Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
By interaction with the State Department has been mixed. There are some true heroes who have strategies for promoting peace and economic development over time in their particular countries, and there are a fair amount of bubble heads who have no clue how the world works, as demonstrated by the State Department rep who foolishly posted a twitter photo stating the U.S. stands behind the opposition with the Syrian Resistance. Giving bubble heads more money to promote bad policy approaches will probably result in more conflicts.
Very few DoS people spend enough time in one country (let alone enough time outside the embassy/bubble) to offer realistic "strategies for promoting peace and economic development over time in their particular countries".

DoS is set up to manage relationships between and among states, not to deal with the internal problems of other countries: even AID is less about promoting development than about using aid as a lever to advance perceived US interests. It's tempting to say that the US should have more capacity to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries, but I have doubts: not really our business, we don't do it well, and the potential for adverse unintended consequences is high.

I understand that some people find pleasure in imagining that the US has the capacity to dictate policy to other countries and then castigating the US for failing to use that imaginary capacity, but it doesn't seem a particularly productive pastime to me.