Diplomats Protest Move to Force Some to Go to Iraq

Some U.S. diplomats told senior State Department officials during a contentious meeting Wednesday that they aren't happy about a decision that could force some of them to serve in Iraq.

Karen DeYoung, senior diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, talked to Alex Cohen on Day to Day about the diplomats' protests. She said the meeting came after department officials sent e-mails to about 200 diplomats, notifying them that they are prime candidates to fill the remaining 48 of about 250 positions that will become vacant next summer. Some of those vacancies will be at the U.S. embassy and others with the provincial reconstruction teams around Iraq. If enough people don't volunteer by Nov. 12, then the State Department will use "directed assignments" that will force people to go.

DeYoung, who listened to a tape of the meeting, said the head of the diplomats' union said his membership didn't feel like they had the training to do the job. Another diplomat talked about coming back from Iraq and not getting help coping with her readjustment, despite asking for it.

But the diplomats' protests aren't sitting so well with soldiers in Iraq, according to JJ Sutherland, currently working in NPR's Baghdad bureau. One soldier he talked to laughed about their protests. He said lots of guys had been there for 15-month tours in brutal, urban combat conditions, so it was hard to understand the anxiety about working in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

But most importantly, the soldiers say the lack of diplomats impedes their work. The military can only do so much, and to rebuild the government, State Department expertise is required.

DeYoung said that the diplomats don't want to be seen as "wimps," and they point out that hundreds of them have served in Iraq since 2003. But the way the potential forced assignments are being handled has made them angry.

4:38 PM ET | 11- 1-2007 | permalink