Last week, the US Department of State released an Inspector General’s report on the US Embassy in Malta [pdf], headed up by Ambassador Douglas Kmiec. Kmiec is an outspoken Republican (head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan) and a conservative Roman Catholic, who bucked both the GOP and many in his church to support Obama in his presidential race against John McCain.

At CNN, religion editor Dan Gilgoff led his story about the IG report like this:

The U.S. ambassador to Malta has upset the State Department by devoting so much time to writing and speaking about faith-related issues, according to a report from the department’s inspector general released last week.

Today, Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter broke the news that Kmiec has submitted his resignation, to be effective on August 15th — the Roman Catholic Feast of the Assumption and also a date that will allow Kmiec to remain in Malta until the construction of a new embassy is complete and the move to new quarters is finished.

NCR has both Kmiec’s letter to Obama last Wednesday [pdf], responding to the IG report and also offering his resignation, and his letter to Secretary of State Clinton [pdf] dated today, offering a fuller defense of himself. In both letters, Kmiec describes the problem as revolving around his writings and the amount of time spent on them. In the letter to Obama, he leads by saying the IG report

expressed dissatisfaction with the extent of the time during my service that I’ve devoted to promoting what I know you believe in most strongly — namely, personal faith and a greater mutual understanding of the faiths of others as the way toward greater mutual respect.

To Clinton, he pointed to the same issue, complaining that “The OIG failed to read any of my writing or see its highly positive effect on our bilateral relations,” as if that were the entire issue under discussion.

That may be how Kmiec wants to spin the debate, but that’s not what a reading of the actual OIG report [pdf] reflects. Here’s what the IG said right up front about the three areas to be inspected (p. ii):

- Policy Implementation: whether policy goals and objectives are being effectively achieved; whether U.S. interests are being accurately and effectively represented; and whether all elements of an office or mission are being adequately coordinated.
- Resource Management: whether resources are being used and managed with maximum efficiency, effectiveness, and economy and whether financial transactions and accounts are properly conducted, maintained, and reported.
- Management Controls: whether the administration of activities and operations meets the requirements of applicable laws and regulations; whether internal management controls have been instituted to ensure quality of performance and reduce the likelihood of mismanagement; whether instance of fraud, waste, or abuse exist; and whether adequate steps for detection, correction, and prevention have been taken.

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In an interview posted yesterday by Germany’s Der Spiegel ISAF Commander David Petraeus was asked about corruption:

SPIEGEL: The build-up of an Afghan security apparatus is a key element of the whole effort. How concerned are you about corruption in the ranks of police and the army?

Petraeus: Corruption has to be put into context. We have to recognize that the Afghan government has taken numerous steps against corruption. The border police chief for West Afghanistan is in jail, a number of provincial police chiefs have been fired or put into custody. Numerous commanders as well as provincial governors have been replaced. In the broader Afghan administration hundreds of judicial workers, including judges, have lost their jobs due to problems with their integrity. Having said that, President Karzai is the first to announce publicly that more needs to be done because corruption undermines the legitimacy of governance on all levels.

SPIEGEL: It might sound disrespectful, but one could also say that if President Karzai wanted to fight corruption he could start doing so within his own family …

Petraeus: There are plenty of locations in which corruption can be countered, there are plenty where it has been countered and there are plenty where it needs to be countered.

SPIEGEL: What steps are taken to counter corruption in a practical manner?

Petraeus: I have just issued a "counterinsurgency contracting guidance". You know the saying that in counterinsurgency missions "money is ammunition," but we have to be careful into whose hands we put that ammunition, that money. The new guidelines are issued to make sure that we supply people who support our policies and not those who oppose them. We also created a new agency to oversee and implement greater transparency within all the organizations that are involved in contracting issues. But again: I don’t think that anyone is under any illusion that we’re going to turn Afghanistan into Switzerland in five years or less. President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan’s capacity to secure and govern itself.

Spencer Ackerman described the counterinsurgency contracting guidance like this last week, noting a significant omission:

But “COIN Contracting” goes beyond knowing whose business to patronize. Get the community involved, Petraeus’s guidelines say, using “local shuras and Afghan government and private sector leaders” to sign off on projects and expose troops to a wide array of Afghan businesses. Look for relatively small-scale projects that Afghan companies can take on and sustain, like “agriculture, food processing, beverages, and construction.” Buy local goods and labor whenever possible. If you can’t use an Afghan business for a project, encourage the people you hire to use Afghan workers. And if you find out that a project you’re funding benefits “criminal networks” ­ insurgents, powerbrokers, random ne’er-do-wells ­ stop what you’re doing.

One conspicuous absence from Petraeus’s guidelines: there’s nothing in here about private security contractors. Granted, many of them work for the State Department, guarding diplomats, or for the CIA, doing… other things. But some also work for NATO troops, directly or indirectly, to the point that Karzai has made an issue of seeking their wholesale ouster from the country. Petraeus just doesn’t touch the issue.

The latter paragraph kind of makes a mockery of the former, don’t you think?

From the counterinsurgency contracting guidance itself:

Where our money goes is as important as the service provided or the product delivered. Establish systems and standard databases for vetting vendors and contractors to ensure that contracting does not empower the wrong people or allow the diversion of funds. . . . Hold prime contractors responsible for the behavior and performance of their sub-contractors.

Whether or not our private security contractors are reporting to State, CIA, DOD, or anyone else, they’re *our* contractors — and holding prime contractors accountable seems to be in short supply. (As Marcy notes, this is an ongoing problem, not anything new.)

The question this leads me to is quite simple: is "do as we say, not as we do" ever going to work as a military strategy in a COIN operation?

If the answer is "no," then the followup question is daunting: how much more must be spent and how many more people must die as we pursue a doomed strategy?

[Photo: DoctorWho via Flickr]

Back in the stone ages when I was a lowly State Department intern, export control laws were a big deal (or at least that’s how I remember things).

Today . . . not so big a deal anymore, apparently:

The company formerly known as Blackwater violated U.S. export control laws nearly 300 times, ranging from attempts to do business in Sudan while that country was under U.S. sanctions to training an Afghan border patrol official who was a native of Iran, the State Department said Monday.

The alleged violations were spelled out in documents released Monday by the State Department as part of a $42 million settlement with Blackwater that will allow the company, now known as Xe Services LLC, to continue receiving U.S. government contracts.

Why does this sound familiar?

Hmmm . . .

Parent: "I’ve told you hundreds of times not to do that! Hundreds!"

Kid: "Sorry."

Parent: "Sorry? Sorry? You’ve lied to me about it — hundreds of times! Hundreds!"

Kid: "I said I was sorry. (pause) But I can still have my allowance and go play at my friend’s house, right?"

Parent: "OK. But don’t let it happen again."

Yeah, that’s going to work.