April 01

April 01, 2003

April Fools

It's April Fools and it is cold and it is payday and I think I am one of them.

I am listening to the news about the van filled with women and children approaching a checkpoint. The media play on this, at least the English language version, is relatively sympathetic. Allowances should be made. The troops are freaked out after all, after the car bombing on Saturday that left four of them dead. There will be an investigation of the shooting at an Najaf, and the quote on the BBC from an anonymous senior officer is "You killed a family because you didn't shoot soon enough."

I don't know what we were thinking when we embarked on this, though I hope that there was a sober thought. That someone realized that there were going to be some unfortunate incidents, and that there was a calculus of catastrophe and the certain knowledge that some of our kids were going to be executed and some will live that moment at the checkpoint for the rest of their lives. If they make it through Baghdad, that is. I'd like to think that this was all considered and that the decision was made with all the factors on the table. I would hate to think it's just baggage we picked up along the way.

I'm sure these words of apprehension will seem quaint someday. After all, there could be a world where the Iraqi capital falls relatively swiftly, and the awful wounds we have made to our relations and the UN will iron themselves out over time. Colin Powell is in Turkey today, working on mending those fences that kept the Kurds in their box and the Fourth Infantry off their soil. And maybe there will be consequences we can't dream of yet, American kids at checkpoints the same way the Israeli kids have been for years. We have started down a road that goes around a sharp bend and we cannot see precisely where we are going. Maybe it will end in sunlit uplands. And maybe it won't.

I'm leaving the Service for a variety of reasons, and the Al Firdos District Bunker massacre twelve years ago and the van filled with noncombatants are part of it. I didn't pull the trigger on either one, but I was close enough the former and don't want to be part of the latter. And I am going because this is an opportunity to do something entirely new and entirely old. My skill set, I have found, is almost entirely transportable.

This is not about confounding Russians or Iraqis or Somalis. But it is almost the same thing. A coalition against global pandemics, a bulwark against the use of weapons of mass destruction. An attempt to bring this large and placid Department into a position to use its medical assets to prevent mass catastrophe. Catastrophe that this war is intended to prevent rather than inevitable.

The business of the Government is something we do well, we staff officers. Show up early, stay late, know everything that is going on, maintain Situational Awareness, deflect bad press and answer all the phone calls and all the e-mails. Be proactive. Managing the process of walking around a large staff with an interested look, metering equities and gaining consensus. It is the same coordination and stroking of large bureaucracies that we have done all our careers, either afloat or ashore. And just because it is new and different is nothing special. After all, we do something altogether new every two or three years. We'll see if it works out.

The real prickly issue is people, and that is one that is a little different. For example, I have a talented GS-14 who seems to think that she has a direct role with the government of Canada and the World Health Organization. We have made some progress in explaining that she has to work through her supervisor on matters of state, though it is hard. She announced to my Chief of Staff that she thought she would continue to report to an older version of the organization which better suits the world as she sees it.

Hard for a military mind to accept, but there it is. She infuriates everyone she deals with, yet she is smart and dedicated. Interesting, and quite unlike some of the rest of the staff, who view their jobs as perpetual sinecures. A challenge.

My job is career service category, not political, but I can scarcely imagine staying for more than the length of a military tour. What you trade for that category is life connected to three cell phones, and a Blackberry e-mail machine. The resulting festoon makes one resemble a Palestinian belt-bomber. We get an hour in the morning to ourselves and two hours after in the evening when it is over. Saturdays and Sundays are more flexible. At the moment, one or the other. Until something happens. Maybe today. After all, it is April Fools Day.

I would rather be in the horse business, hanging out at the barn. Or at least in the business of writing about it. But maybe, in a way, that is exactly what I am doing.