Medieval Times: New US embassy in London to have high-tech security device

Why even bother having embassies anymore??? What exactly do they accomplish that cannot be done in another way??? Ambassadorships, 9 time out of 10, are meted out to loyal political hacks. The only true beneficiaries are the career diplomats in our “illustrious” (remember Honduras?) State Department. Political hacks and bureaucratic detritus hosting gala soirees and pretending to be “statesmen” and squandering our hard earned tax dollars.

Having an embassy in every foreign land is an anachronism in this digital age. You’d think we would have learned that with Iran way back when. Maybe someone like Ron Paul can embarrass these jerks back to reality.

Bob in VA on February 24, 2010 at 10:34 AM

Probably being the lone Conservative State Department Foreign Service Officer that contributes to this blog, I feel I have to speak up and dispell some myths of the favorite whipping boy of the right.

First of all, political appointed Ambassadors probably make up around 25% of the Diplomatic Corps. However, we had hoped that Obama would keep his promise of not appointing these political hacks, we knew that was not going to happen. You are correct that many of these political appointees use their appointments as a tax payer funded gala, some actually do some real work.

Career Diplomats don’t deserve the abuse that is often given to them. Like the military, they put their lives and families on the line and serve in some of the worst crap-holes in this world. In fact, outside of war, more Diplomats are tortured and killed each year from acts of terrorism than the military (for example, Tehran, Pakistan, Nairobi, Dar Es Salaam to name a few.) Please keep this in mind the next time you want to bash career diplomats.

As for having an Embassy in every foreign land is an anarchronism in the digital age, I would agree. However, you assume that the State Department isn’t taking advantage of the digital age. Currently, the State Department has 56 Virtual Presence Posts and another 42 planned Virtual Presence Posts in places that would normally require a Consulate. Because they are Virtual, no additonal staffing is required. To the local populace, it looks as if we have a consulate in their city.

In addition to the Virtual Presence Posts, the State Department is beginning to regionalize many of their consulates and using the Embassy support staff to support the Consulates, thus reducing the amount of people required to be at the Consulate. This too is reducing the staff needed to be deployed.

So people know,the State Department has been one of the leading Executive Branch agencies trying to cut back tax payer dollars or use them more efficiently. We have been living the mantra of doing more with less for many years now, starting back under the Bush administration with annual funding cuts since 2005.

If you want to complain about the State Department, I suggest focusing on why this administration felt the need to give us hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funding. This was a way to circumvent the Federal budgeting process and is the real squandering of hard earned tax dollars. However, don’t blame the rank and file State Department employee for this. Blame those that are responsible, i.e. the Administration.

DoS_Conservative on February 24, 2010 at 1:52 PM