Somewhere I remember a spokesperson for the present administration saying that the US was not into nation building. Sorry, cannot remember which pea brain uttered those words. But guess what?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice inaugurated the U.S. government’s first-ever civilian nation-building team Wednesday in a bid to learn from missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction efforts.
The “active” component, called the Civilian Response Corps, is a team of 250 federal employees from several agencies – diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators, agronomists and others.
Their primary responsibility is to deploy to crisis spots around the world within 48 to 72 hours.
“This is a mission that requires the integration of security, diplomacy and development,” Miss Rice said at a State Department ceremony.
For the team’s active members, the response corps will be a full-time job. Another 2,000 who have other federal jobs will serve as the “standby” component, said John Herbst, the department’s coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.
About 37 percent of the active corps will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about 30 percent from the State Department and the rest from the departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Treasury, Mr. Herbst said.
Members of the nation-building corps already have deployed to missions in Sudan, Chad, Haiti, Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, although the numbers are much smaller than the targets of 250 active members and 2,000 standby members.
Only 100 active members have been hired so far because the $75 million appropriated by Congress is less than needed to fund the operation.
The administration later created Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, which usually are headed by senior diplomats and include other civilian specialists working with the military.
Because of the need to help stabilize and rebuild weak, war-torn or poorly governed countries, Miss Rice has advocated “transformational diplomacy” as a part of the Foreign Service’s future.
OOPS! The the Washington Times article pretty much punched a huge hole in the lame statement from the recent past.