Diplomatic Firestorm

The stories about the town hall meeting at the State Department in which several diplomats complained about potential forced assignments to Iraq are certainly generating a lot of comment (see here and here). And I have to say, the diplomats aren't winning a lot of support.

In the midst of all the shouting, I thought this comment, from "Jake," offered some interesting perspective:

As one of the 2,000 or so FSOs who have volunteered so far to work in Iraq and Afghanistan, all I can say is cut us some slack. We're 68% forward deployed overseas. FSOs are around 20% already rotated through Iraq/Afghanistan, the percentage for the three services is about the same. Due to chronic shortfalls in hiring, the average FSO is pushing forty with family, but we still stepped up over the last three years. A fifth of overseas positions are now unaccompanied, most embassies have been ordered to do more to support GWOT while shedding positions to keep Iraq staffed, and the choice European posts were downsized years ago to fill "transformational diplomacy" slots in China, India, and other fun postings. So yeah, labor relations are stressed. It didn't help that the selected two hundred first heard about the draft from CNN Friday night.

I have no doubt that whiners in particular found the time to attend the Town Hall (I didn't), but I imagine legitimate questions were raised and the responses were less than convincing: will the extra slots for the Embassy in the Green Zone contribute or will those folks just get in the way? Will FSOs embedded at the brigade level have the professional experience, language, programmable funds, and access to Iraqi society to contribute to the reconstruction and stabilization mission or will they just be civilian targets w/o firearms?