This hasn't been diaried yet - at least not that I can find - and it's an event about which I have deep ambivalence.
It seems that not enough career Foreign Service officials have volunteered to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. So Condi Rice and her minions have decided to order about 50 diplomats to go; 250 "qualified" officers have received e-mail notifications they are being considered for the assignment.
Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday criticized senior State Department officials over a decision to order some of them to take assignments at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.
At a town hall meeting in the department's main auditorium attended by hundreds of diplomats, some of them challenged the new policy in unusually blunt terms. They also took issue with the size of the embassy -- the biggest in U.S. history -- and the lack of training they received before being sent to serve in a war zone. One woman said she returned from a tour in Basra, Iraq, with post-traumatic stress disorder only to find that the State Department would not authorize medical treatment.
The Post quotes "a 46-year Foreign Service veteran" who spoke at the meeting and called the posting "a potential death sentence."
To loud applause from his fellow workers, he asked how the State Department could protect people in Baghdad or the Iraq countryside when "incoming is coming in every day. Rockets are hitting the Green Zone."
"It is one thing if someone believes in what is going on over there and volunteers," he said, "but it is another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment. And I'm sorry, but basically that is a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or wounded?"
CNN identified the speaker as Jack Croddy, a 36-year veteran of the Foreign Service. I don't know why the Post didn't identify him, nor why there's such a discrepancy in the length of service.
Here's my ambivalence: On the one hand, I completely understand these folks' reluctance to go to Iraq. The State Department is supposed to be about diplomacy, after all, and heaven knows there's not a lot of that going on in Baghdad. It's not like they're going to be able to travel the country, or assist Iraqis looking for tourist visas, or address emigrants' requests. And with Blackwater in disrepute, they're not exactly going to get a lot of protection. It is completely reasonable, in fact, downright rational, for them to fear for their lives, and to worry about what kind of support and mental/physical treatments they will receive upon their return.
On the other hand, these folks have been so co-opted by this administration that, in another time, they might have been indicted as co-conspirators for their actions (and inactions) allowing this stupid, illegal and immoral war to get under way and continue its unending violence. None of them ever had the courage to speak up publicly, to challenge what Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld - the whole cabal - cooked up and prosecuted. None of them were willing to sacrifice their jobs. They were chicken. Only now, when it comes to their own necks, do they stand up and protest.
Contrast this with Devilstower's front-page diary about Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, who voted for Bush, supported the war, and still concluded his oath to defend the Constitution had to take primacy over his loyalty to the Marine Corps. He acted on that belief in his role as defense attorney, whether for Marines accused in the Haditha killings or on behalf of a 15-year-old Canadian "enemy combatant" imprisoned in Gitmo.
Or, from within the State Department's own ranks, Hiram Bingham IV, who is credited with saving 2,500 Jews from the Nazis in Vichy France, even before the United States entered World War II.
Our current crop of career diplomats only had their careers to risk, not their lives - until now.