maintain "Algerie Francaise."  Fellag (playing, appropriately, a captive FLN "fellagha") and other North African actors have key roles, showing how torn Algerians were between colonial occupiers and guerrillas fighting in the "zone interdite."  The location filming in next-door Morocco is an excellent stand-in for Kabylie of 1959; Cesar-nominated cinematographer Gianni Fiore Coltellacci provides haunting images.

The "fog of war" is ever-present; whether on night patrol or scanning the craggy valleys with binoculars by day, no one is ever quite sure whose side the others are on.  And as Patrick Rotman shows in his documentary of the same name, "the intimate enemy" is sometimes yourself.  How do you go back to life in Swinging Sixties France after you've tortured a prisoner?

Some day, a director might make an "American Ennemi Intime," where the moral fog of the War on Terror catches up with those who carried out - or who ordered - "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Alistair Horne, whose book "A Savage War of Peace" remains the English-language reference on the Algerian war of independence, and has been called "Bush's Favorite Historian," tried to instruct former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the parallels between Algeria and Iraq after seeing the news from Abu Ghraib.  Appropriate in its lack of appreciation for irony, Rumsfeld wrote this back to Horne: "as you well know, we do not believe in torture..."

As the poster for "L'Ennemi Intime" says: "Il n'y a pas pire ennemi que soi-meme" - you're your own worst enemy.  We may have to wait a long time for an American equivalent.

Avuncular American's First Anniversary

With all the excitement over the elections in the States, I almost let the anniversary of my first year of blogging slip by.  Looking back at my first posts in November 2007, I see that I wrote a good deal more about Iraq than I have done recently (that is likely to change once Barack Obama is inaugurated).  There were several posts on the complicated Belgian political situation, which though it has calmed somewhat, remains complicated and never-ending.  It's the national sport.

One topic - torture, as in US practice of - is one that I would much prefer never having had to write about.  If today's article by Mark Benjamin in Salon is right - "Obama's Plans For Probing Bush Torture" - we may all be learning more about the truth behind Bush's assertion that "This government does not torture people."  In the past year of blogging, I've noticed that whenever I do a post about torture, much of my readership seems to fade away.  Denial?

During this strange post-election, lame duck, transition, phony war period, there will be plenty to write about.  Like many others who supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, I will be scrutinizing the news coming out of Transition HQ, to make sure that realpolitik does not trump the wishes of real people who elected the next president.

But the advent of a new, popularly elected administration, one which has to undo so much that harmed the very foundations of the United States, should account for a slight change of tone in the months ahead.  After all, "avuncular" is in my URL: "In the manner of an uncle, pertaining to an uncle, hence, kind, genial, benevolent or tolerant" according to Wiktionary.

I think Barack Obama should bring out the avuncular in me.

The Pride of America, The Joy of the World

Turning on the BBC this morning after a very short sleep, John McCain's voice provided the good news (from The Telegraph):

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together.  Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans.

With that, the incredible journey of Barack Obama to the White House became fact.  John McCain ended his campaign in a very honorable way; francophones would call it "très fair-play."  Now the challenge will be to enlist him and his supporters in the monumental task of rebuilding America after the lost Bush years.

TV audiences saw the emotion on the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering in Chicago, Washington, and in lots of small towns across the country.  Joy, hope, pride, relief.

Last night a few thousand of us gathered in Brussels for an election-eve party - expat Americans, Belgians, but also people from every corner of the international diaspora present in Europe's capital.  My job as the "Obama cheerleader" (debate would be too dignified a term for our performance in front of such a crowd) was made easier by the numbers; Obama's landslide in the US looked mild compared to the overwhelming support he had in the hotel ballroom last night.

The after-action interviews of us expat Americans will soon taper off, and the brainstorming now begins: later today I will attend one of what will be many sessions in European and other capitals on prospects for renewal of American ties with the world under an Obama Administration.  My plan: go into Obama mode: listen to my European hosts - Green think tank The Heinrich Boll Foundation - and hear what they prescribe for bringing the United States into the fold of countries seeking solutions to the world's grave environmental problems of climate change and resource constriction.

Wonkiness will abound, and I will be as active a participant as my couple hours' sleep permits.  But my heart will be in places like Chicago - or Nairobi, where Barack Obama's victory has been declared a national holiday.  It's party time.

I don't care if some commentators want to downplay the Obama-JFK connection.  For millions in the US and around the world, Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency surpasses the historical milestone of Irish Catholic Kennedy's election in 1960.

In my parents' native Ireland, for years thousands of homes sported photos of a sort of holy trinity: the Pope (whoever he was at the time), hero of Irish independence Michael Collins, and President John F. Kennedy.  I expect that President Barack Obama's portrait will be ubiquitous - and not just in Kenya - in simple homes the world over for a long time to come.

And birth registries throughout the world: get ready for a deluge of little ones named Barack!

(photo: Bridges For Obama)

Media and War: New Vietnam Documentary

For those francophone readers who have an hour and a half to spare watching a tiny screen (!) - and can do so in the next 7 days before it disappears - I recommend "Vietnam, la trahison des medias" by documentary director Patrick Barberis.  Actually, much of the film is in English with French subtitles, since it features interviews with a number of American war correspondents (McClatchy Vietnam reporter Joe Galloway among them) and retired Army and Marine officers.

The documentary shows many familiar images from the war, and concentrates on the use of the media in war.  Use, as in "achieving your objectives," which the North Vietnamese were particularly apt at doing.  The footage from the war is mostly in and around the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive.  For French viewers, American references to Khe Sanh as "more Verdun than Dien Bien Phu" are striking.  As in deliberate, Pyhrric bloodletting to "bleed the enemy dry," as opposed to an ingenious trap - that later becomes a trap for the trappers.

I know little about Barberis, except that he appeared at the Chicago International Documentary Festival a few years ago, where the Festival blurb says: "Patrick Barberis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker who has made many works dealing with the history of Communism and Utopian movements."  In "Vietnam, la trahison des medias," he brings us up to date: the latter part of the film shows how the US military evolved in its attitude toward the press.

From almost total, unfettered access to the battlefield during Vietnam (the film shows how the Tet attacks on Saigon and the American Embassy brought the war to those journalists who hadn't jumped on helicopters with the troops in the field), the Army had, by Desert Storm, adopted strict press rules limiting access.  By the time of the Bush invasion of Iraq in March 2003, protests from the press - and good PsyOps work from the "information warfare" people - gave the media a golden opportunity for a look at the action under optimum (for the military) circumstances - embedding!  We even see that Lyndon Johnson had his "Mission Accomplished" moment, pinning a medal on General William Westmoreland, who appears to have been pretty clueless in his media relations.

As someone who came of political age watching Walter Cronkite and other TV news legends report on, and turn against, the Vietnam War, watching this documentary hits home just how much the Iraq War is kept away from American TV audiences.  Vietnam won the Vietnam War, but the US military learned at least one lesson: controlling media access may not win you a war, but it might help you from losing the support of the American people.  Though with Iraq, the policy of "what Iraq War?" does not appear to have earned the war, or those who masterminded it, any lasting support from the citizenry.

Here is the link to ARTE+7: you only have seven days to catch this online.  There's no indication of if or when the documentary will be shown on US TV.

Trillion$ To Go: Remember The Iraq Bill

[T]his financial disaster will end the war in Iraq and limit significantly the choices that both Obama and McCain might have before them as President.

Steve Clemons, The Washington Note

Sorry to bring it up at this delicate juncture, but there is the matter of that other bill.  For Iraq.

As Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz ("The Three Trillion Dollar War") reminded Congress earlier this year

Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war.

There are only so many trillions that a nation can run up in debt and printed paper currency before things start to happen.  Just ask Zimbabwe, where the 40 million percent inflation rate is no joke.  There have been others: people in inter war Germany used wheel barrows to cart their money around.

That's probably not in store for the US - yet - but one thing is for sure: just like having your house repossessed will cramp your shopping style, so too does financial profligacy have a way of delimiting your strategic options.  That is the message of noted national security scholar Andrew Bacevich in his new book, The Limits of Power.

In the blame game that will only get worse, we will hear much about the responsibility for the financial crisis.  Should, as I hope, the Democrats win not only the White House but large Congressional majorities in November, I will make this prediction: Republicans in opposition will rediscover "fiscal responsibility."  The last time the Democrats held the White House, when Republican Sam Brownback had not yet moved from House to Senate, he worried greatly about the national debt: "we're $5 trillion in the hole, so we have to start doing things in a different way."

Now that the - pre-bailout - debt has reached $10.6 trillion, I guess Senator Brownback's party has truly succeeded in "doing things in a different way."  But one thing is for sure: as Steve Clemons has said, America's abysmal financial straits will "limit significantly the choices" for the next president.

Update: In Salon, Gary Kamiya shows us what our money has got us, and reminds us where we are in Iraq today: on the side of Iran's allies.

Andrew Bacevich Speaks the Ground Truth

Readers who don't know Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich would do well to watch yesterday's "Bill Moyers Journal," the weekly interview program on America's public TV channel, PBS.  You can see it in a very clear video here.  I cannot recommend it strongly enough, for Bacevich, more than almost any other observer of American foreign policy, clearly sees imperial overreach as an existential threat - but a natural outgrowth of American society's "profligacy."

The PBS website also has a great service of providing the transcript, which is here.  Bill Moyers told Bacevich, "It's been a long time since I've read a book in which I highlighted practically every third sentence. So, it took me a while to read, what is in fact, a rather short book."  The same could be said of the transcript of this hour-long program.  But here's a selection:

• The pursuit of freedom, as defined in an age of consumerism, has induced a condition of dependence on imported goods, on imported oil, and on credit. The chief desire of the American people is that nothing should disrupt their access to these goods, that oil, and that credit. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire...
• There was a time, seventy, eighty, a hundred years ago, that we Americans sat here in the western hemisphere, and puzzled over why British imperialists went to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. We viewed that sort of imperial adventurism with disdain. But, it's really become part of what we do.
• What I would invite [Americans] to consider is that, if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, and of course you need to ask yourself, what is it you value most. That if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, then we need to change the American way of life. We need to modify that which may be peripheral, in order to preserve that which is at the center of what we value.

Bacevich, who still refers to himself as a conservative, is above all a realist, and a straight talker.  His 2005 book, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War, was in many ways a theme-setter for many of the conclusions of his latest book, the topic of the discussion with Moyers.  Bacevich, who writes in journals from American Conservative to the Nation, has a two-part excerpt from his latest book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, in Tom Dispatch.

Ill Winds From the East: Caucasus War & Energy Dependence

This blog already covers a wide range of subjects, and I don't want to stretch my analytical powers too thin by trying to comment on the South Ossetian situation.  Rather, I'd like to draw a parallel between America's flailing Mideast stance and the West's efforts to "do something!" in the face of the Russian vs. Georgian, ex-superpower vs. truncated statelet firefight in the Caucasus tinderbox.  Actually, Helena Cobban of "Just World News" says it best:

The "west" is hopelessly over-stretched, what with all its current commitments of troops in Iraq, a crisis-ridden Afghanistan, and (still) in the Balkans. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was most likely relying to a great extent on the NATO forces pulling his chestnuts out of the Ossetian fire if they should start to burn there. But NATO is in absolutely no position to do that. All the US could do to give him any concrete help was to gather up and return to his country the 2,000 Georgian troops who had previously part of their occupation coalition in Iraq. That airlift is happening right now. But it will do little to affect the balance on the ground in the Caucasus, while it will certainly cause considerable disruptions to the US project in Iraq.

Does anyone doubt that when NATO next addresses the matter of Georgian membership, already-hesitant NATO members will point out that - had Georgia gotten NATO membership as President George W. Bush wanted last April - it would be an Article V (an attack against a member state is an attack against all) NATO war with Russia that would be breaking out right now.  I just hope those American airlift planes ferrying Georgian troops home from Iraq don't have any run-ins with the Russian aviation now controlling Georgian skies.

It's not just the US that is in an uncomfortable position.  Europe, in particular the EU under the current French presidency, feels the need to "do something!" and has sent Foreign Minister and inventor of "humanitarian intervention" Bernard Kouchner on a peace-making mission.  Already, Russians and their allies have called attention to parallels between interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo (okay for the West) and Russian muscle-flexing in its Caucasus sphere of influence among its former satellite states.

Here's the link between America's Achilles heel in the Persian Gulf and Europe's weak spot on its Eastern borders: dependence on energy imports from, respectively, authoritarian Arab oil-rich regimes and a resurgent Russian natural gas monopoly.  What is Europe going to do? Stop exporting champagne to Russia's nouveau riche mafia?  Is General Motors going to stop selling Hummers to Saudi Arabia if it doesn't democratize?

To consider how things might have been otherwise, here's Thomas Friedman ("Flush With Energy") from Sunday's New York Times:

Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. In 1973, said [Danish Minister of Climate and Energy Connie] Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

Part of Denmark's solution has been wind energy. Friedman says: "Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent."

France, under President Nicolas Sarkozy, has taken a number of steps towards securing more energy independence, or at least diversification.  France leads the world in nuclear energy electricity generation, though recent leaks might give leaders pause on expanding this sector.  Sarkozy's "Mediterranean Union" cannot have been launched without a thought to securing alternative North African natural gas supplies in light of the heavy Russian hand on its gas export spigot.

So what in the world was France's Conseil d'Etat (a kind of supreme court on constitutional matters) thinking when it essentially threw a monkey wrench into France's growing collection of high-tech windmills, which dot the high ground in Brittany (click on photo) and other windy areas? It decision on a "technicality" last week essentially ends wind power's privileged position, where small producers were guaranteed purchase of their output by the national utility, EDF.  Hopefully the Sarkozy environmental and energy czars will remedy the situation, which is not without its eco-strategic significance: every kilowatt produced by somebody's windmill is a kilowatt that does not rely on Russia's largess.

How about wind and US energy dependence (I won't say "independence," since my native country is so, so very far from that happy situation)? Read Thomas Friedman and weep: "Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”

Energy independence starts now, not tomorrow, and has a direct link to strategic influence.  Dependence, on the other hand, means that strategic options are limited by where the fuel for your fighter jets comes from.  Putting your money, so to speak, where your mouth is.  Otherwise, it's just dangerous bloviating, Mr. Vice President.

 

Obama Overseas: One Man Public Diplomacy Triumph

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Frank Rich, New York Times, Sunday July 27, 2008

(Image: BarackObama.com)

As usual, Frank Rich says in 43 words what others devote entire books trying to convey: the power of images.  Yes, the “Barack Obama Trip to the Middle East and Europe” was a campaign event, and yes, as such the US Embassy in Berlin prevented its diplomats from attending (see Foreign Service blogger LifeAfterJerusalem’s thoughtful explanation of the Hatch Act and its limitations for political activity by career government employees).

But if the embassy had “covered” the event, like it might for any gathering of 200,000 American flag-waving Germans, it might have caught a sense of the international importance of Barack Obama and his quest for the US presidency.  As Frank Rich points out, we haven’t seen this in a very long time.

On the night of September 11, 2001, after a long day “role playing” at an embassy emergency action security scenario – cut short by news of the real life emergency happening in the US – I was at home staying in touch with a large embassy nearby (Washington was shut down).  My phone rang, and it was the duty communications officer telling me of a gathering outside the embassy’s gate.  At first, in the heightened security posture and the tension of the day’s events, it appeared that it was a demonstration.  But no, it was simply a spontaneous flow of local citizens, placing flowers, candles, handwritten messages of condolence and solidarity with the United States in the hour of its tragedy.

You know the rest of the story.  The days, weeks, and months following September 11 saw a continuous flow of the same sentiment, at a personal and a governmental level, from Iceland to Iran.  The world was with us.  Afghanistan, the Taliban, al Qaeda – all the early American actions were supported in word and deed.  Then “you’re with us or you’re against us” and Iraq happened.  The magic was gone, and we are where we are.

Now there is another moment, and whatever Senator Barack Obama said in his speech in Berlin, or the content of his meetings with leaders from Afghanistan’s Karzai to Great Britain’s Brown, matters less than the popular public reaction to the person and the idea of Barack Obama.  Whether you are a Republican McCainiac or Democratic Hillraiser, I challenge you to deny the power that an Obama presidency could bring to America’s engagement with the world.

Public Diplomacy is more than Presidential (candidate) speeches abroad, and deeds must accompany the fine words.  But I have no doubt that an Obama Administration, following an act as unilaterally unpopular as the Bush White House, would begin with a massive reservoir of international good will.  Something that a McWhat’s His Name (sorry, but most people abroad cannot even identify by name the Republican candidate) Administration would struggle to earn, identified as Senator McCain is with the ignominious incumbent.

And while a President McCain might give a morale boost to the over-70 crowd who want to maintain their relevance, there is no question that a President Barack Hussein Obama has already sparked the hopes of millions of young minority political wannabees, from Harlem to Hamburg.  With a head start like this, the "combat-booted" (in Matt Armstrong's words) State Department’s public diplomacy establishment (enthralled by the "war metaphor" according to Pat Kushlis) had better prepare itself for a major overhaul to deal with the flowering of the kind of human-to-human cultural exchange that can build on the Obama Good Will "Bridge" Effect.

Iraq and the "S" Word - Sovereignty

“The Iraqi demands are unacceptable to the Americans, and the American demands are unacceptable to the Iraqis, and the result is that we have reached an impasse,” the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said during a meeting with journalists in Jordan. “The Iraqis will not consent to an agreement that infringes their sovereignty.”

Alissa J. Rubin, "Talks With U.S. on Security Pact Are at an Impasse, the Iraqi Prime Minister Says," New York Times 14 June 2008

In my experience in matters diplomatic, when the other sides deploys the "S" word, they've reached for their big guns.  Not that Iraq out-guns the United States in any sense of the term - but that is exactly when negotiators reach for the "S" word.  When the imbalance of power is such that the weaker party can only fall back on its cherished sovereignty, in the face of the other side that holds all the cards... except the ultimate one in diplomacy: "Are you messing with my sovereignty?"

This argument, of course, only works when the weaker party is dealing with a country that is sensitive to sovereignty matters.  A dictatorship might not care a hoot about a neighbor's sovereignty, especially if there are already hostile relations prevailing.  Democracies, however, are usually mindful of touching someone's sovereignty buttons.  The US usually cares, for example, when the country that raises the sovereignty defense possesses something that the US wants.

Sometimes nations will deploy the sovereignty defense over the silliest of issues: I recall a matter of a conference in Africa that was sure to founder on the shoals of disrespect for Nigerian sovereignty, were the US co-sponsors to dismiss the requirement for "hostesses in national dress" at the opening ceremony (said hostesses being the girlfriends, mistresses, daughters and nieces of ministers and other Big Men).  The Americans caved, and had to pay for the hostesses' nice outfits.  Sovereignty prevailed.

In the case of the current negotiations in Iraq, however, the stakes are anything but trivial.  And the leverage exerted by the US is considerable.  It's not just the 140,000 or so troops occupying the country; I refer you to veteran Iraq reporter Patrick Cockburn of London's The Independent, who was interviewed on June 12 on Democracy Now!  Said Cockburn:

Iraqi reserves, Iraqi money, is in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  It dates from 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and there are still sanctions against Iraq as a danger to the rest of the world. That money, about $50 billion, is in the bank. But there have been many court cases brought against it. It’s protected currently by a Presidential immunity. And what US negotiators in Baghdad have been implying to their Iraqi counterparts is that if they don’t cut a deal on American terms, then that Presidential immunity might lapse at the end of the year, and the Iraqis wouldn’t be able to get their hands on these massive reserves, which they need very badly.

$50 billion is serious leverage.

Cockburn, who has reported on this story extensively, has pointed out how the evolving (or stalled, according to al-Maliki) talks are not classic "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) negotiations, over technical issues (APO postal delivery, PX privileges, duty-free Commissary imports - all those nice things that mark the American presence in places like Germany, Italy, or Japan), but talks whose outcome

... really will determine whether Iraq is an independent country or not. Or will it be a client state of the US?... the US negotiators were demanding initially fifty-eight bases. They’re not calling them permanent bases, though that’s exactly what they are. The bases might have, let’s say, an Iraqi soldier outside and a single strand of barbed wire, in which case the Iraqis will supposedly be in charge of their defense, so it won’t be an American base. But everybody knows that it is. Then there’s the question of immunity for American soldiers and Iraqi contractors, i.e. they won’t come under Iraqi law. And the US will also control airspace and have various other rights. Now, although Ryan Crocker and President Bush are saying Iraq under this new agreement will once again be a sovereign nation, most of the rights we associate with a sovereign nation will be in the possession of the US.

The always vigilant Helena Cobban ("Just World News") has much more detail on what's in the "SOFA" (and when all this got started), in her analysis of just-released National Security Archive documents.

Next time you hear PM al-Maliki use the word "sovereignty," consider the context, the stakes in these negotiations, and the relative leverage of the two parties.  As Cockburn says, Iraq since the early 1990's (no-fly zones, oil-for-food, sanctions) has experienced years of "diminished formal sovereignty."  They went from years of Saddam's sovereignty-within-constraints to - despite purple fingers - CPA "Orders" and now a SOFA-defined future.  No wonder they're a bit touchy about that "S" word.

You've Been Volunteered to Iraq

As you may have seen in the Director General’s May 27, 2008 [message] “Announcing the 2009 Iraq/Afghanistan Cycle” and in the Secretary’s personal message to the field, the Department has begun recruiting for summer 2009 openings in Iraq. I am writing to inform you that the Department considers you among those particularly well qualified for the key positions listed below and is asking you to seriously consider volunteering for an opportunity to tackle our nation’s top foreign policy priority.

Excerpt from State Department email of 30 May 2008 to American diplomat "M," cited in the blog Life After Jerusalem

The above is not a draft notice, but these days few people outside the US military receive such explicit hints that it would behoove them to consider spending time in body armor in Baghdad.  In the Army, as my father used to say, it was "We need three volunteers: you, you, and you."  The State Department, diplomatically of course, "considers you particularly well qualified."  The result is the same.  Our diplomat-blogger contents herself with reproducing the Friday morning email.  Like the good career professional that she is, she provides no editorial comment.  But you can bet that there is much soul-searching going on in the "M" household this weekend.

In the fall of 2007, much was made of the State Department's difficulties in filling its personnel slots at the US Embassy in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, though after the initial flurry of publicity, in fact no one was actually "directed" (or, in non-State speak, forced) to go to Iraq.  But "asking you to seriously consider volunteering," while not literally forcing, has a different meaning when you're an individual employee having to deal with the juggernaut of Washington's personnel establishment.  The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA, the professional association which advocates for American diplomats with their employers at the State Department, USAID, as well as the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture) has monitored this issue, and its monthly magazine, the Foreign Service Journal, has documented the nuanced meanings of "volunteering."

Consider the typical case of an officer with school age children, who has to follow increasingly restrictive rules that narrow choices down to places like Iraq (Green Zone or PRT?) and Afghanistan (Kabul or a Provincial Reconstruction Team?).  One such officer outlined his dwindling options, and illustrated how in the end, his "voluntary" assignment to Afghanistan was simply a choice of lesser evils.  And it's not just Iraq and Afghanistan.  According to AFSA, "two thirds of the Foreign Service is deployed overseas at all times and 70 percent of them are at hardship posts (meaning locations with difficult living conditions due to terrorist threats, violent crime, harsh climate, or other factors)."  Like the military, many Foreign Service families are separated during entire tours of duty.

Scott McClellan's current media blitz over his book "What Happened" has been the focus of stinging comment of the sort "If you didn't like the policy, why didn't you just resign from the White House?"  A legitimate question, though last night's "Anderson Cooper 360" on CNN, where he described the former White House Spokesman as a "civil servant," missed the mark.  No, White House Spokesmen are Political Appointees.  Unlike "M" and other career diplomats, who don't have the easy option of a high-level resignation followed by six or seven figure book advances.  Three American diplomats made timely, principled resignations over the Iraq war, and I do not believe any of them became wealthy.

Back to "M'" and her "opportunity to tackle our nation’s top foreign policy priority."  I guess I'm just not convinced of the validity of the Administration's priority list.  Which I liken to a pyromaniac who chooses to set Iraq ablaze while the fire department is busy trying to extinguish the 10-alarm conflagration of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan: "Okay, maybe it is a bigger fire now, but it was arson, and you're the arsonist."

In the remaining months of the Bush Administration, while it rushes to put a "Status of Forces Agreement" with the Iraqi government in place - one that many Iraqis oppose and about which the US Congress has many questions - American diplomats will continue to get more "volunteer notices" like the one above.  But far-thinking people in the "shadow cabinet" that I hope the Democrats will soon form should consider the changes needed to prevent American diplomacy's core skills from atrophying.  For service in all those countries in the world where, though they may be tough places, you still don't require a flak jacket, and where the host government has a presence outside a Green Zone perimeter.  And where the safety of your embassy does not depend on the indefinite presence of the US Army.