Too Many and Too Few Diplomats

The U.S. foreign policy establishment suffers from a couple of problems. One is that it is spread more widely than anyone gives it credit for. Obviously it primarily consists of the State Department bureaucracy; there are probably hundreds of people at Foggy Bottom that no one has heard of, and yet have influence over various details of our international relations. However, the Constitution specifies that the Senate must ratify treaties, and has "advice and consent" oversight on presidential appointments to upper-level positions and ambassadorships; therefore, virtually every veteran Senator, as well as a number of Senatorial candidates, fancies him- or herself as a foreign policy expert. And you have to include much of the media in the foreign policy establishment because many journalists seem to see themselves as the real experts concerning any subject they've ever reported on.

But the real problem is that the foreign policy establishment has both too many and too few diplomats. That is, it suffers from an overabundance of good diplomats and a fierce paucity of great ones. So, you ask, what is the difference? Well, I don't remember who first said this in the dim recesses of history, so I can't credit it properly, but a good diplomat will let you have your way some of the time, whereas a truly great diplomat will let you have his way all of the time and lead you to believe that it was your idea all along. There are simply not enough people in the establishment that are convinced that what is good for U.S. security is also good for the civilized world in general. And there are far too many who want to give concessions in order to soothe tensions with those who hate us.

I don't often agree with columnist Froma Harrop, but on September 7 she nailed it with her "Islamic Terror's Endless 'Root Causes'" column. A most telling quote from that column:

Islamic terrorists are attacking people on nearly every continent -- many who have little or nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy. Multicultural, huggy-bear, we're-not-in-Iraq Canada has uncovered a plot by 17 Muslims to invade its Parliament and chop off the prime minister's head.

No matter how you paint it, no matter how you try to soothe it and justify it and mollify it, the terrorists and their ringleaders are simply going to hate everyone and everything that fails to submit to them absolutely 100%. And any concession made by our supposed experts to address the "root causes" of terrorism is never going to be seen by them as a step towards peaceful compromise, but as weakness that should be exploited to the fullest. They have proven any number of times that they do not believe in compromise, except as a temporary measure to give them a chance to regroup and regather their strength.

We can't afford such compromises, as they only make it easier for them to kill us. But way too many in our foreign policy establishment are foolishly convinced that such a path is the intellectually superior one.

"Can't we all just get along?" No. We can't. Because they won't.