re: "Love Letters to Congress and Who Gets Magic Dragoned Between FSI and First Post"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe.") has created a whole new tag.

Money quote(s):

"I still look at this as a fairness issue for those who remains in the Service. I just hope you all don't get get stuck in the OCP fight. If you are a member of the FS community, your main mission if you decide to accept it -- ta-da! --is to to help educate Congress and the American public about your work and your life abroad in the service of this country. Congress is not the enemy, ignorance is.

The U.S. State Department as an organization has never been good at explaining its work to Congress and the American people. You don't believe me? Ask your neighbors what they know about Foreign Service Officers, and they'd probably ask which foreign country these officers serve. If you tell them, the United States of America, they'd probably ask if these officers are, you know ... real Americans, being foreign and all. And those who are able to identify them as American diplomats would inevitably bring up the words, "pinstriped, cookie pushers," "cocktails", "elite" and most recently, of course, "voluptuous blond" and "WikiLeaks." To others they are nothing more than visa stampers and passport shufflers. A good number of the American public who travel overseas have no reason to see them at US embassies or consulate unless they have lost their passports, marry or adopt a foreigner, lands in the foreign hospital or jail, survives a plane crash, is a victim of crime, is evacuated, or in a host of other emergency crises abroad."

As a Department, State will always lack the kind of domestic constituency that a department which, for instance, builds jet engines and weapons systems in lots of congressional districts will have. That's reality. As both a "diploblogger" and a "milblogger," part of my "mission" as CAA is to educate and advocate with the folks who should be our natural allies, our colleagues in the uniformed services.

"You will hear officials insisting that State is full of really smart, really talented people. But you just have to take their word for it because the officers themselves, smart as they are, are not allowed to have their own opinions or tell their stories. Even in their private capacity. What? Like we're afraid FSOs would wikileaked themselves in their blogs?"

There would be a reason (or two) why this web log is pseudonymous.

"Just so sad.... you see all these wide-eyed newbies entering the service and then puff, their blogs get magic dragoned between FSI and their first posts."

"(M)agic dragoned." That's a new one, but apt enough. I've seen the terms "black dragon," "tigers," and "mandarins" used, generally implying what Dave Barry likes to call "the powers that be" (i.e., white men in blue suits).

"Telling the story of the Foreign Service is not an easy thing. You walk that fine line of either coming across as too whiny or as too bland if you've got nothing else to blog but brown grass in your backyard due to drought. A good thing that the FS has some talented writers who are able to straddle the fine line."