re: "Foreign Service Myths"

Thanks to James Joyner at Outside The Beltway for the link.

Money quote(s):

"There’s a tendency, especially among conservatives and, doubly so among those with military backgrounds, to view FSO’s as effete sons of privilege who spend their day sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. To the extent that was ever the case, those days are long gone."

&

"(T)he Foreign Service has a problem in common with our armed forces: the lack of people with the skill sets needed for reconstruction and stabilization operations. Both our military and our diplomatic corps are built around a very different set of missions that those to which they are increasingly deployed. And despite “everybody” in the relevant decision chains knowing this, very little is being done about that fact."