re: "What do you do with a "problem" like Peter Van Buren? Take away his badge, escort him out, bar the door, throw away the key and ...."

Domani Spero at Diplopundit (" one of the best niche blogs for Foreign Service folks ") considered Mr. Van Buren's situation last October.

Money quote(s):

"Mr. Van Buren was escorted out of the State Department on Monday and barred from returning while officials there decide what to do next with him. Our own source said that Mr. Van Buren has been placed on administrative leave for the next couple of weeks. Admin leave is like “we’ll pay you so we don’t have to see you.” I supposed that’s until they can find the citation in the FAM that would fit this “problem.” Mr. Van Buren’s current assignment reportedly had also been curtailed. If true, that means they just took away his desk and chair, too. So even if he is allowed to return after his admin leave, he won’t actually have a job to return to."

&

"Mr. Van Buren’s book is highly critical of the State Department’s work in Iraq, the accompanying blog, just as critical. Not sure if the punishment is for the book, the blog, or for both. No one would speak on the record. The suspension letter did not cite the book, but did cite as one of the author’s faults, “an unwillingness to comply with Department rules and regulations regarding writing and speaking on matters of official concern.”

This is the first time, as far as memory goes, that the State Department had actually yanked somebody’s clearance over “publishing articles and blog posts on such matters without submitting them to the Department for review.” Whereas, in the past, I was aware of the shock factor in threatening bloggers with this in-house version of the “nuclear” option, this is the first time where somebody actually pushed the red button. And in a very public way. "

&

"(A)lthough Mr. Van Buren is the first ever blogger escorted out of the building, he was only the latest casualty in the tigers can bite you escapades inside the State Department. Some FS bloggers have been unable to get suitable ongoing assignments – or even normal responses to their bid lists. As one recently told me, “these officers have not asked for extraordinary favors: just regular, humdrum postings that fall comfortably within the bidding rules, that are not heavily bid or bid on by superstars, and for which they are completely competent. ….they have heard only silence.”

Assignment issues, blogger disappearances and PVB’s case undoubtedly will bring a big chill to the FS blogosphere. Don’t be shocked if folks go back to the 50′s and start hiding their journals under their pillows, as was quaintly suggested elsewhere."

CAA has not, to date, suffered any noticeable adverse career impact due to blogging.

"I think it must be said that the State Department handled the book clearance badly. Somebody should have owned up to the snafu instead of gunning after the author. The 30-day timeline for clearing the book lapsed. It was not the author’s fault regardless of whether or not the person responsible for clearance had a meltdown, a baby, was sick or was on vacation. But State like any old and cumbersome bureaucracy is loath to admit to its own mistakes. They cleared Condi’s book within the 30-day timeline, yet Mr. Van Buren’s book was not afforded the same courtesy. The State Department, in short, broke its own clearance procedure. And when Mr. Van Buren published the book as allowed under its own regulations in the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM), a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State accused him of “unauthorized disclosures of classified information,” and asked his publisher for redactions six days before the book hit the stores. Can you imagine them doing that to Secretary Rice’s book? Nope. Big fry, small fry; are there different rules?"

Different spanks for different ranks. It's sort of like the Air Force that way.

"(G)iven the potential fallout from a book about reconstruction in what has always been an unpopular, contentious war, and given how much money we’re spending on reconstruction projects over in Iraq, somebody higher than a Deputy Assistant Secretary should have read the book, cleared his/her calendar and spoke privately with the author. Instead of sending the tigers with sharp teeth. I have not meet Mr. Van Buren in person, and he may be far from cutesy and cuddly, but he has written a vivid, engaging account of our reconstruction debacle in Iraq seasoned with absurdities, great and small. To dismiss him as nothing but a disgruntled employee is just plain brainless. Public opinion is already against the Iraq war. Add to that the rest of the domestic headaches that the American taxpayers have been suffering in the last several years. And what do you get? A public relation disaster, with the State Department as the big, bad growling tiger in a starring role. It does not help that State appears to be acting like a big, bad growling tiger trying to eat an angry mouse. "

Overkill much?

"(S)omebody from the Seventh Floor should have attempted to speak with him. He, after all, spent 23 years with the State Department and cared enough to write the Iraq Experience down in a book. With his name on it. Not even the folks interviewed by USIP were willing to put their names down in that Oral History Project. But no one bothered to speak with him. A DAS alleging his disclosure of classified info did eventually write to him, albeit belatedly, and not really to listen to what he had to say.

It’s as if the State Department is proud of all its smart people except for those with the guts to speak up, or write a critical book. Or are they only proud of our smart diplomats when they dissent in private, in a channel that the American public never ever gets to hear, and that which the organization is free to ignore? The guy who talks too much not only gets a good hearing in my book, he or she should be afforded an opportunity to contribute in fixing the problems that he cites. No, we do not shoot the messengers in our book. Most especially if they are bearing bad news. But that’s us. Unfortunately, that is often the case in the bureaucracy, the State Department perhaps more so than most. A dead messenger is a good messenger, no news is good news. "

BTW, the "Seventh Floor" is the part of Main State where all the under secretaries, deputy secretaries, and the secstate have their offices.

10/28

re: "State Department: America’s Increasingly Irrelevant Concierge"

Peter Van Buren at We Meant Well ("How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People") leveled a criticism of the Department of State (which reminds me of Amb. Bolton's joke about the UN*).

Money quote(s):

"A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released July 16 shows that overall more than one fourth of all State Department Foreign Service positions are either unfilled or are filled with below-grade employees. What should be staggering news pointing out a crisis in government is in fact barely worth a media mention in that State’s lack of personnel is silently tracking its increasing irrelevance to the United States, sliding into the role of America’s Concierge abroad."

&

"At the senior levels, the alleged leaders of America’s diplomacy, the number is 36 percent vacant or filled with “stretch” assignments, people of lower rank and experience pressed into service. At the crucial midranks, the number is 26 percent. Entry level jobs are at 28 percent, though it is unclear how some of those can be filled with stretch assignments since they are already at the bottom."

CAA had always assumed that the midranks (or midgrades) were where the shortages were the worst, and that the Senior Foreign Service was relatively flush.

I stand corrected.

"In fact though, it is much worse. Within State’s Foreign Service ranks, there exists the Consular Bureau and everyone else. Consular stands quite separate from the other Foreign Service Officers in that Consular employees have very specific worker bee jobs processing passports and visas and are not involved in the “traditional” diplomatic tasks we know and love such as maintaining inter-government relations, writing reports, negotiating treaties, rebuilding Afghanistan and all that. Many of these jobs are filled because they have to be, cash cow that issuing visas is for increasingly foreign tourism dependent third world America. That means broken down by function, it is likely that there are even larger gaps in vacancies in traditional diplomatic roles than even the sad percentages suggest."

The Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) is unusual within the Department of State for several reasons.

First, CA is the only functional bureau with effective control of the assignments of an entire "cone" (or "career track" in current parlance) within the Foreign Service.

(A quick primer: The Foreign Service comprises FS generalist officers who are commissioned officers of the U.S. Foreign Service as well as a number of cadres of Foreign Service Specialists who have specific skill sets such as couriers, diplomatic security special agents, physicians, nurses, engineers, office managers, &tc. Within the generalist corps, there are five "cones" or "career tracks" by which each FSO is designated: Political, Economic, Management, Public Diplomacy, and Consular.)

So CA controls which FSOs get those FS jobs, domestic and overseas, which are designated as being Consular. Most of those will go to FSO whose "cone" is Consular, but some will go to FSOs seeking to work outside their own "cone" for whatever reason. Since every FSO spends at least a year (usually more like 2-3) doing consular work during their first two overseas assignments, it's not like they're coming to it cold even if it's not their official career track.

There isn't any other bureau within State which manages to do this for any of the remaining four career tracks, no matter what that bureau's name or responsibilities would suggest.

Second, is money. Mr. Van Buren's suggestion that consular work is a "cash cow" is not without merit. Some years ago a deal was struck whereby much of the money collected in consular fees (such as passport and visa fees) would stay with the Department of State rather than going directly to the Treasury Department's general revenue coffers.

By law, visa and other consular fees are adjusted on a regular basis to reflect the actual costs of providing those services, to the best of State's ability to account for them. But that includes a lot of salaries and other costs that would otherwise have to be included in budget requests and congressional appropriations. Maintaining the Department's ability to keep bringing in those dollars is not an insignificant issue.

"GAO says in its report that “Although the State Department is attempting to compensate by hiring retirees and placing current civil service employees in Foreign Service jobs, it ‘lacks a strategy to fill those gaps.’”

(State has 10,490 Civil Service employees and was only able to convert four employees to the Foreign Service. That’s a 0.03813 percent conversion rate to help bridge the gap, so much for that idea. Want another perspective? Here’s why some Civil Servants might pass on the chance to become FSOs.)."

Linking to The Skeptical Bureaucrat is always a good idea. More web logs should follow suit.

"State’s somnolent response to what should be a crisis call (anyone wish to speculate on what the response might be to a report that the military is understaffed by 36 percent at the senior levels?) tells the tale. It really doesn’t matter, and even State itself knows.

What vibrant it-really-matters institution could persist with staffing gaps over time as gaping as State’s? Seriously friends, if your organization can continue to mumble along with over one out of four slots un/underfilled, that kinda shows that you don’t matter much."

To put this into a more longterm perspective, staffing gaps this significant, if not larger, have existed since at least the end of the Cold War and the Clinton Administration, which bade us all to do more with less. The "Peace Dividend" as it was called.

As I heard K.T. McFarland say on the radio one morning, "you don't do more with less, you do less with less."

State had to come up with the staffing for all those new embassies within the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the Former Soviet Union (FSU). And they had to do it without adding a single new position.

State not only didn't add a single new position, for some years it failed to even hire enough new FSOs to make up for attrition.

So it attrited.

In some years, the Department didn't even administer the Foreign Service Written Examination (FSWE) since it had so many qualified candidates already sitting on their Register, waiting for "The Call."

That started to turn around when Colin Powell was secstate and he got Congress to provide funding for the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative (DRI). The DRI was supposed to hire above attrition, to make up for the years of not-particularly-benign neglect.

It was also intended to establish sufficient numbers of FSO above the number of positions needed to be filled that FSOs would be able to complete necessary training (like learning foreign languages) to do their jobs when they got there, without leaving the job positions vacant for too long.

This is known as a "training float."

Of course, 9/11 and the personnel staffing needs of wartime wiped out all that progress, and of the Diplomacy 2.0 follow-on to the DRI.

We're now in "Diplomacy 3.o" and there's no sign that we're all that closer to solving the problem.

"The most obvious sign of State’s irrelevance is the militarization of foreign policy. There really are more military band members than State Department Foreign Service Officers. The whole of the Foreign Service is smaller than the complement aboard one aircraft carrier. Despite the role that foreign affairs has always played in America’s drunken intercourse abroad, the State Department remains a very small part of the pageant. The Transportation Security Administration has about 58,000 employees; the State Department has about 22,000. The Department of Defense (DOD) has nearly 450,000 employees stationed overseas, with 2.5 million more in the US.

At the same time, Congress continues to hack away at State’s budget. The most recent round of bloodletting saw State lose some $8 billion while DOD gained another $5 billion. The found fiver at DOD will hardly be noticed in their overall budget of $671 billion. The $8 billion loss from State’s total of $47 billion will further cripple the organization. The pattern is familiar and has dogged State-DOD throughout the war of terror years. No more taxi vouchers and office supplies for you! What you do get for your money is the militarization of foreign policy." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"(T)he combatant commands are already the putative epicenters for security, diplomatic, humanitarian and commercial affairs in their regions. Local leaders receive them as powerful heads of state, with motorcades, honor guards and ceremonial feats. Their radiance obscures everything in its midst, including the authority of US ambassadors."

Combatant commanders (who used to be called "commanders-in-chief" until a stop was put to it; there can be only one CINC, after all) have a lot more money, people, and other resources than any single U.S. ambassador is likely, ever, to have on tap.

That matters.

Officially, a U.S. ambassador is the personal representative of the president and, in the country to which he (or she) is accredited ranks as the equivalent of a four-star general (or admiral).

Of course, the combatant commanders, who are four-star generals (and admirals) have that rank no matter where they may go.

"The increasing role of the military in America’s foreign relations sidelines State. The most likely American for a foreigner to encounter in most parts of the world now, for better or worse, carries a weapon and drives a tank."

That's why he's called the "strategic corporal."

"Lop off a quarter or so of the Foreign Service for Consular work, which hums by more or less independent of the rest of the State Department.

That leaves for the understaffed Department of State pretty much only the role of concierge. America’s VIPs and wanna be VIPs need their hands held, their security arranged, their motorcades organized and their Congressional visits’ hotels and receptions handled, all tasks that falls squarely on the Department of State and its embassies abroad. “Supporting” CODELS (Congressional Delegations’ visits to foreign lands) is a right of passage for State Department employees, and every Foreign Service Officer has his/her war stories to tell."

Consular work is one of the State Department's core missions, looking after the interests of our U.S. citizens abroad. So it's not something one needs to be apologizing after.

And CAA could tell you about the gang of drunken congressmen who poured off of their VIP flight..... but he won't.

_____

* Amb. Bolton's joke: "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference"

7/18

re: "Write or wrong?"

Steve at Dead Men Working had some sharp criticism of "We Meant Well" author/blogger and FSO Peter Van Buren.

Money quote(s):

"We have been following with interest the blogs and descriptions of the case of Peter Van Buren's book, and we must say, we are becoming increasingly disappointed.

When the case first arose, it seemed open and shut. Mr. Van Buren had written a book, sought Department of State approval, complied with the written procedures, then, after there was no objection during the mandatory time period, submitted it for publication. Months later, after the book was published, the State Department had decided to object, and had contacted the publisher behind Mr. Van Buren's back to accuse him of wrongdoing and ask that the book be recalled.

The State Department clearly looked to be in the wrong. The case raised a number of important issues about how the system worked - or did not. Van Buren looked like a person who had been wronged, and against whom there was a risk of illegal retaliation."

So Van Buren looked like the wronged party up to that point, and DS the black hats.

"Since the story broke, however, Mr. Van Buren has been blogging up a storm, using the media exposure to flog his book. And seizing, it would appear, every opportunity to, at the very least, push further the edge of the already-bursting envelope.

In doing so, he has raised real questions about his behavior and suitability, that have nothing to do with his book.

He has blogged, for example, about his improper refusal to participate fully in the investigation of which he is the subject, and about his refusal to identify his contacts - a requirement of all holders of government clearances.

And he has, apparently knowingly, published links to information which the government, for smart reasons or stupid ones, has toldemployees not to access.

And about how, now that his clearance is suspended (temporarily - while under investigation), he is will be frequenting that andother sites that publish classified materials. "

Brother Van Buren hasn't demonstrated much in the way of being a shy, retiring sort of fellow, nor, perhaps should he. After two tours in the sandbox, working on PRTs, he wrote his book, submitted it per procedures, and was being persecuted, perhaps, for his views despite the Department's failure to use its own publication clearance process in a timely manner.

And he's been howling, essentially, from the rooftops about it, he's that mad/angry.

So might you, perhaps.

CAA thinks Brother Van Buren has gone a bit overboard (for a serving FSO) more than once, such as his unnecessarily offensive characterizations of Sec. Clinton, but then, if they aren't going to treat him like a serving FSO, maybe that's to be expected.

Be sure to read Peter Van Buren's comments at the post cited above.

10/19

re: "Getting Embed with the Military"

Peter Van Buren at posted at Small Wars Journal blog (" facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field ") shared some lessons-learned from his time with an ePRT.

Money quote(s):

"As a Foreign Service Officer plucked from a cozy cubicle in Foggy Bottom and dropped into an embed situation with a succession of can-do Army units (3/82nd Airborne, 2/10thMountain and 1/3rd ID) with no military experience of my own, I had a lot of learning to do. In the end I practiced more diplomacy and cross-cultural skills inside the wire than outside. Of the many uncertainties of the next gasps of our foreign policy, one thing is certain: our future wars will continue to feature civilian-military combined efforts.

Getting along is not always easy; military personnel will always vastly out number (and out spend) civilians and so most of the adapting needs to happen on our side of the equation, not theirs."

Peter provided 19 "additional ideas" for those embedding with the military; CAA's best picks of those are the first four:

"1) Earn respect by being very good at whatever it is you are doing there. Don't expect second chances to move from the dumb ass to the useful category. Don't be a know it all either, especially if your knowledge is mostly book learning.

2) 0900 means be there no later than 0845. Don't operate on civilian time. If you're late for a movement, you'll be left behind, or worse, they'll wait for you. Don’t be late even though you know the movement will start late, as it often does.

3) If you are entitled to privileges beyond what the military gets, share if you are allowed (sat phone, laptop, movies, books) or keep quiet about it (booze).

4) Follow the rules even if you can get away with not following the rules. Shave, keep your hair cut, don't dress like a slob."

Read them all, especially #19:

"19) Special for fellow State Department heroes: don't ask officers to fetch coffee for you, don't wear bow ties, don't speak in passive-aggressive slights, don't complain when your shoes get dusty, don't wear white pants to the field, don't show up without a PowerPoint to briefings, don’t expect soldiers to make your PowerPoint slides for you, don't ask soldiers to take notes for you, don't talk about your next assignment to Paris, overall just don't be a weenie and make it harder on the rest of us."

9/26

re: "State Dept Throws Sink + All Fixtures But One to Fire FSO-Non Grata, Peter Van Buren"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("an obsessive compulsive observer, diplomatic watcher, and opinionator") had a good summary of Peter Van Buren's situation (as of March 19th).

Money quote(s):

"Perhaps it is comforting to some to hear that the State Department will finally get to penalize Mr. Van Buren for linking to two non-secret cables on WikiLeaks. But we gotta ask -- whatever happened to the 2010 Diplomatic Security investigation on the leak of two secret 2009 Eikenberry cables to the NYT in 2010?

Or for that matter, is anyone investigating the leak of Ambassador Crocker's top-secret cable to Washington in January this year, warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy.

Somebody really should check out the status of these investigations and see if anyone has been prosecuted yet. The public may get the wrong impression that linking to non-secret cables in a blog is more dangerous than the actual leaks of secret and top secret materials to the newspaper of record."

There're leaks, and then there are leaks. Different spanks for different ranks. Sometimes a leak is unofficially official, or perhaps just when it's to the New York Times, well, that's just okay then.

"The comment that we often hear is that, he should have done the honorable thing and resigned from his job before writing this book or before skewering his employer in his blog.

And we understand that sentiment; for the bureaucracy to “function,” it must have order. For order to exist, employees must follow the line and not be going off every which way. If employees disagree with a policy, there is what they call the “Dissent Channel,” to register one’s disagreement with official policy. As an aside, AFSA even gives out awards for what it calls “constructive dissent.” We have it in good authority, by the way, that Mr. Van Buren has been nominated by more than one person for AFSA’s William R. Rivkin Award for midlevel officials. Let’s see if AFSA can find an excuse not to give out the award this year.

In any case, it is worth noting that the State Department is not obligated to share the dissent received with the American public, nor is it obligated to report what action it takes in response to such a dissent. If that fails, resignation from one’s job has been the accepted course of action, a norm drilled into the heads of our State Department folks."

Diplopundit has an entire post, dedicated to how the AFSA creative dissent awards turned out this year.

"While we understand what appears to be a prevailing collective desire that the employee who disagrees with policy leave in polite terms, we are wondering if the time has come to rethink that. Getting off the bus quietly is encouraged in that culture, and presumably from the perspective of the organization that’s the best course of action. It avoids controversy and the parties can pretend the separation is like a marriage that no longer works, etc — but is this necessarily good for the paying public? Should the employees ought to just be thankful they have a job and keep quiet? And for those who can’t keep quiet for whatever reason, must they give up their livelihood for pointing out the stinky elephant in the room?"

All good questions and ones going to the heart of the Foreign Service corporate culture.

"Instead of taking this case seriously as a good excuse to look inward and review the policy of reconstruction in war zones, and absent a change of direction, develop more effective metrics and accountability for these projects, the State Department took its fight to the messenger. And wasted time and resources there."

CAA hasn't read Brother Van Buren's book. CAA may never read his book. Not that it's an unworthy book, but.... while CAA's heart may feel that the work of PRTs and E-PRTs was/is good, worthy, and well-intended, CAA's mind has told him from the beginning of GW2 (Gulf War II) that the U.S. was never going to stay long enough, in either Iraq or Afghanistan, for nation-building (as such) to do much good in the long run.

So the money (and the lives) spent were going to go towards buying only temporary successes.

Now, there's a school of thought that posits things like good and evil, success and failure, if they're going to be measures or used as any sort of metric, must be matrixed against time or duration for them to have any sort of useful meaning.

So some temporary success, some lives improved (if only for a few years) are not things to be scoffed-at or disregarded; but they're going to be analyzed against dollars and cents they must include their duration as well.

"The State Department spends much money and effort to recruit and train the “best and the brightest” to represent America overseas, then proceeds to hammer and shape them into, I’m sorry to say, drones, who follow directions, not create waves and most importantly, whose stingers are without barbs."

CAA exists. Ponder that.

Diplopundit closes with a thoughtful question:

"I’m sure the State Department can argue that “enforcing” the rules, however selectively, is done to promote the proper functioning of the Service. But should the proper functioning of the Service trumps everything else? Whether you agree with Mr. Van Buren’s message or not, his method of delivery or not, his case has created a precedent. Throwing the sink and all fixtures at him would help ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. I suspect that would be good for the State Department. Order restored. Life goes on.

But are we, the American public better served?"

3/19

re: "My New York Times Mini Op-Ed'

Peter Van Buren at We Meant Well ("How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People") shared some observations and predictions.

Money quote(s):

"The State Department’s reduction of staff in Iraq is the final act of the American invasion. The war is now really over.

The U.S. has finally acknowledged that Iraq is not its most important foreign policy story."

This is due to a couple-three factors.

First, the change in administrations. The Bush administration made the invasion and reconstruction effort in Iraq a national priority or mission. That national priority or mission drove things like causing Iraq embassy and PRT personnel requirements to, along with similar requirements in Afghanistan (and, to a degree, Pakistan) drive the Foreign Service's human resources engine.

As CAA predicted before the CPA was ever replaced by an actual U.S. embassy mission, Iraq was going to be the tail that wagged our assignments system dog. For better or worse.

The U.S. post-war reconstruction and security effort in Iraq, as of January 2009, became the Obama administration's war to lose.

Second, and deriving from the first, with the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, what media attention still focused there has dissipated. Until such time as things really go south, and the networks can get footage of helicopters lifting U.S. diplomats from the embassy's rooftops, that not really going to change.

"(O)nly days after the U.S. military withdrawal, the world’s largest embassy watched helplessly as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki tried to arrest his own vice president, who fled to Kurdistan where Iraqi government forces are powerless to intervene."

What's that saying about history repeating itself as farce?

In any case, this episode alone makes the prognostications of others, such as Vice President Biden if I recall correctly, about Iraq best becoming three separate countries, a lot less risible. Likewise for the post-pandemic predictions of John Ringo.

"The U.S. has finally acknowledged that Iraq is not its most important foreign policy story, and that America’s diplomats cannot survive on their own in the middle of a civil war. The embassy will eventually shrink to the small-to-medium scale that Iraq requires (think Turkey or Jordan). America’s relationship will wither into the same uneasy state of half-antagonistic, half-opportunistic status that we enjoy with the other autocrats in the Middle East. Maliki will continue to expertly play the U.S. off the Iranians and vice versa. U.S. military sales and oil purchases will assure him the soft landing someday of a medical visa to the United States à la Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, and not the sanctioned disposal awaiting Bashar al-Assad of Syria."

The prediction piece of Brother Van Buren's article could do with some un-packing. Frankly, the second part of the first sentence is simply not so. The U.S. continues, in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, to a degree, Pakistan) to expect our diplomats to "survive on their own in the middle of a civil war." They just do. I can't explain it.

2/11

re: "State Department Fibs About Camp Liberty and MEK"

Peter Van Buren at We Meant Well ("How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People") has been following the PMOI situation at Camp Liberty.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he US and the UN brokered a deal to move the MEK people from their unsafe and politically volatile Camp Ashraf location to the old US Camp Liberty, where the UN would supposedly process them as refugees. As part of the deal, the US would monitor conditions at Camp Liberty to ensure the MEK were treated well."

So far so good.

"It seemed reasonable for diplomats to make the 45 minutes trip out to Camp Liberty once in awhile, in that the World’s Largest Embassy (c) comes with the World’s Largest price tag, some $3.8 billion (about $2.5 billion of that is for security) a year in operating costs, about a fourth of all State’s yearly costs. The idea of US diplomats visiting MEK completes the circle: the US Dips will be surrounded by massive security to protect them from the Iraqis the US liberated while at the same time using their own presence to protect the MEKs from the liberated Iraqis."

This, by at least some reports, isn't what's happened. According to a report by Allan Gerson (who's got some credibility), the facilities at the former Camp Liberty, for whatever reason, aren't in the sort of shape they would have been when it was a functioning U.S. base.

2/24

re: "Counterinsurgency is not peeing on people…"

Peter Van Buren at We Meant Well ("How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People") rated this event as unhelpful to the counterinsurgency mission.

Money quote(s):

"The world is awash in urine-soaked statements by various idiots defending the Marines who peed on the bodies of dead Taliban. The defense is either a) the Taliban deserved it because they are our enemies or b) well, the Taliban have done worse things to us."

Just because the two defenses are completely true doesn't make them useful.

"The Taliban aren’t fighting a counterinsurgency war.

We are.

We are the invading foreigners trying to win the support of the people. Pissing on them is not a good way to do that.

This is part of the whole losing proposition of such war– we have to get it right (almost) all the time to have a shot at winning."

And therein lies the rub.

Dave Schuler addresses the root of this problem here. Take a few minutes and give it a look.

(CAA will still be here when you get back.)

_____

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Okay, back yet?

In the corporate world, in any business, you start with the basic question: what business are we in?

Sounds silly, doesn't it?

(It's not.)

It's the reason that lots of corporations (and government entities) have things called "mission statements." They're a good touchstone for determining if something you're considering attempting is something you should be attempting.

In questions of strategy, you face similar questions. What are our goals? What is the end-state we would like to see? What instruments of national power and influence can be brought to bear in support of this mission?

Mr. Schuler believes what CAA has long suspected: nation-building (and the related mission of counter-insurgency) in Afghanistan is not what the U.S. should have attempted there.

So while Brother Van Buren's points about the marine micturition incident (MMI) are on-point and well-taken, they may miss the larger targets. Indeed, much of U.S. policy over the past decade-plus may have done so.

1/13

re: "State Department Fixing the Facts Based on Policy"

Say or think what you want about Peter Van Buren 's wisdom in tilting at State Dept.'s windmills, at We Meant Well ("How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts And Minds of the Iraqi People") he made some on-target points about AmEmb Baghdad.

Money quote(s):

"The State Department can often times be so inward looking that it fixes the facts based on the policy need, making reality fit the vision whether that naughty reality wants to or not. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it can be tragic."

There is an institutional tendency at State to, as someone in the military might say, "fake it 'til you make it." Just keep talking the talk, and walking the walk, and perhaps others will follow.

(Other institutional tendencies include what I call "the full employment for ambassadors program" of opening or re-opening missions that we probably ought not, or at least not yet. Another is a forward-leaning bias towards making an agreement, signing a treaty, any agreement or any treaty, just to have something signed and on paper, irrespective of how good a deal it might be for the U.S.)

"(A)s the State Department rushes to replace all of the military support it needs to exist in still-dangerous Iraq without the Army, there are fears that the warping of reality may indeed endanger lives in Baghdad."

Brother Van Buren posted this in December (my apologies for the time-delay) so the previously-mentioned military support has vaporized. Gone. Pined for the fjords.

"Currently every item of food for the Embassy, from sides of beef to baby carrots, is procured in “safe” Kuwait and convoyed up to Baghdad. It is an expensive system, one that occasionally even entails the loss of life protecting boxes of Raisin Bran, but it has ensured the safety and cleanliness of the food for almost nine years.

The State Department, facing the crazy costs of this system without the nearly bottomless budget of the Defense Department, is once again swaying the facts to fit the policy. Undersecretary for Management Pat Kennedy told Congress in mid-November that seeking to cut costs in Iraq, State is looking to locally purchase some of the food its personnel will eat, breaking with the U.S. military’s practice of importing. Nothing has changed on the ground vis-a-vis food security, but to save money, State is warping that reality to fit its own needs."

Regular readers will note that this developing situation has already born somewhat bitter fruit (or lettuce) in terms of a tightening stranglehold on our Baghdad mission's logistics and support.

"Much has been made of State’s plan to hire over 5500 mercenaries as security guards for its Iraq-bound diplomats. However, while numbers do matter, the skills that those merc possess matter more. Currently in Iraq, with the US Army in place, a State Department convoy ambushed can call on a QRF, an Army quick reaction force. On standby 24/7, these soldiers are literally the cavalry that rides in to save the day."

"(M)ercenaries" is a bit of a loaded/pejorative term, which I believe is Br. Van Buren's intent. While technically correct on some levels, they might more accurately be called "auxiliaries" if the official terminology of "security contractor" seems to euphemistic.

That being said, he's quite correct in his larger point.

"There remain other concerns harder to nail down in an unclassified environment — security at the Baghdad Airport once control leaves U.S. hands, availability of a blood supply (another contractor, who will have to create a logistics schema with the Armed Services Blood Program) and proper trauma care for the diplomats (yet another contractor), particularly should someone suffer the horrific burns now too common in IED attacks. Under the military system, even during an attack, an injured soldier would receive first aid from a trained buddy, be helicopter evacuated from the site within minutes, stabilized at a specialized trauma unit and on a med flight to a hospital in Germany within an hour or two. While the danger on the ground in Iraq will remain the same (if not more dangerous given the lack of American troop presence), State in no way will be able to replicate the vast resources the military can bring to bear."

Allowing for the OBE ("overcome by events") nature of his observation (which is my fault, not his), these are all potentially fatal (and I mean that quite literally) vulnerabilities of our diplomatic mission in Iraq.

Whatever you might personally think of the wisdom of current (or past) U.S. policies in Iraq or of just how good an idea it is to have an embassy of this (or any) size there, or your possibly prejudiced views about diplomats in general, the ground truth there is that the U.S. has stationed civilian personnel overseas on its behalf, on your behalf, to be about America's business. The diplomats and other staff assigned in Baghdad (and other places in Iraq) are there because our elected government determined they must be there.

"State’s responses have been weak. Can’t travel safely outside the Green Zone? “The Embassy will attempt to mitigate the loss of tactical intelligence by establishing closer working relationships with the Government of Iraq.” Although Embassy medical plans do not currently include the capability for handling a mass casualty event, Embassy officials magic-wanded the problem away by stating that “even the US military’s current combat support hospital can be overwhelmed by a large enough number of casualties.” Meanwhile, State “will continue to explore possibilities for mitigating the impact of a mass casualty event.”

In other words, again the policy seems to be warping the reality on the ground. Only this time, it’s not politics, it’s personal, or maybe, without irony, personnel, at stake."

12/7