State Department Employee In Iraq Criticizes “Overwrought” Colleagues Who Won’t Deploy
Good stuff from Foreign Service Officer John Matel who is currently stationed in Iraq, and on the official State Department blog no less:
I will not repeat what the Marines say when I bring up this subject. I tell them that most FSOs are not wimps and weenies. I will not share this article with them and I hope they do not see it. How could I explain this wailing and gnashing of teeth? I just tried to explain it to one of my PRT members, a reserve LtCol called up to serve in Iraq . She asked me if all FSOs would get the R&R, extra pay etc. and if it was our job to do things like this. When I answered in the affirmative, she just rolled her eyes.
Calling Iraq a death sentence is just way over the top. I volunteered to come here aware of the risks but confident that I will come safely home, as do the vast majority of soldiers and Marines, who have a lot riskier jobs than we FSOs do.
That last point is a great one. Over zealous critics of the war are fond of referring to Iraq with terms like “meat grinder” and “bloodbath.” But in reality, as FSO Matel points out, the vast majority of soldiers and officials deployed to Iraq come back just fine.
But I think the real issue here isn’t so much an “overwrought” objection to the danger in Iraq as an objection to the Bush administration’s policies surrounding the war. After all, I can’t imagine a State Department FSO refusing an assignment to, say, Darfur which is likely every bit as dangerous as an assignment in Baghdad is. The problem is that these State Department bureaucrats are working for the executive branch, thus their job is to apply the policies of the President.
To be honest, what these folks should really do is either go to Iraq and do the jobs they signed up for or resign. But most of them are probably too cowardly to leave their cushy government jobs over an objection to the current President’s policies. So they’ll whine about the danger instead.
