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.)

Ping

Just to be clear, CAA is not dead, injured, committed to an asylum, nor otherwise being held incommunicado.

Nor have the Tigers (or Black Dragons) eaten me.

CAA has been the victim of a horrible plot to "upgrade" my Blogger/Blogspot experience.

Oh joy.  My "experience" is now so upgraded that I'm seriously considering giving up on the whole thing entirely.

In other news, there's been lots of goings-on ongoing in CAA's world.  Which is your world, come to think of it.  So you likely have heard all about most of it.

There are many conflicting reports about the events of this year's 9/11 attacks.  Which is what I'm calling them.  Because that's what they were.

CAA has no special knowledge of those events, privileged or otherwise.  CAA's clearances and accesses simply don't run to those areas these days.  So if I opine just a bit, it's not like I'll be betraying any confidences.

So if, between my cranky home computer and this annoying-as-Hell "upgrade, I can manage to sketch out a more topical post, well, don't hold your breath.

Marking 9/11

CAA's observances of the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 began much like that fateful day itself. It was a normal, pleasant, sunny September day in Washington begun with the usual morning routine and ablutions, followed by a fairly typical commute involving sluggish traffic and/or crowded Metrorail cars.

That day, as did today, a brand-spanking-new A-100 class had just commenced the day before at the Foreign Service Institute: the 169th today and the 104th back in 2001. So the not-particularly-cloistered hallways and common spaces, not to mention the over-burdened parking lot and cafeteria, at the Schultz Center were clogged with the shiny, smiling faces of the newly-annointed.

By the end of today's workday, reports from two of our Middle Eastern posts, in Libya and in Egypt, would bring news of angry mobs, damaged or looted buildings, and casualties.

Back on that fateful day, the trouble came much closer to home.

Even at this decade-plus remove, it is still difficult to put the 9/11 attacks into a bloodless, intellectual perspective. It's just too soon, the wounds are perhaps scabbed or scarred over but remain all too fresh.

So we remember our fallen, remember that many of them did not fall but had to jump to their deaths rather than burn alive, and are thankful for the many who survived. We remember the fire fighters and other first-responders, the police, the veterans-turned-private-citizens, and the passengers and crew of Flight 93 and while we mourn their loss we also celebrate their sacrifice and count ourself fortunate that such men and women yet live among us.

We also look at the last eleven years and marvel at the hundreds of thousands of American and allied soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and others who rallied to their colors and fought (and still fight) the wars their countries asked them to fight. CAA will take quiet (okay, sometimes not-so-quiet) pride in having once been among their number.

Are there lessons we should have learned from our experiences of the last 11 years? Almost certainly. But today the lesson that's over-shadowed my every interaction has been rage.

CAA isn't done being angry. While that's undoubtedly a huge personal failing on my part and something I should pray upon to Jesus most sincerely, it's not simply that I'm stuck somewhere between denial, grief, and acceptance. There's a bit more there that the subconscious is trying to get the intellect to comprehend.

America's enemies are still trying to hurt, humiliate, and if they can manage it, kill us. That much is clear.

What's also clear is that our enemies have a really hard time managing that anywhere close to our home shores and cities. Our enemies best efforts seem to be possible only in those places where we're trying to make nice with Janus-faced local government whose most impressive accomplishments seem to be their marvelously exact calculation of just how much mayhem they can plausibly get away with perpetrating against us.

CAA reads the news every day and wonders how anyone not blindered by wishful thinking can imagine the war is over yet. That's yet another reason he's so angry today.