Features > January 2, 2008
Empire’s Architecture (cont’d)
Waxman’s letter requested a response from Rice within 10 days. She failed to reply before her appearance in front of the committee on Oct. 25, during which her evasive answers to questions left committee members visibly disatisfied.
As for Krongard, his problems may have just begun. (Editor’s Note: Krongard resigned shortly after this issue went to press.) On Nov. 14, he recused himself from the two biggest probes into the State Department—the Blackwater scandal and the embassy project in Baghdad—after House Democrats confronted him with evidence of conflict of interest, particularly related to his brother’s role as an adviser to the private security firm Blackwater. It is also possible he perjured himself on this issue, since he initially insisted his brother had no involvement with Blackwater. Waxman’s committee is continuing to assess Krongard’s performance. (A hearing scheduled for Dec. 3 had been indefinitely postponed as In These Times went to press.)
Washington’s praetorian guard
The internal problems of the embassy are as mind-boggling as those plaguing its construction. On Oct. 7, the Washington Post reported that embassy construction has been complicated by a dispute between Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and James L. Golden—the top Washington-based official charged with project oversight. Golden, managing director of the Emergency Projects Coordinating Office, has been barred from Iraq by Crocker for allegedly disobeying embassy orders during an investigation of a worker’s death. Specifically, he is suspected of altering or destroying evidence in the case. According to the Post’s anonymous source, “When confronted by embassy officials, he allegedly told them he worked for Washington, not the embassy. Crocker then banished him from the country.”
Golden, a contract employee, is no stranger to being unwanted by an embassy. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut denied him the normally standard “country clearance” when he was attempting to enter the country to work on the new embassy plan in Beirut.
Golden hasn’t been Crocker’s only personnel problem. On May 1, Crocker requested a diplomatic surge to match the military one. In a cable to Rice, he wrote, “Simply put, we cannot do the nation’s most important work if we do not have the department’s best people.”
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler reported that Crocker insisted the cable was not intended as criticism of Rice or the embassy’s staff. Backpedaling, he said, “I need more people, and that’s the thing, not that the people who are here shouldn’t be here or couldn’t do it.” Regardless of the confusing and contradictory statements, and despite 1,000 American and 4,000 non-American employees, Crocker’s call is being heeded. So far, political officers have been increased from 15 to 26, and economic officers from nine to 21.
The potential deficiencies of staffing did not occur without warning, however. A March 2005 report by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General had warned that the talent pool of Foreign Service officers was becoming “increasingly scarce” and that an “increasing number of eligible Foreign Service officers are also likely to be influenced more by financial rewards and family considerations than by less tangible considerations.”
Almost three years later, Crocker is still reiterating those concerns, which came to a head at an Oct. 31 town hall meeting among U.S. diplomats, who were facing the threat of either serving in Baghdad or losing their jobs. One participant, who identified himself as a 36-year foreign service veteran, told the Associated Press that he viewed service in Iraq as “a potential death sentence,” and under these conditions, “any other embassy in the world would be closed by now.” Within a few weeks and under considerable pressure, enough volunteers stepped forward to fill the Baghdad tour duties for this cycle.
The organizational chart of the embassy provided in early versions of a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report from 2005 resembled a multinational corporation more than a normal 50-person embassy. Aside from typical—but more populated—State Department offices, other governmental agencies will have offices at the embassy, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, Labor and Transportation. Strangely, given the American interest in oil and security, the Department of Energy and the Secret Service have not requested office space. More recent versions of CRS reports on the embassy have omitted the chart.
The most revealing aspect of the chart, however, was not its size but its power structure. It places the U.S. Commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq as equal in stature to the ambassador. According to the text of the CRS report, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq “has full authority for the American presence in Iraq with two exceptions: One, military and security matters, which are under the authority of Gen. Petraeus, the commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I). And two, staff working for international organizations.
In areas where diplomacy, military and/or security activities overlap, the ambassador and the U.S. commander continue cooperating to provide co-equal authority regarding what’s best for America and its interests in Iraq.”
This new orgnizational structure codified the post-9/11 concern that the Department of Defense has taken over diplomatic roles formerly held by the State Department. There is little doubt that military will trump diplomacy every time they collide.
In the May 1 memo, Crocker also suggested that the “overly restrictive” security rules that the diplomats must work under are hampering them because they cannot, for example, meet with officials in other cities. He requested authority to operate under less inhibitive military standards.
Ultimately, for Crocker, the question is “whether we are a department and a service at War. If we are, we need to organize and prioritize in a way that reflects this, something we have not done thus far.”
Empire’s cornerstone
The grandiose embassy, with all its problems, highlights the United States’ ambiguous role in Iraq—its imperial ambitions, as well as the shortcomings to such delusions of grandeur.
Jane C. Loeffler, author of The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, points out that it is difficult to imagine diplomatic relations with a country given the circumstances. “Diplomacy isn’t the sort of work that can be done by remote control. Instead, it takes direct contact to build good will for the United States and promote democratic values.”
Alongside more than a dozen permanent military bases in Iraq, the U.S. government is building this permanent symbol of empire by imperial design. With only 275 Iraqi parliamentarians and an Iraqi cabinet of less than 40 ministers, American embassy employees outnumber those who ostensibly govern the Iraqi people by more than three to one. This being the case, it’s hard to believe the United States is interested in diplomacy, promoting democracy or even full sovereignty.
During a May 2007 hearing, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said to Condoleezza Rice: “Having said over and over again that we don’t want to be seen as an occupying force in Iraq, we’re building the largest embassy that we have. … And it just seems to grow and grow and grow. Can we just review who we really need and send the rest of the people home?”
Leahy was partially right. The United States doesn’t want to be seen as an occupying force. But that doesn’t mean occupation isn’t what the United States desires. The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based non-governmental organization, argues that the Iraqi government is both neighbored and dwarfed by the embassy, which “is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country.” Indeed, Iraqis have nicknamed the compound “George W.’s Palace.”
“If architecture reflects the society that creates it,” Loeffler says, “the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad makes a devastating comment about America’s global outlook.”
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