MY FIRST OF MANY SUPER BOWLS
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Correspondence LETTERS OF STATE IN MICHAEL RUBIN’s article “Living in a Dream World” (January 21), the author cherry-picks a few comments drawn from the “Post of the Month” feature in...
...In today’s Foreign Service, the majority of our employees assigned overseas serve at diffi cult posts, including Khartoum where two outstanding USAID employees were recently brutally murdered...
...In 2004, I was recruited from my law fi rm to serve in an experimental unit of the State Department called the Afghanistan Reconstruction Group (ARG...
...AMB...
...It is the dysfunctional structure of the department...
...MICHAEL RUBIN’S ARTICLE on the State Department accurately describes the broken nature of the State Department, but it is not the individuals themselves who are the problem...
...I spend most of my time writing cables back to Washington...
...The second obvious problem is that too many State Department employees are burdened with purely bureaucratic busywork...
...First, State rotates its people around the world as often as the Army shifts its offi cers, but whereas an infantry offi cer remains an infantry offi cer no matter where he is, a State Department offi cial is shifted to a completely alien culture and barely has time to learn it before he is shifted again...
...THOMAS F. BERNER West Palm Beach, Fla...
...Rubin should be ashamed...
...Director General U.S...
...They just work in a system that stifl es them...
...He pointed out that the clinic would be unacceptable in a Muslim country because it expected men and women to share a waiting room...
...security...
...asked the USAID offi cial in charge, “They worked great in Colombia...
...CORRECTION FRED SIEGEL’S REVIEW of Bruce Miroff ’s The Liberals’ Moment (“Come Home, America,” January 28) incorrectly stated that Miroff was a “veteran of the McGovern campaign...
...Correspondence LETTERS OF STATE IN MICHAEL RUBIN’s article “Living in a Dream World” (January 21), the author cherry-picks a few comments drawn from the “Post of the Month” feature in State Magazine to claim that Foreign Service offi cers are out of touch with reality...
...The best of them (and there are a lot of those) are the best anywhere in the government...
...A perfect example of this problem occurred when the ARG health adviser had to deal with construction plans that USAID drew up for a health clinic, over 400 of which were being built around Afghanistan...
...I thought that was something all State Department people had the right to do...
...Using their casual comments about living accommodations as a gauge on how Foreign Service offi cers analyze the politics of a country is a misleading distortion...
...Department of State Washington, D.C...
...diplomats which country’s interest they should promote...
...There are at least two reasons for this failure, which were painfully obvious to even a short term diplomat like me...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor...
...But don’t blame the people...
...Although I only served a year with ARG, I had the ability to roam far and wide and meet any number of Afghan ministers...
...I thank Thomas Berner for his thoughtful comments and his service...
...Rubin’s dismissive comments refl ect his ignorance of how small changes can have a signifi cant impact on a society...
...But when I congratulated one excellent offi cial for having his tour extended, so that he could see projects through, he gloomily replied that “it was different for ARG, because you get to meet people...
...HARRY K. THOMAS JR...
...Under Secretary Rice’s leadership, we have reorganized and reoriented ourselves toward the new front lines to address the unique challenges posed by the war on terror...
...As the legal adviser in ARG from 2004 to 2005, I worked with many career State Department offi cials...
...Many of the posts in which we serve have diffi cult challenges both politically and socially...
...The number of employees serving abroad with only some or none of their family members at post has quadrupled since 2001...
...The recent death of a USAID worker and his driver in Sudan should remind us that when diplomats, whether out of naivet?, political correctness, or life in a bubble, downplay or mischaracterize radical Islamism, the result is a threat not only to our missions abroad, but also to long-term U.S...
...They are on the front lines defending America’s interests and protecting its citizens...
...Since 2003, over 2,000 of our employees have volunteered and served in Iraq or Afghanistan...
...As in all bureaucracies, some were better (or worse) than others, but the best career offi cials were truly terrifi c. Nevertheless, State does not function well in the crucial role to which it is assigned in the war on terror...
...Moreover, change in these nations often comes only slowly...
...Despite the fact that the demands on the State Department outpace our resources, department employees comprise the world’s fi nest diplomatic service...
...Taking informal comments out of context for the purpose of ridicule is unfair...
...Why not...
...That Foreign Service offi cers believe Lesotho to be a model for Africa or that Gambia and Oman, the latter of which balked at supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, are key allies in the war on terrorism demonstrates analytical dissonance...
...MICHAEL RUBIN RESPONDS: Ambassador Thomas’s energies would be better spent reminding some U.S...
...If the State Department moves most of its people around too often for them to understand a country and then bogs them down in bureaucratic paperwork, it is no surprise that the United States isn’t getting the diplomatic results it needs...
...You may fax letters: (202) 293-4901 or email: editor@weeklystandard.com...
Vol. 13 • February 2008 • No. 23
