I Walked by the State Department Yesterday (Part II)

(continued from "I Walked by the State Department Yesterday (Part I)" posted 12.6.4)

I remember the shiny wide halls of marble-like material, the elevators with deselect buttons (don't find too many of them no more), and the oh-so-important shiny shoes gliding in lockstep.

Overseas, at least, many of our supposed 'diplomats' are actually in the employ of the intelligence community.  I have wondered about my father in that regard, given his behavior, but I have determined he was an actual F.S.O. (Foreign Service Officer).

He made ambassador, if that's any indication.

But, just as a Naval officer, which he was, might bring home the anger he can't express at work, which he did, so might a U.S. diplomat apply what he learns on the job on the home front.  Treating his own family in ways the U.S. treats other nations, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

So there's your wasted life.

Now a friend, a musician, a highly talented and intelligent person I know has fallen into their fold; never likely to return.  His first posting to the poorest of the world's nations, known for its unstable violence, was hard enough for me.  Knowing what faces him in a Foreign Service career is even harder.

I was on my way to a movie about the Italian mafia, in what the lecturer dubbed the "anti-Mafia martyr" genre.  She was asked after her talk if she was including in her definition of 'mafia' the broader behavior found in numerous groups worldwide--gaining what they want by force.

You can't drive past the State Department on 'C' Street anymore.  Guards at either end.  Kicking so many beehives overseas we have to protect ourselves from the backlash at home.

Oddly, the 'man of peace' turns out to the the four-star general who's stepping down as Secretary of State, Colin Powell.  At the time of his appointment I wondered at the paradox, a military man becoming our chief diplomat.  Not since George C. Marshall, another Nobel Peace Prize winner (1953), had we seen such a thing.  But George C. Marshall was a truly great man, and Colin Powell?

Now we see the hand the State Department plays so clearly.  We see it in Iraq.

What is this diplomatic corps anymore if the diplomats within wish not to go out into the field for fear of their lives.  Billion dollar fortresses now replace out humble diplomatic outposts.  Manned by geeks without uniform or military training.  Sitting ducks in our foreign wars.

We've kicked so many beehives over there we need to give them billion-dollar fortresses to live and work in.

Now I know where my life went.