How State Department earned its reputation for disloyalty

Washington Times:

A recent outcry in the Foreign Service over forced assignments in Iraq has angered many veteran diplomats, who say that whiners and complainers in their ranks have made the diplomatic corps look unprofessional and disloyal.

That perception was reinforced last week by a survey of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the diplomats' union, in which 1,592 respondents said they would not volunteer for Iraq positions because of "disagreement with policy."

"The survey makes us all look like a bunch of recalcitrants," said Keith Mines, a political officer in Ottawa who served on a provincial reconstruction team in Iraq in 2004.

"We are not a collection of commandos ready to parachute in anywhere for as long as we are needed," he said. "But we aren't the whiny insubordinates that we have been portrayed as, either."

Mr. Mines is one of several Foreign Service officers around the world who responded to e-mail inquiries from The Washington Times, though most declined to be quoted by name.

The survey was sent to all 11,500 members of the Foreign Service, but only 4,311 chose to participate in it, AFSA said. It was immediately dismissed by the State Department leadership as meaningless, because of its "self-selectiveness."

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"We ought to have a State Department that understands that service to the country is what they are all about," Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, told the Wall Street Journal last month. "And if that means going into countries where there may be some danger in serving, then by God that's the place they should want to go first."

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State has earned its reputation as a place where liberals dominate the culture and the wimps are the loudest. Because of that many conservatives distrust it. When it failed to step up after the Iraq invasion, it made sense for the Pentagon to take charge. Military planners need to factor that into future operations because the folks at State are not always on our side of the war.