2010 MLK Day Technology Challenge

Reprinted in part from Serve.gov | We are calling on educators and web professionals to join our new effort – the 2010 MLK Day Technology Challenge. The purpose is simple: to connect schools and non-profits that have technology needs, including skills training and mentorship, with web professionals, developers, graphic designers and new media professionals who are willing to volunteer their skills for the common good.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?” We ask that you answer his call in 2010 by participating in the MLK Technology Challenge.

Typical projects include:

• Refurbish computers for schools


• Teach students how to use popular software or online services


• Build a database for a nonprofit


• Help out in your school’s computer lab


• Become an online mentor for students across the country

Read more at Serve.gov, an online resource not only for finding volunteer opportunities in the community, but also creating your own.

Prism: Richard Armitage Interview

Image via Wikipedia

Richard L. Armitage was the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He tendered his resignation on November 16, 2004, the day after Secretary Powell announced his resignation as Secretary of State. He left post on February 22, 2005.

In the first issue of Prism, published by the National Defense University Press for the Center for Complex Operations (COO), Mr. Armitage gave an interview on Iraq, the 3Ds, military and civilian cultures and a whole lot more. Some highlights from the interview:

“They were victims of their own prejudices…”

I was surprised initially with the speed at which we were going into Iraq, and I never understood it. I was not opposed to attacking Iraq—I was opposed to the timing. I just couldn’t see it. I was surprised at the low number of forces—which Secretary [Colin] Powell was able to get doubled—but still far too few.[…]And we got rushed into this timing by the military, who kept talking about the heat—that if it got to April and May, it would get too hot and we couldn’t operate. And I remember thinking and arguing—and it wasn’t just me, but Marc Grossman and others— saying, “Wait a minute, we own the night. We don’t have to fight in the daytime. We’re all-seeing at night—let’s do it! Don’t let the heat be the thing that gets us into war!” So it wasn’t that we were marginalized. We were allowed our voice, but no one wanted to hear it. They were victims of their own prejudices and their own ideology.

“All government property in sight.”

The culture of the military is to make chicken salad out of chicken poop. The culture of the military is, “Yessir, three bags full sir. I’ll get it done.”The culture of the military is embraced as far as I’m concerned in the most positive way by the first general order of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps (different from the Army), which cautions a sentry to take charge of all government property on this post, and that includes people. And that’s frankly how Powell and I viewed the State Department—all government property at post. So that’s their going-in position, whether they’re a private or a colonel. The going-in position for USAID, State, Commerce, or Energy is not to take charge of all government property in sight, but to take charge of “mine.” I like to say that this is my little cubicle and I keep it clean, and if there is a light next door that’s not there or not on, if you are in the military you are going to go fix it. At least you are supposed to. All government property in sight. You’re doing not just your cubicle, whereas the civilians will just take care of their cubicle or space. When I or Secretary Powell would ever swear in an ambassador, we would tell him he could not be totally responsible for the development of our relationship between the United States and country X. But he would be held 100 percent accountable for the development of all personnel under his command—as officers and as citizens and people. If they have personal problems, they’re his. If they have lapses in their behavior, it’s his problem. He doesn’t overlook it, he works with them, he cautions them, he counsels them, and he does whatever it takes. And this is more the culture of the military.

“They’re not armed”

[W]e were at the State Department—we weren’t seized with the mission; we don’t have enough folks. USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] isn’t the USAID you joined because it has been whittled away so much. So we have to relearn the lessons. It was not in any way a lack of courage among the civilian agencies; in fact, when I give speeches, I’ll say that these fellows—men and women—are out in all these exotic-sounding places—they’re not in canapé lines in London and Paris; they’re in Mazur and Kandahar and other places right alongside the men and women in uniform. Not a bit of difference, except one: they’re not armed.

“The Dr. Rice years were terrible…”

Yes, it is. I’ve been very heartened the last 3 ½ years that I’ve been out here, the number of people—many of whom I don’t even know—that worked for Powell and me, and to be frank with you, what they’ve said is, “The Dr. Rice years were terrible. The Powell years were wonderful. But don’t worry. We’re remembering what you said about taking care of your people. We’re remembering what you said about leadership.” So that fills me with enthusiasm, and the answer to your question is yes, it can happen. But it has to be inculcated. Unfortunately, I don’t think Ms. Clinton is from that mindset. She’s very good as Secretary of State, she’ll study her brief, but this takes effort from the bottom up. One has to be inculcated with this.

Read the whole interview here.

About the journal: PRISM is a quarterly national security journal tailored to serve policy-makers, scholars and practitioners working to enhance U.S. Government competency in complex operations by exploring whole-of-community approaches among U.S. Government agencies, academic institutions, international governments and militaries, non-governmental organizations and other participants in the complex operations space.

The first issue also includes feature articles by Senator Richard G. Lugar (Stabilization and Reconstruction: A Long Beginning) and Ambassador John E. Herbst (Addressing the Problem of Failed States: A New Instrument). It also has a From the Field section where USAID Afghanistan Director William M. Frej and David Hatch write about A New Approach to the Delivery of U.S. Assistance to Afghanistan. Frankly, I had a hard time wading through this “new approach” after reading through the OIG reports on USAID programs in Afghanistan. But feel free to check it out.

The journal’s submission guidelines include this tip: “Answer the So what? question. Asking an individual to read 3,000 to 5,000 words is asking a lot. After that reader is finished, he must be edified by what he has read and prepared to operationalize it in some way.”

Related Item: Prism | Submission Guidelines | PDF

Coming Soon - Virtual Tour of Iraq National Museum

General Peter Pace, Chairman and CEO of Google Inc. Eric Schmidt;Managing Director of Trident Capital Don Dixon andU.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill tourthe Assyrian Hall of the Iraq National MuseumPhoto from US Embassy Baghdad

The US Embassy in Baghdad late last month announced that the CEO and Chairman of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt, and members of the Iraq Technology Task Force visited Iraq and had a project to create a virtual tour of the Iraq National Museum using state of the art Google technology.Here is part of the press release:The project, the first of its kind at any museum, will digitize and electronically catalogue artifacts at the Iraq National Museum, allowing global access to the collection. It is part of an ongoing commitment by U.S. institutions to partner with Iraqis under the Strategic Framework Agreement to help support and showcase Iraq’s rich cultural heritage and history. Led by Jared Cohen of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, Schmidt and a delegation of tech industry leaders including managing director of Trident Capital Don Dixon, General Peter Pace, and Sophie Schmidt of Google, capped off three days of meetings with senior Iraqi officials by announcing the project at the museum’s premises. U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill, Deputy Minister of Culture Jaber al-Jabri and leaders from Iraq’s cultural heritage community were also in attendance.Read the whole press release: Google CEO and U.S. Tech Leaders Invest in Iraq’s Future (Nov. 25, 2009). Anything striking about this?

Related articles by Zemanta

• At Iraqi Museum, Google Chief Announces Plan to Put Artifacts Online (nytimes.com)
• Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures (nytimes.com)
• Iraq luring 'virtual visitors' to Mesopotamia's treasures (cnn.com)
• Google to put Iraq's national treasures online (telegraph.co.uk)

What the Soviets Overlooked in Afghanistan

Image by elmada via Flickr

On May 10, 1988, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR issued a “closed” (internal use) letter to all Communist Party members of the Soviet Union on the issue of withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The letter presents the Central Committee analysis of events in Afghanistan and Soviet actions in that country, the problems and the difficulties the Soviet troops had to face in carrying out their mission. In particular, the letter stated that important historic and ethnic factors were overlooked when the decisions on Afghanistan were made in the Soviet Union. The letter analyzes Soviet interests in Afghanistan and the reasons for the withdrawal of troops.

The decision was made in the conditions when there was a lot of uncertainty in the balance of forces within the Afghan society. [Our] picture of the real social and economic situation in the country was also insufficiently clear. We do not want to say it, but we should: at that time, we did not even have a correct assessment of the unique geographical features of that hard-to-enter country. That found its reflection in the operations of our troops against small highly mobile units, where very little could be accomplished with the help of modern military technology.

In addition, [we] completely disregarded the most important national and historical factors, above all the fact that the appearance of armed foreigners in Afghanistan was always met with arms in the hands [of the population]. This is how it was in the past, and this is how it happened when our troops entered [Afghanistan], even though they came there with honest and noble goals.

Babrak Karmal became head of the Afghan government at the time. His first steps in that capacity gave grounds to hope that he would be able to solve the problems facing his country. However, nothing new had emerged in his policy, which could have changed the attitude of the significant portion of the Afghan population to the new regime to the better. Moreover, the intensity of the internal Afghan conflict continued to grow, and our military presence was associated with forceful imposition of customs alien to the national characteristics and feelings of the Afghan people, which did not take into account the multiple forms of economic life, and other characteristics, such tribal and religious ones.

One has to admit that essentially we put our bets on the military solution, on suppressing the counterrevolution with force. We did not even fully use the existing opportunities for neutralization of the hostile attitudes of the local population towards us. We have to assess critically some aspects of functioning of our adviser apparatus in Afghanistan as well. It did many things to provide assistance in strengthening the PDPA and the people’s regime. However, often our people, acting out of their best intentions, tried to transplant the approached we are accustomed to onto the Afghan soil, encouraged the Afghans to copy our ways. All this did not help our cause, it bred the feelings of dependency on the part of the Afghan leaders in regard to the Soviet Union both in the sphere of military operations and in the economic sphere.

Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan continued, and our troops were getting engaged in extensive combat actions. The situation developed, which made any way out more and more difficult as the time passed. Combat action is combat action. Our losses in dead and wounded—and the CC CPSU believes it has no right to hide this—were growing, and becoming more and more heavy. Altogether, by the beginning of May 1988, we lost 13,310 people [dead] in Afghanistan; 35,478 Soviet officers and soldiers were wounded, many of whom became disabled; 301 people are missing in action. There is a reason that people say that each person is a unique world, and when a person dies, that world disappears forever. The loss of every person is very hard and irreparable, it is hard and sacred if one died carrying out one’s duty.

The Afghan losses, naturally, were much heavier [than ours], including the losses among the civilian population.

One should not disregard the economic factor either. If the enemy in Afghanistan received weapons and ammunition for hundreds of millions and later even billions of dollars, the Soviet-Afghan side also had to shoulder adequate expenditures. The war in Afghanistan costs us 5 billion rubles a year.

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. May 10, 1988

CC CPSU Letter on Afghanistan, May 10, 1988 PDF | From The National Security Archive[Source: Alexander Lyakhovsky, Tragedy and Valor of Afghan, Iskon, Moscow 1995, Appendix 8, Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya]

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Afghan 8os are back (guardian.co.uk)
• US 'risks Afghan Soviet failure' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Can the U.S. Still Work with Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai? (time.com)

State’s “T” Bureau: Where Restructuring Was “Easy” as Pie...

And Condi’s transformational diplomacy went kaplunk

Well, I guess the marching order was to “restructure” so they did. Nobody said it had to be coherent or needed an end state. “Just do it!” Like the ad campaign says. 400 employees were reportedly impacted – but heck -- you don’t have to agree with it, just move wherever they want you to move your desk, right? There were complaints that staff decisions were politically motivated – aw -- I mean, really!

Here is the 2005 on-the-record briefing on the Reorganization of the Bureaus to Better Address the Threat From Weapons and Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy: “It had to be done right because it is absolutely essential, as part of what the Secretary calls transformational diplomacy, that we readjust the structure of the State Department bureaus in order to be able to best contribute to the national security agenda that has been set by the President.”

Sigh ;> A funny thing happened on the inkway to the history books.  The GAO
just came out with  its assessment of the restructuring of the Nonproliferation,
Arms Control, and Verification and Compliance bureaus in 2005.  Below is a
summary of its finding:

State cannot demonstrate that the 2005-2006 restructuring of its Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Verification and Compliance bureaus achieved all of its objectives because it did not clearly define the objectives and lacked metrics to assess them. State’s objectives were to enable it to better focus on post -September 11 challenges; reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and top-heavy management; and eliminate overlap. State sought to achieve its first objective by creating new offices and roles to address terrorism and counterproliferation issues.

To meet its second objective, State merged three bureaus having 30 offices and functions into two bureaus having 26 offices and functions and freed up staff slots for these new roles, but problems with workload mismatches persisted after the reorganization as State employees noted it left some offices overworked and some offices underworked. State cannot demonstrate that it met its third objective, reducing top-heavy management, as its goals were undefined. Although it reduced the number of senior executives from 27 to 20 and reduced office directorships, the overall number of higher-ranking employees increased from 91 to 100 and executive office staff increased from 44 to 50.

Moreover, concerns about mission overlap persist, in part because bureau roles remain undefined in the FAM. State’s reorganization addressed few of the key practices for organizational mergers and transformations that GAO developed in 2002. These practices are found to be at the center of successful mergers and transformations. As illustrated below, State generally addressed one key practice, partially addressed two, and did not address the remaining five. For example, State did not address establishing coherent mission and strategic goals because it did not define an end state with measurable goals, nor did it devise a means to gauge progress toward such goals or assess the results of actions taken. As a result, State lacks reasonable assurance that the reorganization achieved its objectives or that it can identify any lessons learned.

The GAO’s damning assessment of the reorganization process includes the following on State’s unsystematic approach and its contribution to staff and employee group concerns:

Instead of using the above [GAO identified] practices to plan, implement, and assess the results of the restructuring, State reorganized the bureaus unsystematically, contributing to staff and employee group criticisms of the process and suspicions that some staff decisions had been politically motivated. State officials told us that they spent most of their time in the months before September 2005 developing the organizational structure for the new bureau and little time planning to implement the reorganization. In the wake of the reorganization, some ISN staff stated they perceived morale within their bureau to be lower. According to State data, attrition rates rose to levels higher than the average for State’s civil service as a whole.

To implement the reorganization, the T human resource office furnished an informal implementation guide to the SMP at the panel’s request. This paper envisioned a reorganization directed by the Bureau of Human Resources and the T bureaus’ human resource office, while the SMP would serve as an advisory body that would recommend specific actions, such as decisions on acting directors, staffing levels, and other details for the new ISN offices. Instead, according to a senior T official, the SMP made its own implementing decisions and reduced HR’s and the T bureaus’ human resource office’s roles to ensuring that State followed all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

State officials and employees expressed concerns about the SMP’s direction and conduct of the reorganization even before the panel made its first public announcement about the reorganization on September 28, 2005. While the Office of the Legal Advisor and HR stated that the SMP could direct the reorganization, some officials in HR and the T bureaus’ human resource office disagreed with this decision.38 According to T bureau officials, they were concerned that the panel’s members were not sufficiently knowledgeable about change and personnel management principles. On September 29, 2005—the day after the SMP sent out its summary of the reorganization procedures—a senior T bureaus’ official with human resource responsibilities sent an e-mail to the SMP stating that it was not following sound personnel management principles.39 The email also stated that the SMP had ignored or misinterpreted her office’s recommendations, advice, and suggestions to the extent that the office had been unable to contribute meaningfully to the reorganization process.

Some ISN employees and AFSA officials also criticized the SMP’s decisions after it publicly announced its reorganization procedures and named acting office directors in September 2005. Eleven ISN employees wrote a memorandum to the Undersecretary for Management and the Director General of the Foreign Service in October 2005, stating that morale was poor within the new ISN bureau. ⁴⁰ Moreover, these employees stated that the SMP’s selections for acting office directors (which resulted in passing over several experienced officials for these positions) reinforced their doubts about the impartiality of the process, as did the lack of career officials or representatives from the T bureaus’ human resource office, HR, and the Office of the Legal Advisor. They also expressed concern about other aspects of the process, such as the requirement to express workforce preferences without first having concrete position and office mission descriptions, position grades, or the names of permanent office directors or deputies. The employees asked the Undersecretary for Management and the Director General of the Foreign Service to suspend the reorganization until a comprehensive staffing plan had been developed and add career civil service or FSOs and HR staff to the SMP, among other actions. AFSA expressed similar concerns in a November 2005 letter to the Secretary of State and noted that the reorganization could result in the potential downgrade or elimination of Foreign Service-designated positions. It also requested, among other things, that State form an independent panel to review all proposed reorganization decisions related to Equal Employment Opportunity concerns and allegations of prohibited personnel practices. In response to these concerns, State named a career official to the SMP, and included representatives of the HR bureau and the Office of the Legal Advisor in the SMP’s discussions, and agreed to have HR review the position descriptions of the acting office directors and prepare new position descriptions where necessary.

The lack of confidence in the reorganization may have adversely affected staff morale and may have contributed to increased ISN civil service attrition rates that immediately followed the reorganization, according to current and former State officials and documents. Twelve percent of ISN’s full-time civil service employees retired or otherwise left the bureau in fiscal 2006, the highest level for the bureau and its predecessors from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008. In contrast, State’s overall civil service attrition rate during the same period averaged about 8 percent.

Wouldn’t you want to know who former Secretary of State Rice appointed to that Senior Management Panel (SMP) tasked with restructuring these bureaus? I think the GAO should start naming names; it is, after all, an agency tasked with providing accountability reports.

Back in 2006, Dean Rust, a 35-year veteran of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and State (who was acting deputy director of the office that dealt with nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency matters) did write about this one in Reorganization Run Amok, a must read if you want an excellent background on this restructuring effort.

My jaded brain assumes that exceptionally talented individuals must now be sharing their restructuring and reorganization talents from some corner offices earning VPs or directorship salaries. Fabulous, really! And no consequences for the mess left behind.

Still, considering that Gonzo did manage to find a job after leaving a higgledy-piggledy DOJ, I am convinced now more than ever that if there is ever a place where second chances can be a lucrative gig (and it might as well be in the bill of rights) -- that is the United States of America. [According to Texas Tech Provost Bob Smith, Gonzales' $100,000 paycheck is on-par with the amount paid to other university employees who are high performers with significant experience or expertise. Someone with a national presence and a long list of accomplishments would be hired at the full professor level," Smith said.]

This is when I get fire ants in my pants -- because really -- where else but in the USA can radioactive blokes “re-invent” themselves time after time, counting on the public’s short memory and apathy, and rise again to wreck havoc once every few years -- all in the name of serving the public like you and me? PS: No offense to the real public servants who gets restructured and realigned and reinvented and rightsized under whatever ice cream flavor is hot.

Related Items:

• GAO-09-738: STATE DEPARTMENT Key Transformation Practices Could Have Helped in Restructuring Arms Control and Nonproliferation Bureaus | July 2009 | PDF
  
  
  
  


• On-the-Record Briefing: Reorganization of the Bureaus to Better Address the Threat from Weapons and Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy | 2005 | PDF

Quickie: The Leadership & Management Legacy

The most significant training innovation during the Powell era was the establishment of mandatory leadership and management training. To remedy what Secretary Powell considered to be a serious deficiency, he established a policy, still in place, that required leadership and management training as a prerequisite for all promotions after 2006. This was a monumental step for the Department. As Dawn Frick, the management coordinator at NFATC, observed, “we’re involved in a culture change – from a culture that didn’t support leadership training and development to one that values, enforces and practices sound leadership up and down through the chain.”

At that time, Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, dean of the Leadership and Management School at NFATC warned that introducing training and leadership into the Department’s culture would not inculcate without the support of employees at all levels. Apparently her insight proved correct, since in June 2008 AFSA President John Naland suggested that the next re-engineering of the personnel system should import the military’s enormously successful commitment to training and professional education.

Michelle Stefanick
Powell’s Leadership Principles- Time for State Department to Revisit
U.S. Army War College (March 30, 2009│Strategy Research Project; PDF)

Grading Condi: Is this a C+ or a D ?

The Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) is a nonpartisan umbrella group of 11 organizations concerned about U.S. diplomatic readiness (www.facouncil.org). It has just released its Task Force Report “Managing Secretary Rice’s State Department: An Independent Assessment, May 2009.”

Only the FAC analyses Secretaries as institutional managers. Its report says that their objective is to focus Secretaries of State on resource and management issues by analyzing achievements as well as problems in this dimension of their responsibilities.

Some excerpts below from the report. Read the whole thing here.

As this report documents, Secretary Rice’s performance was central to the failure in achieving adequate resources. On the other hand, she played a key role in successful efforts to better coordinate economic development and start to build a reconstruction and stabilization surge capacity.
[…]
[D]espite dramatic increases in staffing needs worldwide during her tenure in office, Secretary Rice managed to secure only eight new positions for the Foreign Service in her first three annual budget requests (excluding positions funded from special sources for consular and security personnel). During these three years Secretary Rice did not commit her personal efforts in the struggles with OMB and Congress. Instead, as noted above, it was only in the Bush Administration's final budget request that she sought a significant number of new positions.

Secretary Rice does not, of course, bear full responsibility for the current personnel gaps. Secretary James Baker decided that embassies in the 13 new states emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union would be staffed within existing resources. During Secretary Warren Christopher’s tenure the intake of junior officers was all but suspended for several years. Secretary Albright did little to increase resources when Yugoslavia disintegrated into seven new countries and public diplomacy and USAID lost significant human and financial resources as the “peace dividend” was cashed. Only Secretary Colin Powell fought the good fight with OMB and the Congress and gained about 1,200 new positions in his “Diplomatic Readiness Initiative.” Unfortunately, these new positions were quickly absorbed by the civilian surges in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
[…]
In summary, Secretary Rice’s initial three years of virtual inaction on the staffing front left our foreign affairs agencies hobbled by a human capital crisis. Despite her clear responsibility to lead and manage the foreign affairs agencies under the 150 account of the national budget, Secretary Rice fell short when it came to properly maintaining the platform upon which diplomacy and development assistance are conducted.

Condi Rice: In Her Own Words

“No dear, you’re wrong … we did not torture anyone”

Did she really? Did the former National Security Adviser and the 66^th Secretary of State really said all those things that are ricochetting around the blogosphere? Let’s see …

Um …that did not go down outstandingly well, did it? It spawned sparks around the net, here, here , here and here. Even former Nixon White House counsel John Dean waded in.

On Sunday, May 3^rd at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, Dr. Rice was back on the public sphere, at the podium this time for the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Lecture (h/t to CQ for the transcript, read it here).

In the Q&A after the lecture, she talked a bit about her professorial skills on that video taken by Stanford student, Reyna Garcia:

Dr. Rice:

“This is really hard, right? This is a very hard issue. And I think the debate about it is appropriate and I don’t have any problem debating it. I was asked this by a Stanford student, famously now, on YouTube. And I thought two things: I thought you know, good, we should be talking about this. I also thought I need to work on my professorial skills a little bit – I think I’ve been in Washington a little too long in the way that I talked to the student.”

Yes, she did say, “We were as deaf and dumb and blind on September 10^th as you could possibly be.”

Dr. Rice:

“But I do think that it is important to do this in a context of remembering the times and in giving people the benefit of the doubt that these were people of good will – and I mean everybody who was doing this – who had the hardest possible dilemmas and choices before them. There were second-wave attacks planned. We knew virtually nothing about how al Qaeda operated. We were as deaf and dumb and blind on September 10^th as you could possibly be.

Now, the president in that context – in that circumstance – said what more can we do to protect the country? But he was very clear every time I talked to him – every time he talked to any of us – but it has to be within our legal obligations – both our international obligations and our domestic obligations. That is why we saw an opinion from the Justice Department and ultimately, from the attorney general himself, about what our obligations were and what the agency was proposing and how – whether or not this was legal.”

And what she said earlier, this was what she meant, “This was not a Nixon/Frost moment.”

Dr. Rice:

“Now, there’s been another confusing statement – I said at one point that it was, therefore, a given that the president – if the president authorized it, it was legal. This was not a Nixon/Frost moment. What I intended to say or what I meant to say about this is, the president said I won’t authorize anything that is illegal. It’s not that because he authorized it, it was legal. No, that’s a tautology. It was that he said, I won’t authorize anything that’s illegal.

Dong ma?

There’s really not much to add except to say … ya know … the Chinese has a popular saying that goes like this, "More talk more mistakes, less talk less mistakes, no talk no mistake."

Um … read the whole thing here (pdf), then sit back and wait for the next installment in this series. I’ll go watch Josh Whedon’s Dollhouse.

US Embassy Baghdad: Super Embassaurus

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Inside Iraq's 'Fortress America'
Feb. 11: The U.S embassy compound in Iraq is the biggest, most expensive U.S. embassy ever built. NBC's Richard Engel takes us on a tour.

Click here for the longer segment in The Rachel Maddow Show (7:35) with NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel about the latest violence in Iraq and his recent tour of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Our Inheritance: Bush’s True Legacy

Video above is a 30:38 chat between David Sanger and Charlie Rose.

Part 2 of David Sanger with Charlie Rose is here.

In his new book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for NYT, “takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence apparatus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington was bogged down in the Middle East.”

Sanger says that The Inheritance is not a book about Iraq. And that is true. You don’t see Iraq in any of its chapters. And yet Iraq is a dark cloud that hovers in all 498 pages of this book.

Sanger writes that “In early 2003, the North [Korea] threw out international inspectors, in full view of .U.S. satellites, took the last steps needed to convert spent reactor fuel into material for six to eight bombs (p281-282). And that “On Bush’s watch, the North Koreans had built up and impressive arsenal. They had gone from an unconfirmed one or two weapons to eight or twelve; no one knew for sure” (p.280). Sanger concludes that Bush legacy is that he took a messy, dangerous problem and made it worse.

At around that same time in 2003, the Bush White House was consumed with Saddam Hussein’s WMD and in selling the reason why it must be confronted immediately. In 2008, when Sanger asked a key member of Bush national security team about these two events playing out at the same time, the Bush official replied, “Had a few other things on our mind…. We missed a couple of thing.”

The real consequences of missing a couple things – North Korea became the nuclear rogue state that got away. North Korea helped Syria build a covert nuclear reactor and the intelligence community “never put it together.” So if it was able to do that right under watchful eyes, how hard is it for the North Koreans to sell their wares to “non-state”actors with money to spare? That should make us sleep soundly at night, huh?

Sanger writes: “Like North Korea, Iran quickly recognizes that time was on its side. In the months and years after the start of the Iraq War, the “Dear Leader” in North Korea built his nuclear arsenal; the Supreme Leader in Iran put together a nuclear “capability” that would be difficult if not impossible to persuade the country to dismantle[… ]. The Iranians were just smarter about it than the North Koreans. […] Ambiguity is their friend. In the Second Nuclear Age, countries don’t need to compile huge stockpiles of the sort that the Americans and Soviets amassed during the Cold War. All they need is a “virtual bomb,” a credible capacity to build one in a few months and a credible willingness to do so […] the smartest path to becoming a nuclear weapons state (p85).

Nick Burns is in Part I (Iran: The Mullahs’ Manhattan Project). Christopher Hill makes an appearance in Part IV (North Korean: The Nuclear Renegade That Got Away). In fact, Ambassador Hill kind of owns Chapter 11 where “Everything is Appomattox” or how to learn to negotiate even with your own side (starts on page 315):

“These assholes don’t know how to negotiate,” Hill told a small group of friends and colleagues in 2007. “Everything is Appomattox. ‘It’s just 'come out with your hands up.’ It’s not even really Appomattox because at the end of Appomattox they let the Confederates keep their horses.”

The book is divided into six main sections for Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and China. The last section is focused on three vulnerabilities with realistic scenarios (televised chaos, pneumonic plague as invisible attack, dark angel starts with a simple blackout).

The book jacket says that the book is “at once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunities they create...”

Foreign policy misadventures, indeed…there’s no nicer words for it.

I bet David Sanger won’t be invited anytime soon to guest blog at the Bush’s legacy project over at www.43alumni.com. Nor will his book be recommended reading under “Bush Record” or “Setting the Record Straight.” Neither will the Sanger news clips be included in the The Bush Record: Praise Continues For President’s Accomplishments (now has Parts 1-3 posted online).

But the book is available here and deserves a good reading. Read a Q&A with author David Sanger on the challenges that President Obama will confront in the next four years [PDF].

Legacy: The War That Paid for Itself

(CRS table, click here for larger view)

I don’t think these experts are tripping over each other now for TV appearances. But a while back they all had the idea that this war would pay for itself -- and some.

But see - as of enactment of H.R. 2642 (the FY2008 Supplemental), the cumulative total for funds appropriated since the 9/11 attacks -- to DOD, State/USAID and VA for medical costs for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and enhanced security – total $864 billion.

About 94% of the funds are for DOD, 6% for foreign aid programs and embassy operations, and less than 1% for medical care for veterans.

I’m sorry -- I have to say that out loudly, I don’t think my brain is processing this quite well.

About 94% of the funds are for DOD, 6% for foreign aid programs and embassy operations, and less than 1% for medical care for veterans.

I’ve been harping about the serial underfunding of our red-headed step-child but -- less than 1% spent for the medical care of our veterans? According to the DOD casualty report, there are 30,984 troops wounded in action as of January 26, 2009. How about those who eventually commit suicides (read here and here)? Or suffers from TBI or PTSD? One mathematical model found that "about 35 percent of soldiers and marines who deploy to Iraq will ultimately suffer from PTSD — about 300,000 people, with 20,000 new sufferers for each year the war lasts." That's all lumped under less than 1%.

If that is not absolutely obscene, I don’t know what is.

The only thing more obscene are politicians proclaiming their support for our troops -- politicians who were themselves responsible for this cumulative (mis)appropriation over the last seven years.

The Congressional Research Service has an updated report on The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11. I am posting the full summary below:

With enactment of the FY2008 Supplemental and FY2009 Bridge Fund(H.R.2642/P.L. 110-252) on June 30, 2008, Congress has approved a total of about $864 billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

This $864 billion total covers all war-related appropriations from FY2001 through part of FY2009 in supplementals, regular appropriations, and continuing resolutions. Of that total, CRS estimates that Iraq will receive about $657 billion (76%), OEF about $173 billion (20%), and enhanced base security about $28 billion (3%), with about $5 billion that CRS cannot allocate (1%). About 94% of the funds are for DOD, 6% for foreign aid programs and embassy operations, and less than 1% for medical care for veterans. As of July 2008, DOD’s monthly obligations for contracts and pay averaged about $12.3 billion, including $9.9 billion for Iraq, and $2.4 billion for Afghanistan.

The recently enacted FY2008 Supplemental (H.R. 2642/P.L. 110-252) includes a total of about $160 billion for war costs for the Department of Defense (DOD) for the rest of FY2008 and part of FY2009. Funds are expected to last until June or July 2009 well into a new Administration. The Administration did not submit a request to cover all of FY2009.

While Congress provided a total of $188 billion for war costs in FY2008 — $17 billion more than the prior year — this total was a cut of about $14 billion to the Administration’s request, including both reductions in DOD’s investment accounts and substitutions of almost $6 billion in non-war funding. CRS figures exclude nonwar funding.

Congress also cut funding for foreign aid and diplomatic operations for Iraq and Afghanistan by $1.4 billion, providing a total of $4.5 billion. For FY2009, Congress provided $67 billion, close to the request. Earlier, to tide DOD over until passage of the supplemental, the House and Senate appropriations committees approved part of a DOD request to transfer funds from its regular accounts.

In an August 2008 update, the Congressional Budget Office projected that additional war costs for the next ten years from FY2009 through FY2018 could range from:

$440 billion, if troop levels fell to 30,000 by 2010 or
$865 billion, if troop levels fell to 75,000 by about 2013

Under these CBO projections, funding for Iraq, Afghanistan and the GWOT could total about $1.3 trillion or about $1.7 trillion for FY2001-FY2018. This report will be updated as warranted.

And this guy and a whole rest of them who got us into this pretty mess are off sailing into the sunset with their book deals, speaking gigs and legacy building projects. Crap! I won't buy any of their books if you promise not to attend any of their legacy shindigs.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

In Praise of Our Greatness

Yes We Did!
Photo from The White House

Most folks have no idea how much we like awards. Linda Ingalls, an Office Management Specialist at our Embassy in Pretoria writes in the recent issue of the Foreign Service Journal │January 2009:

"The list of performance-pay recipients (announced in 08 State 110778) has swollen to over 270 members of the Senior Foreign Service. These bonuses total an estimated $3million […]

There was probably a time when performance pay meant something special, a time when the list was shorter and could almost be justified. Today, however, when embassies worldwide must identify painful cuts and freeze real jobs — threatening our ability to meet mission goals — ladling out millions of dollars in bonuses to our highest paid employees feels irresponsible and, frankly, grotesque."

So we give bonuses despite the budget cuts, eh? That's what I'd call the C+ Street bailout. Yay! As you may have seen from a previous post, there are also awards for foreign policy achievements, despite whatever. Except wait -- one FSO got a well-deserved medal and the CINC was the receiver (of two awards), not the giver of the achievement awards. I'm kinda dizzy here -- shouldn't the CINC be the one giving out awards instead of receiving awards? Whose management brainchild is this inverse reward pyramid, anyway?

For some reason this reminds me of the 1990's when there were hundreds of unfilled positions worldwide. Folks kept harping about it, so finally, somebody up decided to eliminate all the unfilled positions down. And voilà! No more unfilled problems, see? So I actually did not fell off my chair when I saw that big ceremony at the Ben Franklin Room. As one seasoned diplomat once counseled a younger charge, "Never be the one who says that an idea is bad." Not bad advice, just a very pragmatic one if you don't want to be banished from the upper floors.

But poor Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, of course he had no idea – and actually wondered if a “a prankster had hacked his way into the White House e-mail system” (Friday, January 16, 2009; Page A03) when he saw this advisory from the White House Office of Presidential Advance.

"Ceremony to Commemorate Foreign Policy Achievements"

He thought, “Two wars, the brink of global depression, and violence from Mumbai to Gaza? Par-tee!” Here is an excerpt of Milbank's biting account of people celebrating people:

With fanfare, they walked into the gilded Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department yesterday: President Bush, the first lady, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Rice's deputy, John Negroponte. They had come to praise great people. Namely, themselves.

Rice presented Laura Bush with a framed "Certificate of Appreciation." Then she presented Bush with a "commemorative plaque." And another commemorative plaque, which, like the first, was sheathed in a gold curtain. Finally, she had an honor guard present her boss with five flags in nifty triangular boxes.

"Mr. President, we've been through a lot together," Rice told Bush.

"We've been through a lot together," Bush told Rice.

"Mr. President, history's judgment is rarely the same as today's headlines," Rice assured Bush.

"History will say that Condi Rice was one of the great secretaries of state our country has ever had," Bush assured Rice.

Dana Milbank also reports that Bush has released two legacy-burnishing booklets, the 40-page "100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record" and the 50-page "Highlights of Accomplishments and Results of the Administration of George W. Bush." I have to add that there is a third tome – a 134-page document called A Charge Kept: The Record of the Bush Presidency 2001-2009. Milbank admitted that however laudatory these may be, “pamphlets can't touch the grandeur of a ceremony at the State Department -- and Rice put on a show for her boss yesterday with all the fixings: the crystal light fixtures, the presentation of the colors, the framed medals and flags. With a flourish, the military aide pulled back curtain No. 1 to reveal the first plaque, and curtain No. 2 to reveal the second plaque. "This one shows what you have done to expand the circle of human freedom in the world," Rice announced.”

Bush had no awards for Rice, but he did come with praise for her ("She's like my sister") and for himself. "In short, we've made our alliances stronger, we've made our nation safer, and we have made the world freer," he said.

Hmmn.... hmmn...


In December 2004, President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to L. Paul Bremer III, Tommy R. Franks, and George J. Tenet at the White House.


How come no medals for “Ponte” and Condi? The West Wing will turn into a ghost town at 9 p.m. today. We don’t award medals on weekends, do we?

Ambassador Crocker Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

Photo from The White House

There was a big do at the State Department yesterday. Secretary Rice led the ceremony to commemorate the outgoing administration's Foreign Policy Achievements (2001-2009) in the Benjamin Franklin Room and gave a nice speech. I find it interesting that Secretary Powell was not invited to participate in the ceremony considering that he "owned" the first half of what was commemorated at the event.

Mrs. Bush got a State Department's Certificate of Recognition and President Bush got a couple of commemorative plaques with shiny things on them. Click here to view a 35-minute video of the ceremony. But I must warn you -- the video clip contains explicit articulation from members of a mutual appreciation club. We don't want to give anyone a heart attack. Also, if you want to know what nickname President Bush has assigned to Secretary Negroponte, this is a "must-see" video.

At the later part of the same event, Ambassador Ryan Crocker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian award. President Bush gave a brief speech prior to bestowing the award (starts at 26:00 in the video). Brief excerpt below:

As President, I have entrusted the Foreign Service with our nation's most critical diplomatic missions. I have relied on your expertise, your advice, and your good judgment. I will always be grateful for your valor and your professionalism.

Members of the Foreign Service bring this valor and professionalism to their work every single day. And there is one man who embodies these qualities above all: Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Over the years, Ryan has earned many honors, including the Presidential Meritorious Service Award and the rank of Career Ambassador. Today I have the privilege of honoring Ambassador Crocker with the highest civil award I can bestow -- the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Applause.) It has not been bestowed yet. (Laughter.)

The son of an Air Force officer, Ryan Crocker has never been your typical diplomat. For social engagements, he likes to tell guests, "no socks required." (Laughter.) For language training, he once spent time herding sheep with a desert tribe in Jordan. For sport, he has jogged through war zones, and run marathons on four continents. And for assignments, his preference has always been anywhere but Washington. (Laughter.)

During his nearly four decades in the Foreign Service, Ryan Crocker has become known as America's Lawrence of Arabia. His career has taken him to every corner of the Middle East. His understanding of the region is unmatched. His exploits are legendary. He has served as ambassador to five countries. He has repeatedly taken on the most challenging assignments.

The man has never run from danger. As a young officer during the late 1970s, Ryan catalogued Saddam Hussein's murderous rise to power. In 1983, he survived the terrorist attack on the American embassy in Lebanon. In 1998, as the Ambassador to Syria, he witnessed an angry mob plunder his residence.

After any one of these brushes with danger, most people would have lost their appetite for adventure -- not Ryan Crocker. In the years since September the 11th, 2001, I have asked Ryan to hold numerous posts on the front lines of the war on terror, and he has stepped forward enthusiastically every time.

When the American embassy in Kabul reopened in the beginning of 2002, Ryan Crocker was our first envoy. When we liberated Iraq and removed the thug Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, I sent Ryan to help lead the reconstruction efforts. When the American embassy in Pakistan needed new leadership, Ryan Crocker was put in charge. In 2007, I asked Ryan to return for a final mission to Iraq as America's ambassador.

Two years later, Iraq is becoming a rising democracy, an ally in the war on terror, an inspiring model of freedom for people across the Middle East. When the story of this transformation is written, historians will note the extraordinary partnership between two exceptional men: General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. As the General carried out a surge of military forces to improve security, the Ambassador led a civilian surge to improve everyday life. In December, after months of intense negotiations, the world saw the culmination of Ambassador Crocker's masterful diplomacy -- two historic agreements for long-term cooperation between the United States and Iraq.

This is not the first time that Ambassador Crocker has executed a brilliant diplomatic maneuver in Baghdad. During a rotation at the American embassy nearly 30 years ago, he persuaded a young Foreign Service Officer named Christine Barnes to be his wife. (Laughter.) They have traveled the world together, and as Ryan prepares to retire from the Foreign Service, we wish the two of them many years of happiness. (Applause.)

General Petraeus recently said this about his retiring colleague: "It was a great honor for me to be his military wingman." And today it is my great honor to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to one of the finest Foreign Service Officers in American history -- Ryan Clark Crocker. And now the military aide will read the citation. (Applause.)

MILITARY AIDE: Ryan C. Crocker. For nearly four decades, Ryan Crocker has advanced our nation's interests and ideals around the world. Embodying the highest principles of the United States Foreign Service, he has cultivated and enhanced our relations with pivotal nations. Following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, he worked to build a worldwide coalition to combat terrorism and help millions of oppressed people travel the path to liberty and democracy.

The United States honors Ryan C. Crocker for his courage, his integrity, and his unwavering commitment to strengthening our nation and building a freer and more peaceful world.

(The medal is presented.) (Applause.)

I think the speech writers forgot something here. Insert somewhere in paragraph #7: In 2002, Ryan Crocker co-wrote a secret memo examining the risks associated with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The six-page memo, titled "The Perfect Storm", stated that toppling Saddam Hussein could unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions, that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events. It also cautioned that the United States would have to start from scratch building a political and economic system because Iraq's infrastructure was in tatters. The secret memo was deep-sixed and he did the best he could in dealing with the aftermath.

Related Post:
In Defense of Ryan Crocker

Related Item:
Ryan Crocker’s Truth Telling

Democracy isn't so good if you vote the wrong way?

Norman H. Olsen served for 26 years as a member of the US Foreign Service, including four years working in the Gaza Strip and four years as counselor for political affairs at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv. He was most recently associate coordinator for counterterrorism at the Department of State. He and his son, Matthew N. Olsen (director of Explore Corps, a nascent NGO that uses outdoor education and youth programming to facilitate peace-building among young adults, with several current projects in the Gaza Strip) have a piece in the January 12 edition of the Christian Science Monitor entitled, An inside story of how the US magnified Palestinian suffering (The covert push to empower Fatah failed. And isolating Hamas just made things worse. But it's not too late to change course):

A million and a half Palestinians are learning the hard way that democracy isn't so good if you vote the wrong way. In 2006, they elected Hamas when the US and Israel wanted them to support the more-moderate Fatah. As a result, having long ago lost their homes and property, Gazans have endured three years of embargo, crippling shortages of food and basic necessities, and total economic collapse.

[…]

It didn't have to be this way. We could have talked instead of fought.

[…]

Hamas never called for the elections that put them in power. That was the brainstorm of Secretary Rice and her staff, who had apparently decided they could steer Palestinians into supporting the more-compliant Mahmoud Abbas (the current president of the Palestinian authority) and his Fatah Party through a marketing campaign that was to counter Hamas's growing popularity – all while ignoring continued Israeli settlement construction, land confiscation, and cantonization of the West Bank.

State Department staffers helped finance and supervise the Fatah campaign, down to the choice of backdrop color for the podium where Mr. Abbas was to proclaim victory. An adviser working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) explained to incredulous staffers at the Embassy in Tel Aviv how he would finance and direct elements of the campaign, leaving no US fingerprints. USAID teams, meanwhile, struggled to implement projects for which Abbas could claim credit. Once the covert political program cemented Fatah in place, the militia Washington was building for Fatah warlord-wannabee Mohammed Dahlan would destroy Hamas militarily.

Their collective confidence was unbounded. But the Palestinians didn't get the memo. Rice was reportedly blindsided when she heard the news of Hamas's victory during her 5 a.m. treadmill workout. But that did not prevent a swift response.

You can read the whole thing here.

I wonder how do you spin this to fit the happy talk into the ongoing legacy project? I don't know about you folks but I am terribly exhausted. Is it a new day yet?

2009: Putting the Diplomacy House in Order

(Or Why Diplomacy Needs More Than a Penny)

The trials and tribulations of 2009 will be mainly on the home front. My Chinese crystal ball says that the new year of the Ox is a good time to settle domestic affairs and put our house in order. I think Ambassador Holmes' piece in Foreign Affairs is a step in the right direction; can’t go forward unless we dare to look back.

In the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, the Cyrus Vance Fellow in Diplomatic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who was previously President of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso pens Where Are the Civilians? How to Rebuild the U.S. Foreign Service.

The title begs the follow up questions of “Who broke it?” And “Why was it broken?” Ambassador Holmes points out that DOD's 2008 budget was over 24 times as large as the combined budgets of the State Department and USAID ($750 billion compared with $31 billion). And here is something that I did not know: The number of lawyers at the DOD is larger than the entire U.S. diplomatic corps.

Holy goat!

He catalogs “Condi’s False Hope” from transformational diplomacy to the creation and staffing of the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization which was created in 2004 and “had fewer than ten employees in mid-2008 to accomplish what Rice described as a vital component of her vision of a new diplomacy.”

He talks about "Green Zone Blues" and the politicization of the Foreign Service. Here’s the nugget that made me throw my new pair of Manolo Blahnik at my sullen, multi-system tee-vee:

"In fact, the Bush administration had effectively engineered the dispute in an effort to publicly embarrass the diplomatic corps. By demanding that FSOs take on the unprecedented, open-ended, and fundamentally impossible challenge of nation building under fire without adequate training or funding, the White House was continuing a myopic tradition of shortchanging the civilian institutions of foreign policy while lavishing resources on the military. Furthermore, the Bush administration's general efforts to stifle dissent and to reward those serving in Iraq with promotions and choice assignments has led to the unmistakable politicization of the Foreign Service."

Ah well, it’s not a pretty picture (unless you were politicized up) but deserves a good reading by FS professionals; most especially by the incoming administration who has the opportunity to apply the appropriate remedy not just Band-Aid solution to this problem. It’s the year of the Ox; it’s a good time to put this house in order.

Related Item:

Where Are the Civilians? How to Rebuild the U.S. Foreign Service
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009