WP - "Five myths about the Foreign Service"

Retired FSO Leon Weintraub addresses some of the most-popular fallacies of the U.S. Foreign Service for the readers of The Washington Post.  He nails it.

Some tidbits:

"(D)iplomats who represent the United States government and help U.S. citizens abroad, have long been the target of jibes from lawmakers, pundits and the public. Often portrayed in films as elitist dilettantes"

It's a stereotype.  Most people will never meet one of their country's diplomats so they'll never know the difference between the portrayal and the reality.  After all, diplomats tend to be working overseas about two-thirds of the time and the rest of the time they're likely to be working in the D.C. area.  Only a relative few will, at any given time, be consular officers working at one of the passport centers or, if they are Diplomatic Security agents, at a field or resident office somewhere around the country.

"There was a time when members of the Foreign Service almost exclusively came from well-heeled families of American patrician society and were educated in one of the Ivy League bastions of privilege, part of an “old boys’ ” network (sarcastically referred to as “pale, male, and Yale”).
These days, though, Foreign Service officers look like America. They come from every state, from rural and small-town as well as urban areas, and from state and small private colleges as well as the Ivy League."

Nowadays, the old-money Northeast establishment WASPs don't much go in for public service at the working level.  There are a few still around, bless them, quietly living way below their means; you won't even know they're there!  But that demographic tends to show up later and higher up the ladder as political appointees if they're interested in diplomacy at all.

"Gingrich suggested in Foreign Policy in 2003 that President George W. Bush’s State Department was purposefully undermining his objectives abroad. But this mistrust mistakes specialized knowledge, which may not reflect what administrations believe, with rogue agendas.

Like military officers, Foreign Service officers have commissions from the president and take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. We serve the president elected by the people of the United States, as well as the officials appointed and confirmed to help formulate and execute our country’s foreign policy and international relations.

We also, however, are responsible for advising the secretary of state or the president when we believe differently than they do, especially when it comes to advancing the nation’s best interests."

FSOs take that oath seriously.  They enter the Service smarter than the average picnic basket, with nice diplomas from lots of different schools (Go State!), buckle-down to learn obscure (and not-so-obscure) languages before going forth to mostly un-glamorous locales to perform often unpleasant duties (morgue visit anyone?).  When they disagree with a particular administration's world-view, strategic vision, or foreign policy goals, it's not out of disloyalty to the country but quite the opposite.  The marvelous thing is how few, from administration to administration, actually throw up their hands, say they just can't do it, and resign.  Most put their shoulders to the wheel and do their level best to make the policy-maker's policies work.

Read the whole thing.