Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security

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Summary: Pat Robertson's comments
Review: I read this book non-stop. Joel Mowbray makes an excellent case for the criminal trial of most senior employees of the State Department, including Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.

Do we need enemies if we already have the State Department the way it is? It is absolutely clear that the State Department must be replaced with a new agency.

George W. Bush seems to be pursuing a set of mutually exclusive goals: he wants to protect Americans from Moslem terror and at the same time George W. does nothing to put an end to the subversive activities of thoroughly anti-American State Department, like sabotaging war against Taliban and Baath party, assisting survival of Syria and Iran state-supported terrorism, forcing victorious US to beg for UN approval of our fight to defend our own country.

And finally, Colin Powell, who is masquerading Saudi phase-by-phase war against Israel as "ROADMAP TO PEACE", is still running "stub George W. in the back" show every which way.

Who needs traitors while having such "public servants" like Colin Powell.

I consider this book as the must read for anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazing
Review: I thought I'd hate this book, I'm not a conservative (would actually classify myself as more of a liberal) and I generally don't like political books, but I couldn't put it down. It's not sensationalistic or tabloidy, just good, hard-nosed reporting. From how the State Department supported the Taliban to how it gave $10,000 bonuses for "outstanding performance" to the executives in charge of giving visas to the 9/11 terrorists, Dangerous Diplomacy makes me afraid of my own government. And in case you don't believe Mowbray, there is a documents section at the end filled with classified memos that prove, in black-and-white, that the State Department has its own agenda.

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Summary: Dangerous paradigms--analysis of State's culture in action
Review: In this staccato burst book, Mr. Mowbray tells his perspective of many damning stories of the Department of State (DOS). His view is shaped by the formative experience he had of being detained by DOS security personnel for having the temerity to question a DOS spokesman on expedited visas in Saudi Arabia, and the lack of bureaucratic accountability.

Mr. Mowbray in eleven concise chapters, attacks DOS on several fronts--but his overarching theme is that DOS needs to remember why they exist--to advocate AMERICAN foreign policy aims, here and abroad. Mowbrays's contention is that DOS careerists frequently "go native" or display extreme "Stockholm syndrome" towards their target countries, and they forget that "their country" is not the country to which they have most recently been accredited as diplomats, or spent a lifetime studying and living in. DOS and their career Foreign Service Officers exist for one simple purpose: to get "on message" with the long term interests of the US, and advocate for them.

In every story, there are at least three sides--my side, your side, and the truth. One should read "Dangerous Diplomacy" with at least one arched eyebrow, wondering what the "rest of the story" is. Nonetheless, Mowbray's telling of the DOS failure to pressure Saudi Arabia, whether over general human rights issues, or terrorism, or kidnapped US children, has a great deal of truth in its perceptions. I have spent a great deal of time in the Middle East--and repeatedly US government officials are kowtowing to Saudis.

It is important to remember that nations have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, they have only permanent interests, as Chaim Herzog famously put it. We have very little in shared interest with Saudi Arabia--and once the oil is gone, and Americans have succesfully invented the next great source of cheap, plentiful, renewable energy, that list of common interests will get even smaller.

Mowbray's insightful observations about DOS "kultur" are spot on--they all want to get along, and avoid confrontation, as though somehow a healthy sense of outrage and anger from time to time is not allowable. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can be either Chamberlain-esque, or Thatcher-esque. I suspect that the great majority of the careerists at DOS routinely had their lunch money taken, glasses stolen, and were picked last to play on the kickball team in school--and never got over it. They want to use their words, as though words have some sort of long term productive value. The only words they should remember come from Cicero: Leges silent inter arma.

Lastly, I think a modest proposal would help readjust the bore sight for DOS. Every time diplomacy fails, and as a result, violent conflict ensues, the top five DOS employees for that region should be taken down to Grant's tomb at noon on the first Tuesday of the following month, and fired, publicly, for their failure. Sometimes, a good confrontation is just what's needed--DOS would do well to learn this.

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Summary: Rather silly and petulant from a discredited "reporter"
Review: Joel Mowbray has an axe to grind. He also doesn't understand that foreign policy is not made at the State Department (it is made at the NSC and has been since FDR's 3rd term). Further, he seems to want to indict the Foreign Service without having really spoken to any members. He also doesn't seem quite able to grasp that the State department neither makes nor administers US military relationships. He also just doesn't seem on top of simple truths like "the job of diplomats is not to provoke wars."

All those indictments aside, he does have some very valid points. The DOS does give out visas too easily, or at least it did before 9-11. The Consular Affairs bureau is NOT vigorous enough in helping US citizens abroad. And the Foreign Service is rife with apologists, collaborators, wimps, and egomaniacal sycophants, as he alleges. I know: I was a Foreign Service Officer for ten years!

Don't expect anything "fair and balanced" in Joel's little screed here. But there are certainly some things to get you thinking and it might be worth reading this along with some views from the other side of the spectrum.

Rating:
Summary: Rather silly and petulant from a discredited "reporter"
Review: Mr. Mowbray, who was something of a running joke among the State Department press corps, became quasi-famous in DC political circles for being regularly embarrassed in on the record briefings at State for getting basic facts wrong and displaying an inability to understand the subtlety and nuance of foreign affairs.

Once prominent in National Review, he now plies his trade on rather obscure right-wing web sites.

The book is a cross between a screed and a tantrum, and pulls out of context anecdotes to create a world in which all Foreign Service officers and State employees in general are dedicated to undermining not only America, but our values, Israel, freedom, etc. If only they were more like the senior officials at DOD, all would be well. It is written with the style, tone and professionalism of the first draft of an undergraduate op-ed piece written on the down-slide from a three-day coke binge.

On and on, for quite a while. It's amusing at times, if for nothing else that its own sort of bold incompetence and conspiratorial ramblings.

It would have benefited from an editor. Preferably a grown up.

Rating:
Summary: author has an agenda
Review: This is absolute garbage.

Does anyone really believe that State Department has acted completely in defiance of the White House and Congress all these years? Do you believe that the Reagan White House and the CIA didn't also support Saddam Hussein in the 80's? Was it the State Department that forced Donald Rumsfeld to go to Iraq and shake hands and pat Saddam on the back just a few days after the incident with the Kurds at Halabja? Do you believe Rumsfeld would do anything the State Department told him to do if he didn't want to do it?

No, the State Deaprtment carries out the foreign policy of the President and his appointees. It's absurd that they could control foreign policy on their own and lock out the Excecutive and Legislative branches.

A good example I'd like to hear Joel's explanation for comes from the first Gulf war. Saddam, having serious disputes with the Kuwaitis informed US ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie that he was considering the option of force against Kuwait. Glaspie took this message back to the Bush I administration and she was specifically instructed, by James Baker I believe, to relay to Saddam that the US "had no opinion on Arab vs. Arab disputes." Saddam invaded Kuwait shortly thereafter. That was not a result of anything career State Department officials caused. That was policy from the President and his closest advisers...

This is nothing but propaganda and Mowbray is nothing but a foot soldier in the ongoing neocon attack on the State Department that is probably motivated by two things:

1) most career State Department officials assigned to the Middle East accept the legitamacy of UN Resolution 242 and believe that the solution to the Middle East's ongoing crisis can only come when Israel ceases its settlement policies and wihdraws from occupied territories. Indeed, that is our government's official policy for over 30 years yet the Israel lobby has succeeded is undercutting it.

2) Colin Powell unsuccessfully resisted the neocons in their push for the bogus war in Iraq. No one escapes the wrath of this vindictive neocon lot once you have crossed them. See the case of the "outed" CIA agent.

The neocons and Mowbray are all about Israel. The whole drive to "re-make the Middle East" is only to make the world safe for Israel and to weaken and divide the Arab countries, at the expense of US blood and treasure. If there is a spike in terrorism against Americans that results, it is of no concern to them because it furthers Likud objectives.

I invite you to do a "Google" on Joel Mowbray. You will see that before this book he spent much of his time on Israel and it's realtionship witht the Middle East and that is his focus, not US security.

Mowbray is part of the fanatical necon group with Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Ledeen etc. who, after insinuating themselves into infuential policy positions, are using and abusing their authority to promote an agenda for Israeli stabilization and expansion. Concern for US security is just the cloak they use to hide their agenda.

Caveat Emptor, Buyer Beware!