State Department firings say much about administration’s ‘reforms’
One might call it government reform by insult.
As the Trump administration hacks away at federal agencies, the justifications begin with “fraud, waste, and abuse” but quickly descend into personal attacks because we must purge those “radical lunatics.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has learned his lines well and trotted out that perennial “bloated” as he took his first whack at his department, firing 1,107 civil servants and 246 Foreign Service Officers, while hundreds more are taking the buyouts on offer.
Rubio suggests these cuts are in the name of efficiency, but that is just not true. One just has to look at the offices that are being downsized or eliminated to see that there is a perverse ideological agenda at work.
Offices that deal with human rights, women’s issues, climate change and most certainly diversity, equity and inclusion have been targeted. Eliminating advocacy for climate issues will allow Republicans to go to the fossil fuel industry and ask for larger contributions.
Rubio said that these issues can be handled by the regional bureaus, but one is asking rotating desk officers to have the same expertise as individuals who have spent decades steeped in arcane subjects.
Guess what? The world is a complicated place with myriad issues and staying on top of them requires individuals with specialized knowledge, key contacts and the judgment that comes from experience.
When supporters of democratic reform around the world know that the American State Department is advocating for their rights, they are willing to stand up. When that voice is missing, authoritarian governments feel few constraints and those reformers end up in prison, or worse.
The secretary noted that a memorandum came to his desk with clearances from 40 offices and individuals and held it up as an example of a bureaucracy gone mad. In the parlance of the State Department, the process of getting a large number of “chops” to advance a cable or memo can be maddening when one is trying to make a deadline.
However, many different offices can have equities that need to be taken into consideration. One curses the clearance process up until the moment that someone points out an important fact that needs to be considered and the language of the memo changed. The right words, in the State Department, lead to the right policy.
Perhaps the secretary should have been grateful that this particular memo had been looked at from every possible angle and that he would not be blindsided.
The cuts to these offices come on top of the shuttering of USAID and the work of thousands of development professionals around the world.
Because of those cuts, tens of thousands are projected to die. These are individuals that Americans will never see or spare a thought for, because they exist — barely — in some of the most benighted corners of this planet. But American professionals knew they were there and, for a long time, their efforts suggested that a country as rich and powerful as the United States cared about the poorest of the poor. No more.
The animating ethos of this administration is a kind of faux masculine toughness that often manifests itself as cruelty. It is not enough for people to lose their careers. They must be told that they and the work they did are worthless and that they are un-American. It is grotesque.
The mercurial extortionist who occupies the Oval Office wields the substantial power of the presidency as a cudgel to bend people to his will. At some point, he might find out that knowledge is also power and that he and his enablers, such as Secretary Rubio, are destroying the sources of that power.
• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86. His book “American Dreams: The Story of the Cyprus Fulbright Commission” is available from Amazon.com.