[Title redacted]...

The time to quit was yesterday.

That was the title of a cable (and my reaction to it) which came out last week.

Every year, the FS goes through this massive, expensive, and (for the players) high-stakes game of musical chairs, as people nearing the end of their tour lay down "bids" on their next posting. The fairness and transparency of the system has always been subject to fierce debate, especially as a series of little changes recently has rewritten the odds in favor of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (while ignoring those who've served in disease- and violent-crime-ridden posts like Port-au-Prince or Lagos). Of course, many people saw the changes as simply making explicit what was always common practice.

This latest cable pretty much ensures that a diplomat will never see Wellington or Madrid unless she first survives Baghdad or Kabul. It also restructures the timing of the bidding season to rather blatantly use prolonged uncertainty as a stick to drive the reluctant towards dubious assignments. Worse yet was the tone of the document, which can be summarized as "unless someone volunteers for Iraq, I'm turning this car around!"

I don't think the often-maligned pin-striped set are particularly cowardly. I'm not a huge fan of the overall set of traits the FS Exam seems to select for, but I've got no complaints about the sort of thrill-seeking that seems to end up in the mix. I'd say that, on average, we're more up for a novel and dangerous challenge than most Americans.

But there's dangerous, and then there's stupid. (Granted, the military has now agreed to protect Provincial Reconstruction Teams, but the security situation has also deteriorated since then, so I think it's pretty much a wash.)

Nor is it entirely about personal safety. Quite a number of us just have no desire to wade into what looks like a bureaucratic quagmire of gross inefficiency and mismanagement -- we deal with that at quite a high enough level at other posts, thank you -- in support of a war we disagree with.

Foreign Service officers pledge "worldwide availability" when we join, and this term is being thrown around accusingly a great deal these days. I know my own track record looks bad (for the record, I never bid on London, and was in fact trying to get to Malaysia -- long story), but I think my interpretation of "worldwide availability" is common: I'll volunteer for relief work in any disaster zone anywhere around the globe; I don't participate in military campaigns. Absent changing the relation between State and the Pentagon -- which, I fear, is exactly "the future" that is "now" -- is it fair to insist that civilians do anything else?