Living in a Dream World
RUBIN, MICHAEL
Living in a Dream World The political fantasies of foreign service officers. BY MICHAEL RUBIN As pundits begin to write their obituaries of the Bush presidency, much ink will be spilled over...
...For Cubans, interaction with USINT officials can bring unwanted attention from an omnipresent state security apparatus dedicated to squelching all potential opposition...
...BY MICHAEL RUBIN As pundits begin to write their obituaries of the Bush presidency, much ink will be spilled over foreign policy...
...Ah yes, things were great for the Armenians under Soviet rule...
...Others less so: “Oman is a strong ally in the global war on terror,” wrote the U.S...
...embassies in Chad, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are content to interact only with governmentapproved interlocutors or government-operated NGOs, the diplomats in Havana recognize the diffi culties ordinary Cubans face in meeting them...
...embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, writes that “What’s been billed as ‘the best place in South Asia to live’ is also the site of a brutal 20-year war that’s left approximately 64,000 dead...
...And if North Korea gave its people freedom and embraced democracy, it could be as successful as South Korea...
...Things are likewise looking up in Africa...
...Perhaps this is why the writer concludes that “Lesotho has the potential of becoming a model in Africa during the 21st century...
...Less great...
...It would be interesting to know how...
...Still, “if Sri Lanka could settle its confl ict peacefully, it could be a model for the region and the world...
...The essays would make local tourism boards proud, but they also provide a mirror into the alternate universe inhabited by all too many U.S...
...Presidents come and presidents go, but the labor union that manages foreign relations is forever...
...Here’s a classic from the June 2004 State: The economic-commercial offi cer at the U.S...
...Housing for diplomats under communism...
...Perhaps we could discuss this over pizza some day, should we ever meet in Ulan Bator...
...In October 2001, the wife of a security offi cer in Bangladesh wrote, “Another benefi t of living in Bangladesh is its proximity to other fascinating lands...
...Perhaps, but it was not itinerant preachers that built the King Fahd Bridge, the main crossing point over the Niger river in the capital, Bamako...
...diplomat in Havana has long meant living under diffi cult circumstances,” they wrote in a stunningly honest October 2007 essay...
...Being a U.S...
...Radical Islam too often causes our U.S...
...Diplomats there, we learn, can even enjoy pizza delivery...
...If our diplomats are tickled by the camaraderie of the Global War on Terror, they are less enthused by George W. Bush’s freedom agenda...
...Meanwhile, “Transition is the best word to describe Angola today: transition from war to peace, from humanitarian assistance to development, from trailers to a new $40 million chancery,” writes the political offi cer in nearby Luanda in September 2004...
...Not all in State is fl uff, though...
...While the U.S...
...diplomats...
...Interests Section] spaces, vehicles and homes mean one can never escape Cuban government scrutiny...
...Less on the reaching out to those on the outs with the government of Egypt, including independent civil society organizations, proponents of (now canceled) municipal elections, free political parties, and an impartial judiciary...
...That same year, Muscat voted with the United States at the United Nations 9 percent of the time...
...embassy in Tripoli puts Foggy Bottom’s struggle with democracy promotion more eloquently: “Promoting democracy in Libya is the work of a generation,” he wrote in a March 2007 essay...
...Like the crucified in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, they are in a quest requiring that they always look on the bright side of life: In a February 2007 feature on Cambodia, the family member of a diplomat noted that “Cambodia is enjoying a measure of peace and stability it has not seen in more than a generation”— a low hurdle, if ever there was one...
...Azerbaijan gave the United States its unqualifi ed support in the wake of September 11 and offered assistance to U.S...
...government’s sole non-fraternization post...
...Washington has always been a place where down is up, but nowhere is the world quite so inverted as at the State Department...
...Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Some of us remember good old Angola, playground of the Cold War, scene of horrendous battles between the Soviet-backed MPLA and the U.S.-backed UNITA, as a place where regime opponents were executed and elections routinely stolen...
...Each issue highlights a “post of the month” in which diplomats describe their home away from home...
...Too bad that the average Lesothan, because of AIDS, does not live past 40...
...To listen to U.S...
...Happily, “in practice, professional women are on equal footing with male colleagues...
...In February 2006, for example, the public affairs offi cer at the U.S...
...That Ronald Reagan: He failed to understand that those Cuban troops and their Russian advisers were merely helping the Marxist president “[fi ght] off coup attempts...
...The public affairs officer at the U.S...
...policy goals in Africa such as promoting democratic values, free market economies, and health...
...The pervasive intelligence-gathering effort directed at USINT has garnered Havana the dubious honor of being the U.S...
...Interests Section in Havana, did not gloss over the diffi culty of life in Cuba...
...As always, the victors will pen the history...
...Take Mongolia: “Until 2002, embassy staffers lived mainly in a Communist-era apartment block near the chancery affectionately known as ‘Faulty Towers.’ Today, almost all staff members live in Czech-designed townhouses or apartments in a modern, gated housing compound 15 minutes from the embassy,” the political and public affairs offi cer wrote in a June 2007 feature...
...efforts against international terrorism,” wrote two diplomats in March 2003...
...And in the case of the Bush administration, those victors are the permanent bureaucracy at the State Department—the Foreign Service...
...The State Department’s in-house magazine, State, records the sheer inanity that is a staple of Foreign Service thinking...
...Mission to Egypt reaches out to the Egyptian people to advance peace, democracy, and prosperity . . . through a variety of programs with the government of Egypt and Egypt’s growing civil society...
...Likewise, itinerant preachers did not build the Muammar Qaddafi Islamic Center, Bamako’s largest mosque...
...Others fl ail a bit when it comes to meting out praise...
...Ram?n Negr?n and John Vance, respectively the political-economic offi cer and public affairs offi cer at the U.S...
...diplomats posted abroad, almost every country is a trusted ally in the war on terror...
...Tunisia, a police state that rivals Libya for lack of political freedom is, in the assessment of the community liaison offi cer there, “standing on the brink of becoming a modern, First World nation...
...embassy in Maseru opined that “Lesotho is a good fi t with U.S...
...diplomatic rhetoricians to avert their eyes...
...Negr?n and Vance: You seem to be honorable exceptions to the rule...
...Not all State’s correspondents are enamored of smoke and mirrors, nor are all diplomats willing to apologize for autocracies...
...Something like the benefi ts of living in New Jersey—so close to New York...
...Certain diplomats evince a strange nostalgia: “Armenia was once considered the Silicon Valley of the Soviet Union, providing advanced avionics for Soviet aircraft and supercomputers,” the public affairs offi cer in Yerevan explained in February 2005...
...But not our political offi cer...
...embassy in Mali, an impoverished democracy, airbrushes its growing problem with intolerant Islamism: “Mali’s moderate Islam also serves to dilute the harsh rhetoric of fundamental Islam that is spread by itinerant preachers,” he wrote in April 2003...
...Perhaps peace would have come earlier, he notes, had not “the Reagan administration supported those opposed to the communistled MPLA, making Angola a major Cold War battlefi eld...
...Indeed...
...The public affairs offi cer at the new U.S...
...While American forces fight wars in Afghan mountains and Iraqi deserts, train counterterror troops in Philippine jungles, and stare down North Korean soldiers across the Demilitarized Zone, Foggy Bottom remains as removed from reality as Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and Laputa ever were...
...embassy in Cairo boast that, “The U.S...
...Some are truthful...
...The bearers of the American standard are vigilant for democratic progress...
...Yes, Cambodia is in the bottom tier of Freedom House rankings, but “criminal charges were dropped against some political opponents...
...Some pay lip service to the notion: Diplomats at the U.S...
...Too bad, also, that “married women are considered legal minors” by law...
...And the beauties of moderate Islam cannot hold a candle to our many, many allies in the Global War on Terrorism...
...Messrs...
...Listening devices in all USINT [U.S...
...Somehow you have managed to avoid the blinders worn by so many of your colleagues...
...ambassador there in January 2005...
Vol. 13 • January 2007 • No. 18
