Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Post-Benghazi, GOP hurts Libyan diplomacy

This is basically what I said earlier: U.S. diplomats understand that they must sometimes work in dangerous places, and they're willing to take some risks to do their jobs:

Thousands of U.S. diplomats do their jobs every day, conscious of the dangers they face but accepting of the risks that come with the job. Excessive security that interferes with their jobs doesn't serve our interests abroad or make us safer at home. The politicians who play political football with Benghazi should be ashamed of themselves.

In other words, our foreign service officers can't do public diplomacy when they are ridiculously outnumbered by armed guards, or holed up in a fortress embassy.  

FSOs also receive extra compensation (danger pay) for working in posts like Libya. 

(Mieczyslaw Boduszynski was a Foreign Service officer with the State Department from 2004 to 2013.)


By Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski 
December 3, 2013 | Los Angeles Times

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