State has a serious case of "Congressional Terroritis," that is, mortal dread of Congress. It quakes and quivers at the thought that Congress (or any of its myriad myrmidons) might get cross. Or cut a budget.

State knows that the bad press resulting from dead diplomats would lead to a Congressional inquiry at the least, with the likelihood of the SecState being grilled in camera/on camera most likely.

Thus, it will spend oodles of dollars to build fortress embassies to make sure that we don't have repeats of the Beirut bombings of the 80s.

Decisions were based on stark calculations: It is better to have live, though less effective diplomats than dead ones who were doing a better job.

Because I worked in Public Diplomacy--whose entire raison d'etre is being in publicly accessible places--a large part of my career was spent fighting the planned closure and relocation of PD offices. They were in impossible locations if security was the driving concern. Usually these offices were downtown, on the main drags, and no way did they have set-backs from the street to mitigate the effects of car bombs.

Of course, this is tension-making. Some people, oddly enough, didn't feel comfortable knowing that a car bomb outside the front door would take down the entire building. Even those with brass balls were not immune to reality.

While I was in Riyadh, the US Foreign Commercial Service office in Jeddah was located separate from the Consulate in Jeddah. It was very much publicly accessible. It was so easy to get to, in fact, that the Public Affairs Officer in Jeddah tried to get his office relocated there.

I fought against that move, preferring to have him and his staff behind walls. Security forced USFCS to relocate behind walls after the 2003 bombings of residential compounds in Riyadh.

As the attack on the Consulate in Dec. 2004 demonstrated, this was wise. Had USFCS been in their original location, they would have been held hostage if not been killed.

There's already an imposing wall at State filled with stars of FSOs killed in the line of duty.

It is possible to be out in the public--at least part time--without being stupid about it. But it means being able to get away from the desk. And that's not always easy.

As in many private sector businesses, State did away with lots of clerical staff in the 80s and 90s. That was good for cutting costs, but rotten for efficient use of highly trained officers. Bare bones Admin and Personnel (sorry, HR!) sections can't carry the load and much of the work bounces back to the actual line managers of substantive sections.

Other than Ambassadors and some of the security folks, practically no one has American secretaries with security clearances. This means that truly mundane things also get kicked back to the officers--like escorting visitors, collecting and disposing of cable traffic, etc. This is a waste of limited time on the part of trained talent.

My biggest question--and I'd love Dr. Demarche's thoughts--has to do with recruiting and retaining officers.

I believe I'm of the last generation of "career" officers, i.e., doing 20+ years in the service. Today, you just don't find spouses--of either sex--willing to work for uncle on an unremunerative basis. For some strange reason, they're of the opinion that when they work, they should be paid. That's if they're willing to give up their careers to go overseas in the first place.

While State no longer rates officers on the behavior of spouses and children, on the willingness of wives to pass the cookies at functions, it still expects an awful lot from unpaid partners of officers.

Maybe State needs to recruit, exclusively, Shaolin monks and nuns, single people willing to put it all on the line without the encumbrance of families. That would solve a major problem, all right.

"Assignment discipline" is necessary, of course. "Worldwide Available" means just that; you can be sent where the service needs to send you, your druthers be damned. State hasn't been doing much of that for the past 20 years, but it should. (Actually Afghanistan and Iraq are seeing lots of people who never bid on the jobs.)

Hard-to-staff assignments tend to draw officers who can't get jobs in nicer places. Or officers who are down to their last chance to make something of their careers. Or those who have proved to be such pains in the ass that no one else will take them. This works out nicely for HR, but not so well for the field posts encumbered with problem children.

State also needs to find solutions to other family issues that just aren't met by typical stateside private sector employees.

While kids are young, they can be dragged around almost anywhere. As they get older, and as schooling becomes more important, then officers correctly start getting concerned about where they'll be assigned.

I have a smart kid, a really smart kid. He deserved good schools. I did everything within my power to make sure I could get a European assignment when he was in the critical middle grades, and succeeded with an assignment to London. After that, he was willing to go to boarding school for HS, and I could take an assignment in New Delhi, where the American HS wasn't so great (at least by my standards).

I had absolutely no guilt about getting the London assignment as I'd already done 12 years in hardship/greater hardship posts, and would do another four afterwards.

Were that European assignment not available, I would have walked; my son's education was that important to me.

My wife got screwed over consistently by State. Prior to our marriage, she was a book editor. My assignments in the Middle East did absolutely nothing for her career as there was very little call for English language book editors in the Arab world. The Arabic training she got was not adequate to editing in Arabic, nor could it have been (ask someone who's studied Arabic).

While State tried to make jobs available for spouses, they were always jobs that had no future, no career track within State. This has changed somewhat of late, but if a spouse is a professional, there's little scope for meaningful employment overseas.

So how do you deal with these real problems? It's not a matter of whimpy demands from spoiled brats. Only one person is getting a salary, is getting all those awards for meritorious or superior performance: the officer. Spouses get a roof over their heads, the pleasure of the officer's company (mostly). They also get to live in not-so-fun places, dealing with not-so-fun health issues, safety and security issues, learning to shop in various languages, acquiring a taste for those Clorox-strawberries and lettuces. And they don't get paid for all the fun they're having.

Try imposing those conditions on the spouses of someone at IBM or Smith-Barney.

While many private companies do send employees--and their families--abroad, it's not to Tincanistan or Wagamamadoogoo. And those companies offer salaries and benefits packages far beyond what Congress would countenance.

Getting tough is certainly a necessary part of the solution, but it doesn't do it all.