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 officers are out of touch with reality. Using their casual comments about living accommodations as a gauge on how Foreign Service officers analyze the politics of a country is a misleading distortion. Many of the posts in which we serve have difficult challenges both politically and socially. Moreover, change in these nations often comes only slowly. Rubin's dismissive comments reflect his ignorance of how small changes can have a significant impact on a society. Despite the fact that the demands on the State Department outpace our resources, department employees comprise the world's finest diplomatic service. They are on the front lines defending America's interests and protecting its citizens. 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.
In today's Foreign Service, the majority of our employees assigned overseas serve at difficult posts, including Khartoum where two outstanding USAID employees were recently brutally murdered. Since 2003, over 2,000 of our employees have volunteered and served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The number of employees serving abroad with only some or none of their family members at post has quadrupled since 2001.
Taking informal comments out of context for the purpose of ridicule is unfair. Rubin should be ashamed.
AMB. HARRY K. THOMAS JR.
Director General
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C.
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. It is the dysfunctional structure of the department. In 2004, I was recruited from my law firm to serve in an experimental unit of the State Department called the Afghanistan Reconstruction Group (ARG). As the legal adviser in ARG from 2004 to 2005, I worked with many career State Department officials. As in all bureaucracies, some were better (or worse) than others, but the best career officials were truly terrific.
Nevertheless, State does not function well in the crucial role to which it is assigned in the war on terror. There are at least two reasons for this failure, which were painfully obvious to even a short term diplomat like me.
First, State rotates its people around the world as often as the Army shifts its officers, but whereas an infantry officer remains an infantry officer no matter where he is, a State Department official is shifted to a completely alien culture and barely has time to learn it before he is shifted again. 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. He pointed out that the clinic would be unacceptable in a Muslim country because it expected men and women to share a waiting room. "Why not?" asked the USAID official in charge, "They worked great in Colombia."
The second obvious problem is that too many State Department employees are burdened with purely bureaucratic busywork. 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 thought that was something all State Department people had the right to do. But when I congratulated one excellent official 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. I spend most of my time writing cables back to Washington."
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. But don't blame the people. The best of them (and there are a lot of those) are the best anywhere in the government. They just work in a system that stifles them.
THOMAS F. BERNER
West Palm Beach, Fla.
MICHAEL RUBIN RESPONDS: Ambassador Thomas's energies would be better spent reminding some U.S. diplomats which country's interest they should promote.That Foreign Service officers 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.
The recent death of a USAID worker and his driver in Sudan should remind us that when diplomats, whether out of naiveté, 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. security.
I thank Thomas Berner for his thoughtful comments and his service.
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."