Remember The Ill-Fated Air Traffic Controller Strike?
According to The Washington Post, a bunch of union bureaucrats at the State Department are balking at having to do their job.Â
Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.Â
This is fairly simple to me.  If you don’t want to do your job, quit.  See, these courageous diplomats have that option. When they accepted the job, the possibility of being sent to a potentially dangerous place was very clear, yet they accepted the job. In contrast, if someone joins the Army and is ordered to deploy (into far more dangerous circumstances than any of these pogues I assure you), he does not have the option of quitting.Â
Service in Iraq is “a potential death sentence,” said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran. “Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now,” he said to sustained applause.Â
This cowardly old fart should just retire already! Â Forty Six years has to qualify for a one-way trip to Florida. Foreign Service officers swear an oath to serve wherever the secretary of state sends them, but no directed assignments have been ordered since the late 1960s, during the Vietnam War. More than 1,200 of 11,500 eligible State Department personnel have already served in Iraq, but the growth of the embassy has led to an ever-increasing demand.Â
So 10% of those eligible have actually served? I wouldn’t want to give up that cush detail to The Bahamas myself but again, it’s your damn job. Go do it or quit.
At least three department employees have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.  Â
Three? Now that’s not exactly a “death sentence†is it?  In the last four years, how many State Department employees have died? What were the causes? Anyone want to bet that Iraq is not in the top five? Just a reminder of that oath you took before the Union tries to call a strike.Â
[As released by the Office of the Spokesman, February 15, 2001]Â
SECRETARY POWELL: “That I will well and faithfully”
CLASS 100: “That I will well and faithfully”
SECRETARY POWELL: “discharge the duties of the office”
CLASS 100: “discharge the duties of the office”
SECRETARY POWELL: “on which I am about to enter.”
CLASS 100: “on which I am about to enter.”
SECRETARY POWELL: “So help me, God.”
CLASS 100: “So help me, God.”
SECRETARY POWELL: Congratulations, Class 100. (Applause.)Â
And now, to the new graduates and to your families, it is my very, very great pleasure to present the President of the United States, George W. Bush. (Applause.)
Category: Politics
This is what comes as a result of President Bush’s “New Tone”. He damned well should have cleaned out this cesspool of cowards when he took office. You know what? Now that Bush is a lame duck and has only 14 months remaining in his term, he ought to take a page from Ronaldus Magnus and fire the lot of them.
They took an oath office; to serve honestly and faithfully and carry out their duties.
No where in that oath does it have an “if”, “or”, or a “but”.
As a former Soldier, I took an oath of enlistment as well, and I was smart enough to realize that the Army of the United States sent me where I was needed. If these craven scatterbrains didn’t want the job, they should have never signed up.
FIRE THEM.