re: "Diplomacy, Continued"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ asks a key question:

"What's the deal with gifts?"

He continues:

"Hm. You work at the State Department, with thousands of native Russian speakers at your easy command."

Maybe not thousands, but certainly about a dozen native Russian language instructors at the Foreign Service Institute, the hundreds of American diplomats trained by them, and the local staffs at our embassy in Russia as well as the several U.S. consulates within Russia.

"(I)t does demonstrate that none of these fucks have any idea what the hell they're doing.
Hillary could have called a native speaker of Russian, but apparently she decided to rely on, who knows, her good buddy Joe Wilson and BabbleFish."

&

"If they can't take the minute necessary to get the small things right, I don't see why I should have confidence they'll spend the hours and weeks necessary to get the big things right."

There is such a thing as a learning curve. I'd much rather see screw-ups like these now, at the micro level, while the new administration is essentially doing a shake-down cruise, then later on when it's for all the marbles.