This letter is interesting.
Not sure that I’m on the same page as the American Foreign Service Association which has a beef that a new senior post created by Condi did not go to a career foreign service officer — but the nature of the public letter is provocative.
I am flying to DC from Germany today. Have just had four fascinating days — speaking in the Bundestag in Berlin as well as speaking to groups in Halle, Bremen, and Hamburg.
I don’t know how much coverage there has been in the U.S. of “Germany’s Abu Ghraib” scandal (well, that is what they are calling it here) — but essentially I heard personally Angela Merkel’s comments of outrage on Wednesday regarding a bunch of pictures of German soldiers posing with and abusing a human skull. One of the pics that ran in The Bild shows a soldier with his penis out — and the skull posed as if giving the soldier a blow job.
A friend of mine who is a high ranking Bundestag member in the Free Democrats said that just this one photo by some young idiot destroys the good will of building hundreds of schools or hospitals, of people exchanges, and so on designed to get public diplomacy on a good track.
— Steve Clemons
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