WhirledView on the Miranda Memo

Whirled View has an excellent commentary on the Miranda Memo:

The Miranda Memorandum: the pot calls the kettle black

By PHK
Whatever one thinks of the recent nine-page memorandum by Manuel Miranda, a Republican political appointee operative, at the conclusion of his obviously less than satisfactory one year tour at the American Embassy Baghdad, one has to question the judgment of the State Department for hiring him and assigning him there in the first place. Surely, the powers that be should have known his reputation as the staffer in charge of shepherding the Bush administration’s most controversial judicial appointments through the Senate Judiciary Committee then an aide to Senator Frist, positions from which he resigned under a cloud.

I can’t help, however, but agree with several of Miranda's observations concerning the management style and administrative abilities of the State Department. I have never thought the department was the right place for administering programs whether nation- or democracy-building, international educational exchanges, international tours for performing artists, publications, exhibits, narcotics eradication or, well, you name it. State just wasn’t and isn’t nimble enough. It is foremost a policy, not a program agency. That’s why once upon a time we had two separate specialized civilian agencies: the US Information Agency for media, cultural and educational exchanges and USAID for international development. USIA was destroyed in 1999 and USAID is now a mere shadow of its former self.

A substantial number of Foreign Service Officers – at least those who have already served in Iraq if the most recent American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) opinion survey is accurate and I think its numbers and scope are compelling - would agree with Miranda that assigning yet more State Department officers to the country is no answer to the enormous problems that State has agreed to tackle there. To do so, it has let all its other installations abroad operate on skeleton staffs for far too long. Where I disagree with true-believer Miranda is that I do not think that anyone short of Hercules himself could put the Iraqi Humpty-Dumpy together again once the Bush administration had pushed it off the wall.

Moreover, the Foreign Service does not have agronomists, electricians, well-drillers, police trainers, or guerrilla fighters on staff. Nor should it. That is not what diplomacy is all about: diplomacy is all about relations between countries and their governments. It is not about running someone else’s government, society, economy, electrical or water systems. This is a form of post-colonial imperialism at its worst - and least effective.

The Foreign Service and the State Department do, however, have plenty of – some might argue too many – lawyers. I find it, therefore, difficult to understand why a position with the questionable title “director of the office of legislative statecraft” could and should not have been filled by someone from the department itself.

In all my years in the Foreign Service – and I served in some very large embassies - did I ever meet anyone with a title remotely resembling Miranda’s. Regardless, the Department has any number of officers who have served in staff positions on Capitol Hill and a fair number of them had had legal training. Certainly they would have been more qualified than Mr. Miranda to embark upon the difficult Iraq legislative training task at hand. Could Miranda’s have been simply a made up title for a difficult to place Republican stalwart in need of a lucrative paycheck thrust down the department’s neck by the White House Office of Personnel. Who knows who owed what to whom and why. Miranda did not bring Arabic language skills or Iraqi cultural or even Iraqi legal understanding to the position. Whether the US legislative experience is relevant to Iraq is questionable.

Made-up titles for phony jobs for politicos have certainly happened before in US diplomatic circles except they often occur in Washington. Otherwise, the recipients of such “largesse” often wind up with Ambassadorial titles to places like Paris, London or Rome not stuck in a mid-level job in the Emerald Palace on the Tigris. Mr. Miranda, however, would never have made it through a Senate Ambassadorial confirmation hearing - especially with the Democrats in charge of the Senate - even one in an out of the way hell-hole, given his record on the Hill.

Yet as I read, then reread Miranda’ Memo addressed to Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador to Iraq, a diatribe which was clearly designed to garner the most media attention possible and leaked on a slow news day, I couldn’t help wondering what Miranda thought he should have been teaching Iraqi officials during the time he was apparently assigned to witness endless furniture rearrangement and staff reorganizations in the Green Zone.

The major thing that came across in this now infamous memo was the necessity of teaching the Iraqis the practice of lobbying, a dubious endeavor at best but one which Miranda appears to equate part and parcel with the core of the democratic process. If so, then I think Ambassador Crocker and his staff should be congratulated for keeping Miranda otherwise engaged.

Miranda also criticized his predecessor’s overly ambitious claim to progress on gaining passage of Iraq’s “oil law,” a claim which Miranda thought was at best premature. But wait a minute. Wasn't the task of ensuring the oil law’s passage farmed out to private contractor Bearing Point last year? Given Miranda’s position that government can do no right and the private sector can do no wrong, this should have made him ecstatic – although, of course he’s hot to trot to blame the State Department, not the contractor, for failure to deliver.

I was initially taken aback by the cavalier brush-off that State’s Public Affairs Office gave to the hapless reporter who asked a question about Miranda’s memorandum. But given the political landmines any substantive answer might have triggered, perhaps the department was right – the less said, the better.

Yet, I was equally annoyed by ABC’s decision to publish the entire text of Miranda’s memo with no apparent research into the writer’s background or motives. You would think in these days of easy access to myriads of data through Google and other Internet search engines far more reporters would have put two and two together and at least raised more than the few questions about Miranda’s own background and motives before unquestioningly taking the document’s contents at face-value. Unfortunately, all too few did.

Considering the Source

Avuncular American discussed the Miranda Memo today:

Dissing The Diplomats: Consider The Source

Yahoo users today had this little item on their "Yahoo News" homepage: "Is US Diplomacy Being Shortchanged?" - originally in Time Magazine on Valentine's Day. But it's no love letter to the American Foreign Service. Author Brian Bennett's description of "tweedy diplomats" plying the "genteel diplomatic circuits" of the State Department or in the "separately-funded fiefdom of USAID" betrays his view of Foreign Service Officers. So does his choice of sources: Manuel Miranda, described as a "former top congressional aide." Writing of Miranda's departure from Iraq, Bennett says Miranda

"blasted the State Department's performance there in a valedictory memo. "The Foreign Service is not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq," wrote Manuel Miranda, citing "an excuse-making culture," "willfully negligent if not criminal" management, a "built-in attention deficit disorder," and "information hoarding." "

"Former top congressional aide" is one way to put it. Here's another: disgraced former top congressional aide and hit man for Republican causes. From the Washington Post of February 6, 2004 ("Frist Staffer Quits Over Judiciary Probe"):

"The counsel on judicial nominations for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has resigned in response to a probe of how Republican staff members gained access to Democratic computer files on President Bush's most controversial choices for the federal judiciary. Aides to Frist said the resignation of Manuel Miranda, who has been on leave pending outcome of the inquiry, was accepted last week and takes effect today.Miranda's resignation comes in the midst of an investigation by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, with help from the Secret Service and forensic experts, into whether GOP staffers improperly or perhaps illegally tapped into Democratic strategy memos on a computer server shared by Judiciary Committee members of both parties. "

But since loyal Republicans can do no wrong (see: Scooter Libby; Donald Rumsfeld; etc. etc.), there's always useful work to be done. In Iraq. This is from Jeffrey Toobin in the December 3, 2007 New Yorker ("Where's Manny?") The answer ...

"... a couple of weeks ago, Miranda sent a group message to his old e-mail list that closed with his current title: “Director, Office of Legislative Statecraft, State Department, U.S. Embassy, Baghdad.” Say what? "

“In August of 2005, I got an e-mail saying that the embassy had a need for someone with private-practice and government experience to work with the Iraqi Prime Minister’s legal office in developing its process for legislation,” Miranda said over the telephone the other day. It took a couple of months for the political appointment to come through, and Miranda needed additional time to receive security clearances and training, but he moved to Baghdad in January of last year and since then has been living in a trailer inside the Green Zone and working in Saddam Hussein’s old Republican palace. He is reluctant to say much about his precise duties in Iraq, but it seems that he advises the staff of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on how to prepare legislation for submission to parliament.

Guess Miranda got those "security clearances" (how does that happen, if you're being hunted by the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms?). So if you're ever wondering where the Iraqi PM's legal office got its ethical training, now you know.

Next time "Manny" complains about the Foreign Service and its "excuse-making culture," ask him what his excuse was for stealing Democratic staffers' emails. When he complains about the State Department's "willfully negligent if not criminal" management, check with the Secret Service on its investigation into his questionable activities. Check your sources, Yahoo and Time Magazine.

Digger comments:
My initial comment on this memo was commented about on another blog, which blasted me for discussing Miranda's background before discussing the memo. But just as I put out there were I work (and hence, what my biases are and, I hope, what things I won't allow in the blog), like Avucular American, I think it is important to consider the source.

Secretary Rice's Testimony Before Congress

Here is an article from Time about the Secretary's testimony before Congress.


Is US Diplomacy Being Shortchanged?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat before senators on Capitol Hill Wednesday to urge a State Department budget increase of 8.5% and the hiring of 1,100 new staff. Unusually, some lawmakers wished she'd have asked for even more. Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat, told Rice that her request was "small compared to the overall needs." and that U.S. diplomacy was still getting "shortchanged."

A number of recent government studies have demanded the State Department radically transform its approach to diplomacy, in line with the fact that America's most urgent foreign policy challenges today lie far beyond the genteel diplomatic circuit of the industrialized world. A former top Republican congressional aide who this month completed an assignment as an adviser to Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Iraq blasted the State Department's performance there in a valedictory memo. "The foreign service is not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq," wrote Manuel Miranda, citing "an excuse-making culture," "willfully negligent if not criminal" management, a "built-in attention deficit disorder," and "information hoarding." (The State Department has dismissed Miranda's charges as the opinion of one individual, saying they are not shared by the vast majority of officials serving in Iraq or
Washington.)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did talk about tackling some of the deficiencies cited by Miranda when she spoke to students at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service Tuesday. She's changing the training, focus and culture of the foreign service, she said. Rice wants to beef up career development programs for mid-level managers. She wants to phase out the foreign service tradition of having a cadre of generalists in favor of being able to deploy diplomats and civilians who have the specialized experience to address the specific needs of a post-conflict country. Rice has also talked about how she is trying to transform how the State Department shares information, so foreign service officers have "quick access to the knowledge and real-time information they need." All of these recommendations speak to the underlying faults that Miranda points out in his memo — and only State Department officials seem to see any substantial improvement since the plans were first announced in 2006.

Feingold, for example, wants to see the State Department put more resources into disaster assistance, education and health programs, which he sees as a major part of "building strong nations" and "restoring stability in post-conflict situations." At the moment the State Department and its separately-funded fiefdom, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), are contracting out the vast majority of this work. Rice says she wants her diplomats
getting their hands dirty in development work, but lawmakers are growing impatient at what they see is a lack of will to fund the major overhaul and hiring binge that this would require. Indeed, in 1970 USAID employed 4,500 foreign service officers; today it employs only 800.

Just getting foreign service officers to go to the more undesirable corners of the planet where they are most needed has been an uphill battle. In November, the State Department was short volunteers to serve in the embassy in Iraq and was threatening to "direct" — diplo-speak for "order" — 48 foreign service officers to Iraq. At a town hall meeting to discuss the staffing gap, one 46-year diplomat described a posting in Iraq as "a potential death sentence." After the hubbub, enough volunteers stepped forward, so no one was ordered to go to Iraq. But the incident laid bare the cultural aversion some tweedy diplomats have to the realities of the changing world beyond Foggy Bottom. After the town hall, Rice, says a close adviser, was even more determined to make sure the department had the right people serving in the most difficult places. "We are trying to do things, quite literally, that have never been done before," Rice
told the audience at Georgetown. "America must recruit and train a new generation of foreign service professionals with new expectations of what life a diplomat must be."

All of this, of course, costs money. The Bush Administration has increased the State Department budget by 25% since 2005, but the department is still moving at a snail's pace toward achieving its goals. Even with next year's requested bump, the average embassy will still have a staffing shortfall this year of 20%. The State Department has never recovered from a hiring freeze on new foreign service officers in the mid-1990s when more diplomats were retiring than were brought in.

With the State Department short-staffed and unprepared for operating in dangerous places like Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon officials have expressed frustration in recent years that the military has been forced to shoulder most of the load in post-conflict zones. To address this, Rice is proposing the creation of a Civilian Response Corps. Similar to the military reserves, the new program would comprise doctors, lawyers, engineers, agricultural experts, police officers and public administrators, led by a team of diplomats, that could deploy with a military unit with 48 hours notice. Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware and Richard Lugar of Indiana originated the
idea in Congress in 2003, but some lawmakers are wondering why, five years into the war in Iraq and seven years since the U.S. intervened in Afghanistan, it has taken so long to get these resources out of the gate.

The Miranda Memo

I've been debating for a few days whether to respond to the Miranda Memo, a scathing attack on the State Department and Foreign Service officers who serve in Iraq, first began appearing on some of the blogs.

Miranda, for those who don't know, is Manuel Miranda, has been serving for the past year as the Director of the Office of Leglistative Statecraft in the Embassy in Baghdad. The memo in question was one he wrote to Ambassador Crocker. That is ended up in the press is of little surprise, since he is the same Manuel Miranda who gained access to the emails of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and leaked them to the Washington Times.

According to the New Yorker:
"Early in the George W. Bush Presidency, Miranda came to public notice as a fiercely partisan aide to the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He moved to the staff of Bill Frist, who was Senate Majority Leader at the time, and orchestrated a series of noisy attempts—including an all-night Senate session—to win confirmation for Bush’s judicial nominations. In November, 2003, after internal documents belonging to Democrats on the committee were leaked, the Senate opened an investigation that revealed that Miranda, through a quirk in the computer system, had been reading his adversaries’ e-mails and sharing them with right-leaning news outlets like the Washington Times. Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, called Miranda’s actions “improper, unethical, and simply unacceptable.” Miranda resigned, and a criminal investigation of him was initiated."

In the memo, Miranda says that:
"That civilian progress, and the Pax Americana, will not be achieved with the Foreign Service and the State Department's bureaucracy at the helm of America's number one policy consideration. You are simply not up to the task, and many of you will readily and honestly admit it. I believe that a better job can be done. It is simply that we have brought to Iraq the worst of America – our bureaucrats – and failed to apply, as President Roosevelt once did, the high-caliber leadership class and intellectual talent, whose rallying has defined all of America's finest hours..."

"Foreign Service officers, with ludicrously little management experience by any standard other than your own, are not equipped to manage programs, hundreds of millions in funds, and expert human capital assets needed to assist the Government of Iraq to stand up. It is apparent that, other than diplomacy, your only expertise is your own bureaucracy, which inherently makes State Department personnel unable to think outside the box or beyond the paths they have previously taken. "

The truth is that the State Department has far more experience than Miranda in managing multi-million dollar programs throughout the world. But Miranda seems to think highly-paid contractors rather than dedicated government servants who have experience throughout the world would be better at this mission. How offensive to those of us who have dedicated our lives to serving the country.

The Embassy is also severely encumbered by the Foreign Service's built-in attention deficit disorder, with personnel and new leaders rotating out within a year or less.


I find it ironic that he is criticizing Foreign Service Officers for rotating out after a year when he is also leaving after a year.

"Most notable, there is a near complete lack of strategic forethought or synchronization between Embassy staffing and program initiatives and funding. This is also true of PRTs. Only the military takes seriously the Joint Campaign and its metrics of achievement, while State Department leaders use it only when advantageous."

I seem to recall that it was the State Department that argued for a plan for rebuilding Iraq BEFORE we started the war, and the Secertary Rumsfeld dismissed us as feet draggers. We are now seeing the results of the lack of planning but it has somehow become the State Department's fault.

"This past year, the State Department and the Embassy has been led by two misguided premises: first, the obsessive aim that the Embassy be turned into a "normal embassy" and, second, that the State Department cannot be faulted for things that the GOI is not doing, i.e. "the Iraqis need to do this themselves.""

Again, if memory serves, we were told before this war that the U.S. was not in the business of "nation-building." Then we trumpeted the Iraqi election of a government of their own. And now the State Department is criticized for conducting the business of government-to-government relations rather than governing Iraq ourselves. The Department is not the Government of Iraq, nor should we be.

Overall, I found the memo to be pompous, partisan and, as someone who has very good friends serving in Iraq and who will no doubt serve there myself in the not so distant future, deeply offensive. It is full of the same old rhetoric about how the military is Iraq is perfect and the State Department is really just an impediment to the progress the military could make. The truth is we are part of the same team. Even Defense Secretary Gates recognizes the need for both soft power and hard power. No one blames the pitcher for not being a catcher and everyone recognizes that a baseball team needs both.