Quote:
Originally posted by ltl/fb
My friend's brother who is in the Foreign Service and has volunteered to go back to Iraq several times and is there now and understands that he's working for THE FOREIGN SERVICE and that that sometimes involves, like, risk and shit, isn't dead yet! Woo hoo!
Seriously, wtf? It seems like the possibility of having to go to dangerous places is, like, part of the job. Not that anyone isn't free to quit any job they want at any time, e.g. if they totally rearranged our world and I got assigned to a sub that I find morally abhorrent (and that is in NYC, which I just abhor), I would quit -- but you can't really have the shiny bright "I'm a good person because I'm serving our country in the Foreign Service" coupled with "But other people can go to the bad places."
So, I'm happy your friend doesn't have to find a new job, but he's got no job-related moral high ground with me.
I am hating everything today.
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First of all, State has usually pulled people out of situations as dangerous as Iraq now is. Vietnam and Haiti are examples. So to suggest that they signed on to get sent wherever is wrong. My friend signed on to be a diplomat. If he'd wanted to be in the military, he would have joined the military. My friend has served in the Middle East, which is where he picked up the Arabic that put at risk of being sent to Iraq, so it's not like he is unwilling to accept risk. Obviously, there is a quantum difference in going to Baghdad.
Second, my friend has a wife and small kids. They live on-site with him -- but obviously they wouldn't in Iraq. That, too, is not what he signed up for. Indeed, the life insurance FSOs have does not cover them if they're killed in Iraq.
There was a third, but I forget it now.
My friend is excited to serve his country in his next posting, a place that many of us would not want to live.
