1 Well, unless you are going to join the foreign service and go to Iraq, you are nothing more than a Chicken Dove!

2 Send every one of the 300 who clapped. Who cares if you agree with the policy or no? Its your job to carry it out.

3 Shitcan them, take away their government benefits, and hire someone willing to do the job.

4 Heaven forbid that a government employee have to actually go where the government tells him to go. 

5 Apparently these ass hats weren't paying attention when the air traffic controllers didn't want to do what they were told.

6 These State Department Warriors of Peace know full well that AQI is known to substitute instant coffee for fresh-brewed and will even let shrimp coctails warm up to room temperature.  They need some time to find their courage, but I know they can do it.

7 If you want to know why America is on the defensive in most of the world, this is as good an explanation as any.  It would be good to have a major housecleaning, but where are you going to get their replacements from - not from today's International Studies grads!  The communists inflitrated and gained control of academia and have been churning out acolytes for 30 years.  That was the Soviet Union's "Plan B", and it worked.  Now any pro-US President is royally screwed.

8 I've run into this with my national guard company.  We're getting ready to go, and suddenly people aren't very excited about being members of the military.  They had no problem getting bonuses to join, drill pay and money for college, but now that they have to deploy for a year, several are finding all sorts of previously undisclosed medical and family issues.

For the most part, there's not much I can do.  Many hope they'll be left behind with paperwork pending so they can stay in, but I've been pretty ruthless about discharging those unable to go.

Thankfully, it's really only a handful of personnel, but strangely it's mostly senior leadership trying to duck out.  They have families, better paying civilian jobs and such, so I guess it makes sense, but it's the opposite of what I usually saw in the active duty, where homesick and scared kids wanted to get discharged and the senior leaders could be counted on to stick through it.

9 "... where are you going to get their replacements from
..."

From the same place we get our military men. Open up the recruiting process, pull in people who are not the same diploma mills who are filling the State Department now. Try a little ... dare I say it? ... diversity the recruiting.

Good God, there 300 million people in this country! Surely there must be a few thousand out there who will serve their country honorably and well in the Department of State!

10 I should also try a little proofreading: "people who are not from the same diploma milla" and "diversity in the recruiting".

Sorry about that.

11 Cyberluddite and Brown Line ... yep!  The bedwetters have controlled the hiring process for these jobs, so just like in academe, they have selected leftist cowards in their own image, as it were.  It's time to clean house.  There's lots of retired military folks who can and would do these State Department jobs, and they would likely actually do the jobs rather than sit around and whine.

12

We talked about the State "town hall" meeting out here in the boonies where non-retired diplomats serve.

There are a lot more than 300 people working at Main State (i.e., "Foggy Bottom") and nearby State Annexes.  You got an audience filled with the people so unhappy with the policy change that they left work to go to a meeting about it.  Most people stayed at their desks and got on with their work.

Do the math.  A noisy and vocal minority got an article written about them.  Big surprise:  it fits the media's meta-narrative for the nation's professional diplomats to appear disenchanted with the administration's Iraq policies.

A third (1,200) of FSOs (6,500 total) have already served in Iraq; more than two-thirds of FSOs are serving overseas at any given time.  And out of 252 job vacancies next year, there were qualified volunteers to fill 204 of them.  So only some 48 officers will receive directed assignments.

So far, a couple of hundred qualified "prime candidates" have been identified and notified about their being considered for one of the 48 unfilled vacancies.  Nobody's been picked, nobody picked has resigned.

13 If anyone had any serious doubts that the State Department was due for a serious mucking out, this should put those doubts to rest.