Daily Archives: September 10, 2012

Obama Nominates Robert Stephen Beecroft as Next Ambassador to Iraq

September 10, 2012 By in Ambassadors, FSOs, Iraq, Nominations, Officially In, US Embassy Baghdad Tags: , , , , ,

The NYT is reporting that President Obama announced today his intent to nominate Ambassador Robert Stephen Beecroft as the next US Ambassador to Iraq following the withdrawal of his first choice, Brett McGurk in June 2012.

Ambassador Beecroft has been Chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Baghdad since the departure of Ambassador James Jeffrey on June 1, 2012.

Below is a quick bio from US Embassy Baghdad:

Robert Stephen Beecroft, a career member of the Foreign Service, joined Embassy Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission on July 14, 2011.  Prior to that, Mr. Beecroft served as Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  He became Chargé d’affaires upon the departure of Ambassador James Jeffrey on June 1, 2012.

Mr. Beecroft’s previous assignments include service in Washington as Executive Assistant to two Secretaries of State and Special Assistant to a Deputy Secretary of State.  He has also held assignments in Department of State’s Executive Secretariat and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.  Overseas he has served at the U.S. embassies in Amman, Riyadh, and Damascus.  He is a recipient of the Department of State’s Meritorious, Superior, and Distinguished Honor Awards.

Before joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Beecroft practiced law in the San Francisco office of an international law firm.  He holds a B.A. from Brigham Young University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ambassador Beecroft graduated from BYU in 1983 and the University of California at Berkeley Law School in 1988. He practiced law in San Francisco for several years before joining the Foreign Service in 1994.

The August 2008 coverage of his appointment as US Ambassador to Jordan by Church News of the Church of Latter-Day Saints has additional personal details here.  The Church News also covered Ambassador Beecroft’s Diplomacy for Human Rights Award on April 21, 2011 at the State Department here.

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El Snarkistani: 5 Things You Should Know About Dead Kids in Kabul

September 10, 2012 By in Af/Pak, Blogs of Note, Security, War Tags: , , , , ,

El Snarkistani of It’s Always Sunny in Kabul was gone for a couple of weeks of R&R.  We miss him when he’s gone and we’re always happy to see him return to his blog. But then he blogs about the 5 Things You Should Know About Dead Kids in Kabul which makes us throw shoes at the dark, surly skies.

Because it’s Massoud Day, or because it’s a Saturday, or because the CIA is here, or because the State Department just declared the Haqqani network a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the Taliban/ISI/Haqqani convinced a street kid to fill a backpack with explosives and detonate it near the front entrance to ISAF headquarters here in Kabul.

I, like most people who have worked with ISAF/the Embassy/the Afghan government in that part of Kabul have walked that stretch of road a lot. We know the kids that hang out there, sometimes by name, mostly by whatever trinkets they’re trying to sell this week.

As tragic as today’s events were, and believe me, I’m trying like hell to keep typing and not just sit here in a pool of my own self-pitying grief for kids I barely knew in a place I’ve come to love at some level, it matters a whole lot more than just our (hopefully) usual human response to tragedy.

So, in keeping with a format that a) keeps my ADD at bay and b) lets me make a list, here’s 5 reasons why some dead kids in Kabul should matter.

Go here to read the 5 reasons.

His reason #3: This is going to be blamed on the Haqqani.   On September 8, Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi  blamed Saturday’s attack on the Haqqani network but did not say how he came to that conclusion.

CBS News report that the bomber, who Kabul police estimated to be about 14 years old, struck just before noon on a street that connects the alliance headquarters to the nearby U.S. and Italian embassies, a large U.S. military base and the Afghan Defense Ministry.  He reportedly detonated his explosives while walking down the street, according to Kabul police. The Ministry of Interior said some of the victims were street children.  The NYT has additional coverage of this attach here.

At the end of his piece, El Snarkistani asks, “After 11 years, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives (most of them Afghan), are we really doing any good that’s going to last more than a minute after we shut off the aid spigot?”

Good question. Are we?

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The Foreign Service is like your husband’s crazy college girlfriend … Va Va Voom — oh, but …

September 10, 2012 By in Book Notes, Foreign Service, FS Blogs, Org Culture, Realities of the FS, Spouses Tags: , , ,

One of our favorite Foreign Service writers, Kelly of Well, That Was Different has her blog fingers right on the button on this.   When the Foreign Affairs Fudge Factory (by John Franklin Campbell) or The Theory of Public Bureaucracy (Politics, Personality, and Organization in the State Department)  (by Donald Warwick) ever gets updated for the 21st century, there definitely needs to be a section for the crazy old girlfriend’s schizophrenic outbursts and not too endearing qualities. Kelly writes:

The Foreign Service is like your husband’s (‘scuse the masculine, but that’s how it is for us) crazy college girlfriend. She is sexy as hell, which is how she seduced your husband in his young and foolish student days. But, she is also bipolar and totally narcissistic.

She can be really nice when she wants to be, or more accurately, when it’s in her interest to do so. Every couple of years, she comes knocking at the door, all charming and cute, with slick promises of promotion, money, and other goodies, and chances are, your husband will be suckered once again.

She even has long periods of sanity sometimes—at least I think I remember one of those. (It lasted about 8 years.)

The manic phases are interesting. Sometimes, she even gets a wild hair and builds a huge mansion in, like, the worst neighborhood on the planet, then expects everyone to be totally excited to work and live there.

But look out when she is on a downswing. You are just cannon fodder then, and she’ll be seriously pissed if you don’t toe the line. She gets especially cranky when she’s running out of money, or someone is giving her a hard time. She doesn’t take criticism very well. In fact, her general approach is to deny that there is a problem. Being basically insane, she may actually believe this to be true.

 

Tee-he! Can’t help but appreciate the sustained simile.  Continue reading In Which I Am Shocked To Discover That I No Longer Absolutely Loathe Foreign Service Bidding.

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