The shortage of foreign service officers willing to serve in Iraq has provided rightish commenters a new excuse to deepen the caricature of career State Department officials as effete, snobbish, and selfish (they didn’t want us to go war! that should tell you all you need to know!).
This morning on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol pooh-poohed the “Foggy Bottom set” for refusing to hew to the “oath” they took to serve their country “anywhere in the world.” He was echoed by Brit Hume and Chris Wallace; when Juan Williams gingerly offered that he wasn’t sure the oath was binding in that way, he was all but shouted down.
It turns out foreign service officers do take an oath. Here it is (from a transcript of Colin Powell swearing in the Foreign Service Institute’s 100th class):
I, [state your name.] do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I take this obligation freely and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. That I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me, God.
I, personally, would like to think I’d go where they send me, and I think the employees that are complaining about being involuntarily assigned to Iraq look less than noble BUT the oath doesn’t specifically demand that they go. And while that maybe seem overly legalistic, it’s instructive to compare the foreign service oath with the armed service oath (emphasis added):
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
The military oath of enlistment quite properly emphasizes obedience. Civilians don’t have to obey because they are civilians. They’re expected to exercise independent judgment and perhaps even question superiors. It’s too early on a Sunday morning to get into a long discussion about the merits of military versus civilian approaches to foreign policy, but suffice to say, a country does not prosper when government compels the latter to act like the former.
UPDATE: I want to emphasize that I’m not saying FSO’s shouldn’t go; I’m just saying they’re not breaking an oath if they don’t go. Being wusses? Perhaps. Not showing a lot of respect for the sacrifices of the 19-year-olds being killed outside the Green Zone? Maybe. But these are questions for which they need to answer to themselves, not to Bill Kristol.