What really went down at the Dean Acheson auditorium

Never mind why I was there; I was.

And since this story is popping up all over the place, often inaccurately, and inviting this kind of "editorializing" (and worse, in various comments sections around the world), I'm going to compromise the list of topics I don't like to blog about, just this once. Or, who knows? Maybe twice.

I arrived as the hall was filling up, and carefully chose a seat that appeared to be out of panning range of the camera that was there to record for the Department's internal broadcasting system. I was amused to note that these seats appeared to be at a premium.

The hall did not entirely fill, which may have simply reflected how little notice was given prior to the meeting, rather than interest levels in the topic. Most news reports that I've read have treated the attendees as a proxy for the Service as a whole. This is careless: at most, 2 percent of all officers were present. (At any one time, most are in places that are, y'know, foreign.)

The mood was one of sullen resignation. No one was under the delusion that he or she was going to successfully lobby for a policy change. The Iraq draft was accepted as a fait accompli; we were there to learn about the details -- though, I have to say, a lot of people seemed to be there to get a sense of how large a number 200 (the number of people identified as "Prime Candidates") really was, and to suss out what their chances of getting designated were.

FSOs are not a rallying kind of people. As I've detailed elsewhere, they are a careerist kind of people. In a situation such as described by Pastor Niemoeller's famous poem, FSOs are likely to sit down and mentally go through their personal affiliations to try to work out exactly how long they might optimally be able to stay silent before someone comes after them and they need to get the hell out. I mean, let's just establish that from the start, especially as it helps to understand how astonishing the ending of this tale is.

The real news story, from my perspective, is not the much-reported one that, essentially, some guy nearing retirement got in a few digs at an extraordinarily dysfunctional bureaucracy. The real news story is how the Director General of the FS, occupying a fiercely competed-for position that few will ever hold, exhibited the media- and PR-savvy of a small woodland creature. How, I kept thinking, does this happen?

Rather than give the crowd some version of "Here's the deal; go on, take your best shot; no really, right here on the chin; ok, do you feel better now?; that's good; send us a postcard from Basra; we all care very much; you're all doing wonderfully; may god bless America," the DG chided the audience. Baited, almost.

Despite that, when he opened the floor for questions, there were none. The audience was silent, save for the creaking of chairs as people attempted to discreetly lean out of the line of sight of the panning cameras.

Finally, someone asked some technical questions about types of leave and allowances for Iraq draftees. The DG did not know. There was some back-and-forth with other audience members until someone who did know was located. The original questioner mumbled something about the solutions "not being good enough."

Did the DG launch into an "I feel your pain" speech? The DG did not. The DG angrily announced he would not be dissed (actual words, I'm afraid), leading the original questioner to put his tail between his legs and clarify "I am not dissing you, sir."

I slunk down in my seat and felt the profound desire to be a member of a different profession.

Someone else asked what the DG would do for families. He explained that families were the Department's highest priority (leaving vague whether he meant that in the "Prime Candidate" sense, or the more conventional one).

The head of the union stood up and asked why the Corps learned about the decision to go to a draft from the Washington Post on a Saturday morning. The DG gave a very unconvincing answer, which the union head did not, at that time, push.

A woman stood up and asked what I thought was an excellent question: how badly were single officers going to be over-represented in this draft, and how fair was that, given that we they usually get stuck with some of the longest hours and most difficult assignments anyway, in the guise of "family friendliness"? The DG explained that singles were the Department's highest priority (leaving little doubt in anyone's mind that he meant it in the "Prime Candidate" sense).

Someone else asked another terrific question: Let's say that you'd nobly served a dozen years in malarial outposts that no one else has wanted to go to, at the ends of the earth, in boring, filthy, dangerous cities that happened not to be Baghdad. After that, you finally did one "reward" tour in Norway to detox. Under the current rules, you'd be just as eligible to be drafted as someone who'd spent the same time alternating between Paris and Genoa. The DG agreed that this was unfortunate, and took the next question.

That's when the young woman with the quavering voice, who sounded either insanely nervous or on the verge of tears, took the mic. She spent about five minutes praising the DG, with shaky and unfocused sentences that had me queasy with empathetic anxiety even as I was thinking "what a tool!" Then she meandered into a description of her own Iraq experience, praising it, too, as one of the most meaningful things that had ever happened to her, while the entire auditorium began to tap their collective toes and thrum with impatience -- a bit like what happens at a book reading, when someone takes 10 minutes "asking" a "question" about how their Irish nephew had a heroin experience that was nothing like the one in "Trainspotting." Then, her voice growing soft, she described how she returned with PTSD, and what the effects were; how she needed help. Suddenly, everyone was absolutely quiet and listening.

Her once-obsequious voice abruptly gaining strength and certainty, she said "And the Department did nothing."

She let it hang there for a long minute, before giving her denouement. It was electrifying. It was an incredible build-up before that hairpin turn. It was masterful. She got a partial standing ovation from the audience, which I joined.

It was after that that the guy who's quoted everywhere got up and said his thing about "a potential death sentence, and you know it." The "and you know it" tends to get cut off, which is unfortunate, because, I think, it's key: this guy was trying more to attack the DG's participation in making the decision rather than speak to the absolute levels of danger in the assignment. It was also one statement out of several, and, if I remember correctly, was added after some back-and-forth with the DG in which he (the DG) was again rather provocative. He did get some applause, but it was a polite smattering. Honestly, when I gave the post-game blow-by-blow to others, I didn't even think to include it. But it was, I suppose, the only real quote sufficiently succinct and general-interest to serve as soundbite.

After that, the union head tried to capitalize on the fact that the audience mood had gone from mute and cowed to willing to display a tiny bit of irritation, and again raised the question of how and when news of the draft was communicated. He raised some other completely non-Iraq-related longstanding union grievances, and asked what the DG planned to do about the fact that only 12 percent of officers thought Secretary Rice championed their interests.

The DG (who is black) shot back something along the lines of "Yes, but at one time, 88 percent of this country believed that slavery was right."

There was a bit of a collective intake of breath, and then folks, bless 'em, began to boo.

The DG announced the meeting was over, and started to walk offstage.

Except no one in the audience budged. "Answer his [the union rep's] questions!" some people in the back started yelling.

The DG made some unhelpful remarks ("It's his right to think these things, but he's wrong.") and walked off again.

And that was it. I felt enormously cheered by the acts of justifiable booing I'd witnessed, as well as the active confrontation of churlishness. And felt it again the next day, when I realized that no reporters had actually been present, and that someone must've either kept an open cellphone line or wisely and surreptitiously recorded it.

But, y'know, almost none of this was about Iraq.

The BBC headline (later corrected) of "Diplomats Refuse Iraq Postings" was, of course, utter fiction. Even the multiple headlines that substituted "balk at" or "vent anger over"...y'know, hard to say. Had the townhall been held before, not after, the decision to implement the draft; had the news been announced to the Corps before the Washington Post; had people in authority been present to answer the technical questions about assignment details; had the meeting been run by someone who didn't open with a harangue; had the Foreign Service Director-General not compared his constituents to slaveowners; well, who's really to say that the audience wouldn't have remained sullenly resigned, asked a few technical questions, and departed, quietly -- but still very politely -- frustrated and despairing?