Thanks to Mac Hall for letting me publish this commentary.
L'Affaire Bagdad
"I shall have to delay you for a few minutes. You see the Legation is only just open and we have not yet got our full equipment. We are expecting the rubber stamp any minute now."
-- A diplomat in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop
The American diplomatic corps, the envy of the world of pallid wine and crumbly cheese, is afraid to go to Bagdad – so afraid that no one is volunteering, and diplomats may have to be dragged out of cocktail parties in Ottawa and the racing season at Epson Downs and ordered to report to The Cradle of Civilization.
Working Americans whose taxes support civil servants can certainly understand the reluctance of diplomats to serve civility in Bagdad. What towboat captain or steelworker cannot appreciate the difficulty in finding a really good tailor in Port Said Street? And, after all, embassy soirees in Bagdad are more likely to be explosive rather than sparkling, and the paucity of wine merchants is appalling, simply appalling. Worse, the shopping along Muthana Al Shaiban Street is simply not up to Paris standards, m'dear. Picnicking along the Tigris is quite impossible given the heat, and trying to punt through the bobbing, malodorous corpses is so, so tiresome.
A with-it diplomat in Bagdad can only resent the sad reality that so many of his personal bodyguards are not Harvard or Yale, and don't appreciate amusing anecdotes about yachting with Walter Cronkite off Martha's Vineyard and tittering about people who actually have jobs and love America.
And then there are the Christian priests in Iraq. In New England, anyone who's anyone keeps a tame bishop or two for amusement. In Iraq, though, priests and bishops are not much fun at parties, didn't go to the right schools, and suffer a tendency to be martyred by the sort of people American bishops like to be palsy with for the cameras. Yawn.
Doesn't anyone understand that stern diplomatic notes can be exchanged just as easily after one's afternoon nap in Brussels as well as after one's afternoon nap in Iraq? And the embassy in Brussels is so convenient to the theatre.
And then there's the bother of domestic staff in Bagdad. When interviewing and hiring a suitable kitchen staff (soooooooo exhausting), one must check references very carefully so that one does not hire a pastry chef who might bring explosives into the morning room. The maids, the housekeeper, the porters, the gardeners – can one find staff up to scratch in Iraq? Yes, a life of public service is terribly demanding.
Entertaining can be quite a bother too. In Europe one knows that a grand duke l'orange takes precedent over a charge' du flatus, but how does one seat a Sunny mahdi and a Shirty sheik at dinner without causing a row? Gracious! And what is the proper dress for receptions during a rocket attack – black-tie body armor or white-tie body armor?
And must those beastly American soldiers get blown up in the street outside the embassy? Can't they go out to the countryside and get blown up there? An American diplomat needs his sleep, after all, and having all those persons from the flyover states fighting and dying just outside is so unseemly.
The American diplomatic service – always a step and six feet of reinforced concrete behind our fighting men and women. Why should they have to serve in Bagdad – or anywhere else?
-30-
The glory of modern people is that they really do feel. Their only danger is that they cannot think.
-- G. K. Chesterton
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