Civilians

Further proof of the difficulties in staffing at the State Department. President Obama wants to send more civilians overseas as part of reconstruction teams. The problem? There aren't enough people available to go:

The shortfall offers more evidence that the government's civilian departments have not received enough money to hire and train people ready to take up assignments in combat zones. Unlike the armed services, nonmilitary agencies do not have clear rules to compel rank-and-file employees to accept hardship posts.

Senior officials said Wednesday that the president's national security team had not determined exactly how many people would be required to carry out the reconstruction portion of the strategy, nor which departments and agencies would be required to supply the people.

But not enough of those civilians are readily available inside the government, officials said, forcing the administration to turn to the military, Pentagon civilians and private contractors, at least for the initial deployments.

The folks who work at State are great. But there aren't enough of them to staff missions, much less rotate some of them out for training courses. President Obama has pledged funding to increase the size of the foreign service, but it's going to get them on board and up to speed. The State Department needs internal reconstruction before it's going to be ready to expand its reconstruction role overseas.