Editorial: Creating diplomatic strife

Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007 | 6:53 a.m.

The State Department's practice of asking for volunteers to fill its embassy in Iraq is expected to end as the Bush administration plans to start ordering diplomats to report to Baghdad.

The State Department needs to fill roughly 50 of the 250 jobs coming open next summer and is having problems finding volunteers. The embassy has become the biggest in the world - and the most dangerous , with regular attacks on diplomats and the fortified Green Zone.

If the administration moves forward with its plan, it will be the first time since the Vietnam War that there has been such a number of "directed assignments."

Although career Foreign Service officers pledge to serve wherever ordered, it is understandable why they are balking at the plan.

State Department officials are trying to jam the plan , much like the war itself, into acceptance. In a late -Friday-night e-mail last month, several hundred "prime candidates" were informed they might be forced to go.

Diplomats say they are being sent into a war zone without the proper training or support. Foreign Service officers sent on directed assignments to Vietnam received four to six months of training. Volunteers headed to Iraq have received two weeks.

One Foreign Service officer said she came back from a tour of Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder and the State Department refused to pay for her treatment.

In a town hall meeting to address the matter last week, diplomats noted the embassy would be evacuated if it were in any other country. Career diplomat Jack Croddy told State Department bosses the forced assignments are "a potential death sentence and you know it."

State Department officials then curtly shut down the meeting, which demonstrates the Bush administration's sense of denial. Diplomats aren't just worried about the danger - they face danger in most overseas posts. They are also troubled about the task - trying to sell the Iraqis, much less the world, on a nonsensical foreign policy to support a failed war.