Other Hostages: The State Department Arabists

By Andrew I. Killgore

Is the United States served by its professional diplomats, selected with such care that hardly one applicant out of a hundred is accepted into the Foreign Service? Specifically, are our diplomatic officers in the Middle East telling it like it is in their reports back to Washington? Or are they playing to prejudices back home, shading their analyses to avoid controversy? With increasing numbers of Americans being kidnapped and killed in the Middle East, a question arises. Does the U.S. Government understand the realities of the area? If not, is reporting from our Embassies in the Arab countries at fault?

We Americans assume that Russian diplomats in Washington do this, exaggerating every maladjustment in American society and turning blips in our economy into depressions, one of which, in Marxist dogma, foredooms the capitalist system. Certainly Moscow's official pronouncements about the United States seem to reflect such lopsided reporting. We also assume, however, that free and democratic America welcomes the unvarnished truth in reports and analyses sent back to Washington by its diplomats from overseas.

No Room for Rambos

Well, it's a complicated story, especially where the Middle East is concerned, but "welcomes" is hardly the right word. The truth is that diplomacy is not a macho business. Compromise and accommodation are constant goals. Zealousness is frowned upon. Besides, a good team player swims with the prevailing tide, not against it. If the subject is emotion-laden, as with the Arab-Israeli dispute, and officers reporting on it from the Middle East are "State Department Arabists," then bucking the pro-Israel tide in Washington is deemed suicidal.

Syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft may have been the first to give a pejorative twist to the "State Department Arabist" label applied to officers who had specialized in Arabic language and area studies. About 1971 Kraft wrote a widely distributed essay that, on one level, seemed fair enough. The Arabists were described as genuinely liking Arabs. He managed to intimate, however, that this might stem from unworthy motives, such as anti-Semitism.

Another unusual distinction for Kraft is that he "fired" a distinguished American Ambassador to an Arab country. This Arabist Ambassador learned, not from the State Department, but from a Kraft column in the International Herald Tribune, that he was being dismissed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The Ambassador and Kissinger had disagreed over a matter of protocol having serious implications. This calculated humiliation of the Ambassador—who by any objective standard had been absolutely right in the disagreement—taught the other Arabists a clear lesson: Keep your mouth shut.

Some years earlier Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir had publicly complained about "low-level fanatics in the State Department." Except for these, she complained, relations between Israel and the United States would be a lot better than they were. The Arabists joked about this among themselves, saying that if they could just steer clear of Mrs. Meir and her supporters they might someday be "high-level fanatics." Still, the private joshing had a nervous edge.

Quite apart from Israeli officials and Zionist publicists taking pot shots at Arabists, however, all Foreign Service officers remember the fate of the "Old China Hands" nearly 40 years ago. These Foreign Service officers were blamed for "losing" China when Mao Tse-Tung won the Chinese civil war. Although they had only reported the truth from China as they saw it, many lost their reputations and their jobs. Perhaps the best known of them was John Paton Davies, who had to go to South America and sell furniture for a living.

The Ministry of Fear

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a bizarre phenomenon. He charged there were 86 Communists in the State Department. Before the hysteria inspired by that wild charge subsided, many diplomats had quit or been forced out, while books by "leftists" had literally been withdrawn from official libraries abroad. None of McCarthy's charges were proven because, in fact, they were false. Neither politicians nor Presidents were trampled in any rush to defend our diplomats, however. It taught surviving diplomats another lesson. Avoid getting involved in controversy, at all costs.

McCarthy and McCarthyism were eventually discredited, and charges that a few Foreign Service officers reporting from China "lost" one-fourth of mankind to Communism were eventually seen as ludicrous. But the State Department Arabist label still hurts, and badly. Perfectly valid arguments that the United States must improve its relations with the Arab world to protect its own national interests tend to be dismissed as anti-Israel, especially if they are advanced by Arabists. If such arguments are persisted in, charges of being "emotional" or "not a team player" can stunt a career.

In a sense the Arabists are also hostages, just as airline passengers recently were in the Middle East. Several outstanding officers, including Ambassadors, have been killed in the ever-widening reverberations of the Arab-Israel dispute. This does not count 260 U.S. Marines who have died in Lebanon, nor does it number the diplomats, military personnel and business people still certain to be killed.

Those Arabists not killed or injured suffer psychologically from remaining silent when they feel our Middle East policy must be changed before it claims more unnecessary victims. But their careers suffer when they speak out. One outstanding Ambassador warned the State Department repeatedly during the first Reagan term that Syria could not safely be ignored in a U.S.-brokered agreement providing the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Lebanon. He was ignored and the agreement failed. Those praising that flawed agreement were absolutely wrong. They are still on active duty. The Ambassador was absolutely right. He has retired.

If the U.S. media turned its investigative powers on the precarious situation of Foreign Service Arabists, Israel and its Lobby in the U.S. would be deeply disturbed. But all Americans would be safer, and true American interests would be well and honestly served.

Andrew I. Killgore, former US Ambassador to Qatar, retired after 32 years in the Foreign Service. He is now a political and economic consultant in Washington, D.C., and also president of the American Educational Trust.