Blackwater, State Department Pansies…..

And ongoing discussion of other lies and misrepresentations.

I’ve watched the coverage of the issues of Blackwater with interest, even though currently, it probably qualifies as old news.  It is interesting because from every thing I have seen Blackwater is probably a professionally run company and contrary to some of the reporting, it is conscious of its reputation and has worked hard to safeguard it for the most part. Given the fact that its founder is an former Navy SEAL turned greedy Republican businessman, I expect nothing less. You can’t make money if people don’t think you can deliver the product.

Which is why, in my view, the coverage of the  company and the incident where 17 Iraqis got killed is really far off the mark. I’m not going to be like some zealots and put on my knee pads and perform unnatural sex acts extolling the patriotism and sense of duty of the company’s employees. I’m also not going to simply lump them into the “M” word, mercenaries-with all of the negative connotations that word inspires.

Because Blackwater is not the issue……..and never was.

Blackwater is a business, pure and simple. It has to operate the way it does because it is not a state sanctioned entity, and while it is state supported, it does not operate within the confines and protection of being part of an established government the way that armies and police forces are.

Accordingly, Blackwater only gets to deliver its product-some semblance of security-if it creates a certain image for itself. Namely one that “we are better equipped, well trained, and not afraid to use our weapons. You don’t want to fuck with us.”  I would submit to you that’s a smart play for them and if you look at the number of folks they protect and the overall track record they have, its actually worked very well. Its why they win the contracts they do and why the State Department wanted them. They deliver what they sell.

Which is probably the real question that everyone should be asking. Why is the United States government putting companies like Blackwater in its employ in the first place? There are real ethical and moral questions, not to mention the practical issues that arise when more than just the Army and the police have guns. Its a slippery slope , doubly so in a place like Iraq where the sovereign government of the country is incompetent.There’s about 180,000 private contractors in Iraq, and the vast majority of those are not armed contractors like those who work for Blackwater.  They cook food, they drive trucks, they do laundry. Blackwater has approximately 1,000 operatives deployed in Iraq – at least that’s what the company says.  There are other private security companies as well-paid for by companies trying to do business in Iraq.

The contractors probably have their place, especially if the US is going to choose not to invest in an adequately sized Army, Navy, Marine Corps and  Air Force. However the current trend to outsourcing everything you can is just not a smart one.  Furthermore, many of the support contractors are recruiting and employing folks from nations of great poverty and then turning around and using labor practices that , on paper at least, the US government opposes. The issue of oversight and compliance with honest labor practices is enormous.

However when it comes to the application of deadly force-well I think that should be done by people whose first and only obligation is to the government. If that means the State Department needs to get its own version of the Secret Service-so be it. ( Actually defense of Embassies is a Marine mission-maybe State should pay the Marine Corps and support an end strength increase).

How did we get here? Because as it is often want to do, the DOD was penny wise and pound foolish. Its felt that by paying the private contractors enormous sums of money up front- over the long haul the country saves money on benefits it won’t have to pay Soldiers. And unlike Soldiers-no one gets up in arms when a contractor gets killed.  More than a thousand contractors have died in Iraq since the invasion. That number never seems to get lumped into the total number of killed and wounded. Probably vast majority of contractors working for the US government in Iraq are indeed not American citizens. 

 So the question we all should be asking is why the government does not re-think its policy on using contractors out side the Aegis of the soldiers mantle.  Or better yet, why not ask why after 5 years, al-Maliki government does not assert itself in, and provide services for, Iraq itself.

What does that have to do with State Department wimps who feel put upon because they have to go to Iraq? A lot actually. And like Blackwater, this is another story where the real issues go unreported and unanalyzed.

The overwrought histrionics of a few people at a town meeting that should have been private and not for attribution-(how the hell did the video footage get out anyway? And why was the meeting allowed to be taped.) makes for good TV sound bites. However, this is not just about some Foreign Service officers who don’t want to be inconvenienced. Its about the people running the department and whether they really care about their employees. On that score Condi Rice probably draws a grade of D- at best. Its not exactly as if her tenure at State has been a smashing success anyway.  However, what is not being reported is that in total, just like with DOD, George Bush says good things, but his actions say just the opposite. The Foreign Service’s problems with Iraq are directly a result of it being under-resourced. ( Sound familiar?).

As both John Naland, the president of the American Foreign Service Association (the union of which I am a member) and Ambassador Thomas Krajeski, director of career development and assignments at the State Department, stressed on The News Hour Wednesday night, the Foreign Service is desperately short staffed. In my view far too many of its personnel – experienced or not – have already been threatened, or cajoled into agreeing to year long Iraq assignments over the past four years. Thus far 15 more have reportedly “volunteered” for Iraq for next year, leaving apparently 33 of the 48 still open positions to fill by hook or by crook.

Krajeski too pointed out that staffing Iraq is a State Department priority – 94 percent of its positions are filled as opposed to 79 percent elsewhere in the world. Many of these other posts are not Gardens of Eden either. In fact, very few are.

Maybe staff shortages are part of the reason it took months for the Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs now being charged by Congress with overcharging) to get the passport issuance mess straightened out: unlike in private business where if a company has the need and the funds, additional employees can be added without an act of God. In the US government, every position needs authorization by the White House and Congress before it can be filled and both – since Colin Powell’s departure – have placed far more demands on the Foreign Service while refusing to increase its numbers. Or maybe this latest late in the week State Department scandal has other roots. Yet how much more blood can be squeezed out of State’s turnip to support this administration’s expensive and staff-intensive Middle East foreign policy that is rotten to the core?

I’ve said it elsewhere and I will say it here, there is more to this than just Iraq. You could see it in the reaction of the rather rotund Director General of the Foreign Service who, -taking his cue from dozens of serving Flag officers and others working in the Bureau of Naval Personnel-appeared to be the ultimate version of Rhett Butler: ” Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.” (Why too did he drag slavery into the whole discussion anyway? No one else did.). Seems to me he left a few other questions unanswered-which are his to answer by the way:

A quote by Ambassador Ryan Crocker which says that the FSO’s swear an oath to serve anywhere in the world. This is not true. They swear an oath to uphold the constitution. They sign a contract that allows them to be posted anywhere. There is a difference, and the two documents may actually be in contradiction. For instance, what if the government did something unconstitutional and wanted to send you to support that action . . .?

Or maybe he should really step to the plate and answer this one, which gets to the heart of the resource issue mentioned above:

Consider the record: The annual Defense Department budget has grown nearly $350 billion in the past decade while Congress cuts the president’s international affairs budget request each year. The defense authorization bill is enacted annually while the congressional foreign affairs committees cannot get their authorization bills considered on the floor. Legislation such as the Lugar-Biden bill, designed to strengthen civilian capacity in stabilization operations, has been blocked. The military’s authorities and missions have expanded while much-needed new civilian authorities are denied by neglect. Civilian agencies are disappearing. The U.S. Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency have folded, while the U.S. Agency for International Development operates with less than a third of the staff it had during the Cold War. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s initiative to transform diplomacy lacks fiscal and personnel resources.The State Department’s initial answer to the problem of civilian unreadiness, a coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, is underfunded and relies heavily on contract workers and personnel detailed from other agencies. The entire Foreign Service comprises about the same number of people needed to operate one aircraft carrier battle group. State’s operational culture focuses more on policy development than implementation. USAID’s overseas personnel have become contract managers, and efforts to create a civilian reserve corps are also stalled in Congress.

So long as folks are going to attack the Foreign Service for “oath breaking”-which I do not believe they have done-maybe someone should attack the Bush administration for violating its oath. To properly resource the government agencies that are tasked with implementing his misguided policies with the right numbers of people and stuff to do their jobs.

Maybe the cart is before the horse. The surge is working,  so we are told. The Iraqi government still needs time to get its act together. ( The preceding 5 years have not been enough….). Maybe the solution is to have the US ” forego its yet to be completed Saddam Hussein Palace style Crusader Castle in the Green Zone – a ‘right-sized mission’ simply wouldn’t need to be housed in such a troubled behemoth.”

Its not like Iraq is the only game in town. It never was and never will be.

However that never makes for a good Fox noise sound bite. Ergo, it never gets reported.

And the blogging public misses the real issues again.