The Anti-Academic

Did I mention the jaw-clenching? Source

In addition to the many benefits of pursuing a Master's degree, there are a few down sides. Among these: you're less fun at parties, your pants don't fit as well as they used to, and you start using words like "monistic/emancipatory" in casual conversation.

For me, one of the great tragedies of higher education was never having time to go to the cinema. But this was addressed last night when my friends and I, in celebration of the completion of our studies, went to see the most non-academic movie we could think of.

If I had to describe Fast Five in one word, I think it would be "smashy." Yes, this was a great movie for smashing: people, cars, metaphors, the English language -- nothing escaped the director's penchant for pulverization. For two hours, things flew about and crashed together and emerged in a glorious, technicolor mess with a pulsing soundtrack. The movie was every bit as fast as the franchise title had promised. Also, furious.

Lest you think I have nothing positive to say about this movie, let me clarify: I found it highly entertaining. I thought the actors showed great range, drawing from an emotional spectrum that included everything from eye narrowing to jaw clenching. And the women proved to be adept at leaning forward whilst wearing tight clothing. Eric Rohmer it was not. But it was a fabulous vehicle for selling popcorn, and I enjoyed myself immensely.

I should turn this into a reflection on diplomacy somehow, or on the projection of American values via cinematic blockbusters. But it was recently brought to my attention by a concerned reader that my blog is far too academic and does not contain enough me-ness in it. So I'll leave it there for tonight, in the hopes of increasing my blogger bona fides by stepping away from academic navel gazing for a bit.

Putting the "Dip" in Diplomat

It's been a while since we here at manIC have nominated anybody for a GOB Award. The GOB, named for Will Arnett's character in Arrested Development, recognizes ill-conceived diplomatic actions and is awarded periodically to dips who "have made a huge mistake."

Today's candidate: The unnamed Russian diplomat Ireland booted off the island for identity theft. Read about it in the New York Times. Evidently this diplomat stole six Irish identities and handed them over to Russian spies in the U.S. in what is both a horrendous breach of diplomacy and really incredible set-up for an offensive ethnic joke. (So a Russian spy walks into a New York bar with an Irish passport....)

Kudos, anonymous Russian diplomat. This one's for you:

GOB Award: Qatar

Today's GOB Award (for the PD personality who's "made a huge mistake") goes to Mohammed Al-Madadi for not only smoking on a U.S. flight, but attempting to extinguish the flame on his shoes. The Qatari embassy official's questionable judgment understandably set off a few red flags and resulted in massive delays for his fellow passengers, who had to submit to additional security screening at the far end of their flight. Mr. Al-Madadi, for putting the "dip" in diplomat, this one's for you:

Embassy Overload

According to a recent Washington Post report, the Kabul embassy is straining at the seams, and new employees keep wedging themselves in like so many frat boys in a phone booth, taxing the embassy's ability to accommodate them and run effectively.

The ongoing demand for more personnel has meant that hiring orders are sometimes approved without designated jobs. In one case the inspectors cited, an agency had requested authorization "to create up to ten full-time positions in Afghanistan but had not yet decided what those positions would do when the employees actually arrived in country."

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that pulling ten embassy newbies into a war zone before you've got work for them to do is a poor use of resources. And how exactly do you fill a job position before it's been defined? Just hire somebody who looks reasonably competent and hope they're adept at writing memos and/or detonating mines, whichever need you decide you need met?

The situation's not much better in Iraq:

In Baghdad, the new embassy compound still crowds 1,100 people into 700 one-bedroom apartments. Christopher R. Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said during a recent visit to Washington that those accommodations are better than the boxlike trailers where most civilian embassy personnel were previously housed.

"But in the long run," Hill said, "we're not going to be able to attract people when they're two to a one-bedroom apartment. . . . It's like college. And, you know, I didn't have that great a time in college."

On behalf of all Americans who didn't have that great a time in college, I hear you, Chris. One of the great joys of graduation is knowing your days of coming home to find a sock on your doorknob are over. It's bad enough you're asking these people to serve in a land with camel spiders; the least you can do is provide personal bedrooms.

The article doesn't spell out exactly where these problems stem from, although I suspect the technical term for it is "putting the cart before the horse." I'm all for expanding personnel where it's most needed, and doing it quickly, but a little logistical planning goes a long way. Our embassies do essential work. Let's give them the structural support they need to get that work done.