Transform or Die

The Bush administration has belatedly discovered the virtues of diplomacy, but is having some little trouble finding the staff to implement it. Now that the sovereign, independent Iraqi government has been surged to an appropriate degree of stabilitisation, the new US embassy requires forty-eight staff to help convey the Iraqi leaders' wishes to their humble helpers in Washington. Unfortunately American diplomats, only three of whom have been killed since Mission Accomplished in 2003, regard the prospect of a tour in Iraq as a "potential death sentence". The present ambassador in Baghdad has warned that those who put their personal safety before the interests of the chickenhawks are "in the wrong line of business", and the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has informed the recalcitrant that she and they "are one foreign service and people need to serve where they are needed", be they trailer-trash in the firing line or chimps in the National Guard. Rice has apparently vowed to "shake up the antiquated bureaucracy", presumably a euphemism similar to the Blair/Brown "reform", the process which has led to such brilliant results in the United Kingdom's health service, education system and courts. In place of the antiquated bureaucracy, apparently on account of "a new historic calling" which has called historically to the State Department, Rice wishes to introduce "transformational diplomacy", which she defined as doing stuff "with other people, not for them", and as using "America’s diplomatic power to help foreign citizens to better their own lives, and to build their own nations, and to transform their own futures". So that's where it's all been going wrong! "Vital to this vision," she noted, "is continued collaboration between civilians and the military. Diplomats must be able to work effectively at the critical intersections of diplomatic affairs, economic reconstruction, and military operations."