Foreign Service Family

The latest figures I’ve seen show State Dept. as having 16,631 Civil Service (i.e., GS or “General Schedule” and Senior Executive Service or SES) employees, 44,764 Locally-Engaged Staff (i.e., what used to be called “Foreign Service Nationals,”) who are predominantly foreign nationals but also FS family members employed at our missions overseas, and only 13,636 Foreign Service staff members, including both Foreign Service Specialists (FSS) and “Generalists.”

The Foreign Service is a very small corps, overall.  It’s been said, truthfully, in this and other fora that there are more Army bandsmen than U.S. diplomats, more military lawyers in the Pentagon, &tc.

Looked at through the other end of the telescope, it’s also something of a very large extended family.  We’re pretty spread out, it’s true, but we get our orientation, language, and professional training in the same place, through the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) at Arlington Hall.  Then we work in widely dispersed locations around the world or across the country, oftentimes living in the same buildings or on the same residential compounds with our co-workers (with your kids going to the same schools) before winging back to D.C. to work at “Main State” in Foggy Bottom (near the GWU campus) or one of the various State Annex facilities scattered around Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

After awhile, the “degrees of separation” narrow down pretty far, so that if you don’t know someone in the Foreign Service personally, from having worked or trained with them, chances are pretty good that someone you have worked or trained with has worked or trained with them.  Or your spouse has.

So when something like Benghazi happens, where a senior foreign service officer/ambassador like Chris Stevens is killed, along with a long-time Information Management Officer (IMO) like Sean Smith and two of our contract employees, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, it hits home.  It’s like four of your fellow citizens in small hometown were suddenly murdered.

There’s a sudden and visceral impact, something like hearing of casualties from another military unit within the same division.  You might not have known them yourself, but you know you’ve walked the same hallways, sat in the same classrooms, and have similar missions facing similar dangers.

Another of those factoids that comes up from time to time is how there have been more ambassadors killed in the line of duty, since World War II, than general officers or admirals.  That remains true.

(One columnist or commenter, I forget where, voiced the criticism that if, in a decade of warfare, not a single general has been killed, our senior military leaders are leading from too far behind.)

Much of Main State emptied out, apparently, in order to be bused to Andrews AFB for attendance at a sort of ceremonial or memorial reception of the four caskets containing our fallen diplomats.   It was pretty well-attended, by all accounts, although marred somewhat by the behavior of those who simply had, in contravention of their instructions, to raise their arms in a sort of fascist salute as they took cell phone pictures.

(And don’t quibble with about whether our two ex-SEAL colleagues count as diplomats.  If they were part of our diplomatic mission in Libya, that’s good enough for me.)

re: "Why we honor some with half-staff flags and not others."

Chuck at From My Position.... On The Way! ("Life and Observations from the Pointy End of the Spear") posted an explanation for those who don't already know.

Money quote(s):

"We fly the flag at half-staff every memorial day, from sunrise to noon, to honor those who've fallen. To honor ALL of those who've fallen. "

8/10

re: "More on Biden and His Fat Mouth"

Patterico at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense") is unimpressed by dangerous buffoonery in high office.

Money quote(s):

"The other day I noted how Joe Biden had run his mouth about who killed bin Laden, putting SEAL Team 6 at risk. I said: “there is no way to know whether this was an orchestrated ambush targeting Team 6. But it is an important reminder why it’s not just comedy relief to have cynical glory-seekers and complete buffoons at the highest levels of government.”

Well, the possibility of an orchestrated ambush looks much more likely — as an Afghan official tells the press that’s exactly what happened"

Among professionals, the heart of what makes intelligence information classifiable (i.e., secret, top secret, or confidential) is whether it discloses sources and methods. On the military side, this means not disclosing or publicizing information which reveals to the enemy that which the enemy can use against you. Operational details, procedures, capabilities; if it's public, it gets play. Somewhere. And if it's public somewhere, it's public everywhere. The information superhighway has off-ramps into some very bad neighborhoods, after all.

"In other words, a Taliban no doubt incensed at bin Laden’s death set up an ambush designed to target exactly the sort of forces that would respond to a report of high value targets.

Did the families fear this? You betcha."

Military families have, as they say, "skin in the game." They have an acute appreciation of their loved one's vulnerabilities to this sort of exploitation operation.

"When morons like Biden run their mouths, they put good men at risk. When the Obama administration decided to release all the information about who killed bin Laden, they put good men at risk."

This is why I hate working with amateurs.

(8/6)

re: "Do Victory Laps and Spiking the Football outweigh Operational (and Personal) Security?"

Jeff Emanuel at Redstate ("the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill") considers the Tourette's Syndrome approach to OPSEC.

Money quote(s):

"Shut up about the SEALs already, please"

Excellent advice. Here's why:

"While the information being reported by various media outlets and individuals has often missed the accuracy bulls-eye by quite a bit (yet again demonstrating that life imitates the Onion), enough accurate-ish information has apparently been revealed to the public by the usual suspects - the administration and those members of Congress who hold security clearances because of the voters’ actions rather than for any personal character qualities they may actually possess - that some units within, and affiliated with, JSOC are reportedly being forced to consider adapting their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) — not to mention the fact that some operators are now concerned for the safety of their families (more on this later).

Joint Special Operations Command is the umbrella under which “black SOF” falls. This does not mean that every individual within the command is a secret agent or Chuck Norris-like commando; however, it does mean three things: (1) the organization, its people, and those it aligns itself with for mission and intelligence purposes conduct operations which are of particular importance to the national security of the United States, and therefore are of particular sensitivity; (2) its members utilize specific procedures and equipment which are highly specific to the types of missions they undertake (and which can therefore be outside the norm of conventional military procedures and equipment, or even of those utilized by “white SOF” units); and (3) due to the former two points, the equipment used by JSOC units and those with which they work, the TTPs employed by them, and the identities of the operators themselves are sensitive to excessive sunlight. In other words, of all the military units the United States has, JSOC is perhaps the one most damaged by public attention being paid to its equipment, its TTPs, and its personnel."

Newsflash: CAA is not now nor has he ever been assigned or attached to a JSOC unit. But the principles of operational security (OPSEC) which underly this are the same ones which applied to our MI units operating in OIF1.

"The high-profile nature of the target made it virtually impossible not to acknowledge the success of this particular mission or to provide some details regarding how, and by whom, it was accomplished. However, the Obama administration’s tourette’s-like insistence on telling the press whatever version of the operational story they felt like giving at that time or on that day (before they decided not to say anything any more), in tandem with the president’s own insistence on reinforcing his narrative of the “gutsy call” that resulted in bin Laden’s death at fundraisers and through media surrogates, have demonstrated that OPSEC and the safety of America’s premier special operators and their families are far less important to the Commander in Chief and his administration than taking so many victory laps and spiking the football with such frequency and repetition that it’s a wonder Obama himself hasn’t coughed up a (redacted) lung yet while simultaneously deflating the prop football he’s been handed for this purpose."

&

"(A)dapting to a changing battlefield environment and a changing enemy is one thing; being forced to adapt because members of your own government - particularly those who see one successful mission as a silver bullet to be used in a reelection campaign, and to enact a comprehensive and completely unrelated agenda - couldn’t keep their traps shut about sensitive information."

re: "Pirates as plunder"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") opines on options for anti-piracy operations.

Money quote(s):

"We have been letting the pirates run the ocean for too damn long. Our occasional feats of brilliance, like when the SEALs wished the Maersk hijackers a Happy Easter, are brutally overshadowed by episodes like the recent slaughter of four Americans while we motored along behind them, and the more recent capture of seven Danes. We have had a few successes trying these wankers either in African courts or bringing them to the US, but both of those plans are full of holes. Kenya decided they didn't want to be our trash disposal service and for most of these Somalis, US prison would be a Shangri La."

This is a real problem. Naturally enough, Americans assume that sending someone to prison is a bad thing for them. However, in the Somalian paradigm, it's an improvement.

(Ironically, the same often holds true for female suicide bombers. But I digress.)

"I am not holding my breath that our government is going to unleash the SEALs of War against these parasites, it goes against too many diplomatic and international niceties for our timid leaders. You would think this is the simplest of problems and custom-built for one of these trans-national collections of tea-sippping, petit-four nibbling, meddlers telling formal lies in formal wear. I mean if we can't agree that piracy is a scourge and all necessary means should be employed to stop it, then WTF good are these groups? I answer my own question." (Typeface not bolded in original. - CAA.)

&

"We have quite a few well informed, experienced folks around here who think that Congress ought to be cranking out a few Letters of Marque for pirate hunting."

I recommend to (both) my readers Tom Kratman's new military adventure "Countdown: The Liberators." The (good) colonel's fictionalized account of how to effect a hostage rescue permits considerable insight into the conditions and mentalities of our pirate adversaries.