Actually, there are plenty of dangerous, isolated and uncomfortable assignments in the Foreign Service. Unfortunately, at the moment many of them are in Afghanistan and Iraq and all of them have to be filled all over again each and every year. As do the Liberias and the Pakistans and all the other dangerous and/or uncomfortable posts.

There's no warehouse chock-full-o' Arabic linguists or reconstruction experts (who have been on ice since last practising their trades during the occupations of Germany and Japan) upon which we can draw.

And there's no diplomatic reserve component, no equivalent of the national guard, that can be called upon at need to make up any shortfalls.

Secretary Rice recently announced that the number of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) would be increased from 10 to 18. Those people are going to have to come from somewhere. I don't doubt that the Department will staff them and deploy them with the best qualified people it can; that's been an announced and public priority for some time now and I believed them the first time. But Arabic linguists aren't something you can just order up whenever you need a hundred or a dozen. And you still have to staff all those diplomatic missions in Arabic speaking countries at the same time, plus the whole rest of the world as well. It's not going to be easy to accomplish and may require the implementation of directed assignments, something that will not be received well within the Foreign Service.

A colleague of mine mentioned something the other day that had been obvious to me when it was first announced in late 2003 that we would be re-opening an embassy in Baghdad and in what numbers we would staff it. At the time I was temporarily back in uniform and serving in Iraq as a soldier. His thoughts now, in 2007, were that in any other country, at any other post with a security situation like Baghdad, like in Iraq, we would be drawing down the mission, evacuating non-essential personnel, and eventually closing it down entirely.

For reasons of national mission, that hasn't happened, but it was obvious to me way back in 2003 that staffing that sort of commitment by the Foreign Service on an annual basis was quickly going to become the tail that wagged the personnel system's dog.

I've linked to you, and commented as above, here.

One would think a cadre of experts spread out into tiny teams as advisors with Iraqis doing the bulk of the work would be . . .

. . . kidnapped and killed. These guys aren't restricted to base for no reason.

WASHINGTON | The “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq that President Bush announced Wednesday ...