An Embarrassment of Embassies

“Protesters broke into the heavily guarded compound of the United States Embassy in Baghdad on [Dec. 31, 2019] and set fires inside … The men … demand[ed] that the United States withdraw its forces from Iraq.”

YAWN. Old news: mobs in the Middle East have been bawling such objections for decades, though I grant that they’re hard to hear over the windows they shatter and their Molotov cocktails. And of course patriots who revere liberty agree wholeheartedly that Washington should recall its hired killers. In that spirit, I offer a friendly amendment to the militants: how about the US withdraws its ambassador and worthless diplomats, too?

The embassy lately attacked in Baghdad, America’s “biggest and most expensive in the world,” robbed us serfs of $750 million when it was built during George the Pea-brain’s reign; were I the editor of a dictionary, I’d illustrate “boondoggle” with its picture.

Actually, I’d feature the whole of Iraq under “boondoggle.” As of 2012, Our Rulers’ largesse there held the infuriating distinction of “the most ambitious American aid effort since the Marshall Plan”—and that’s on top of the $5-$12 trillion for DC’s wars in and around Iraq. Why we pay to destroy a place and then “restore” it is a conundrum only the military-industrial complex and their bought-and-paid-for politicians can fathom. Rational folks with even a speck of prudence or humanity will never comprehend such evil.

Ergo, by 2012, repairing Iraq had “already cost $500 million, including $343 million worth of construction projects around the country” and $100 million on the “Iraqi Police College.” Though said college is a bargain compared to the embassy, it’s also a more damnable waste of our money than usual: not only did “Iraqi officials…say they never wanted it in the first place,” but the facility was “turned over to the Iraqis at year’s end because [the US Dept of] State”—under whose aegis all “diplomatic missions” fall—”didn’t get land rights use for more than one year.” Clearly, State’s criminals aren’t nearly as rapacious with foreigners as they are with America’s peons.

But I digress. The Feds’ “compound” in Baghdad comprises 104 acres, making it “larger than Vatican City.” And though the Vatican beats the compound all hollow for magnificent architecture, Pope Marx–sorry, Francis must envy the diplomats’ “food court and a shopping mall where embassy staff can spend their hazard pay” (yep, those are more of your taxes at work, subsidizing the compound’s 1350 federal sponges. That figure was current in 2013; given government’s propensity for growth, the sponges have probably multiplied a few dozen times by now), “a six-lane swimming pool…fitness center…a regulation-size basketball court… There’s even an irrigation system, which makes [a] regulation-size soccer field possible.” Après-exercise, the leeches can feast in a “palatial dining room” offering “burgers, sushi, ‘Mexican Fiesta,’ Thai beef, grilled shrimp salad, sandwiches and more.” Don’t forget the extravagant piles of fresh fruit and “a wide variety of desserts… The Embassy generates its own power, has wells for water, as well as treatment and sewage plants.”

What else could the bloodsuckers in Baghdad want? Plenty: “…three and a half years after American diplomats moved into the massive $700 million facility,” they lavished an additional  $115 million on “upgrade[s],” the “most interesting” of which “is the construction of a data hall in an existing classified embassy annex building…” Hmmm. The NSA East?

Sic transit gloria. Last week’s protests “scorched” the entrance to this staggeringly sumptuous fortress.

But of course building and maintaining such an enclave merely inaugurated the overspending—and apply only to this embassy: the US boasts another 167 of these money-pits. We also foot the bills for securing them. Then there are the salaries for the ambassadors, assorted diplomats, staff, etc. Your Intrepid Reporter tried to discover exactly how much of our wealth Leviathan squanders on “diplomacy,” but the State Department’s bureaucratic complexity and overlapping “duties” and definitions thwarted this quest. My best estimate is half of the Deparment’s budget, or $20 billion. (Tragically, State’s forty billion bucks are barely worth discussing: Medicare, Social Security, “National Defence,” and “Health” plunder us of trillions, plural.)

And what do we get for that $20 billion? Nothing. Zero, zilch, nada.

“Now hold on a minute,” you’re saying. “When I was in France, I went to the embassy, and they helped me with my visa.”

More likely, you visited a consulate. It’s easy to confuse consulates and embassies, because the State Department spawns both, and they’re both varieties of “diplomacy.” But expecting a bureaucratic office to fulfill more than one function would limit government’s size, you see. And so a consulate sticks to “helping” Americans abroad in the same way that the DMV back home does: by selling us documents we neither want nor need so bureaucrats can track and control us.

“But what about an emergency?” you ask. “Consulates warn American tourists when a war’s breaking out.” You’re right, but as with all of Leviathan’s “services,” taxpayers who never avail themselves of a consulate still pay for it. Wouldn’t it be fairer to disband these outposts? If travelers value their advice and other benefits enough to purchase them, private companies will fill the void.

Meanwhile, an embassy has just two goals: to massage its potentates’ egos and glorify their government. Embassies and ambassadors amplify their state’s pomp and self-importance in the hopes of wowing the international political class.

You and I as mere citizens aren’t even a blip on their radar, until the bills from the butcher, the baker and the caterers arrive. Debt is all an embassy ever gives its patsies.

But don’t take my word for it: “An embassy,” says the World Atlas, “…(has the) sole purpose of acting as the representative of the home country. … All the main diplomatic talks between two countries are held in embassies especially when the discussions involve sensitive matters like wars and trade.”

“Sensitive matters.” As if sociopaths ought to decide whether we’ll slaughter one another and kleptomaniacs should manage trade! Tell me Apple and Coke can’t convince customers overseas to buy their products unless an overpaid ambassador wines and dines the native poohbahs on our dime.

“The ambassador plays a substantial role in all of this as he/she is the spokesperson of the foreign country,” the World Atlas continues. “Their work [sic] is to protect the interests of their land in the receiving country”–or, in plain language rather than euphemisms, they advance Our Rulers’ agenda—”as well as acting as the intermediaries during negotiations. They report directly to their presidents back at home.”

Really? And in our computerized age, with websites and newspapers galore and intercontinental hot lines, not to mention the omnipresent “national security” with its worldwide network of spooks, “reporting directly to their presidents back at home” is oh, so essential. These parasites are nothing more than inexplicably but stratospherically exalted messengers. Worse, when the going gets tough, despots talk directly to one another rather than relying on overpriced errand-boys. Or they tweet, a la President Trump. I don’t know about you, but this taxpayer much prefers a cheap tweet to an $815 million embassy.

The playwright Arthur Miller observed, “A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.” With their hands deep into our pockets.

The post An Embarrassment of Embassies appeared first on LewRockwell.