From Claudia Rosett at PJ Media:
Inspector General Slams Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy’s Embassy as Amateur Hour
When President Obama nominated Caroline Kennedy in 2013 to serve as America’s ambassador to Japan, there were those who had their misgivings. On the celebrity social circuit, Kennedy knows her game — daughter of the lionized JFK, enthusiastic supporter of Obama, and guest earlier this month of the Obama family at their summer holiday enclave on Martha’s Vineyard.
But Kennedy came to her ambassador’s post with no foreign policy experience, no particular background in Japan or Asia generally, and apparently not much skill at running the $93.6 million-per-year operation that is the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.
This embassy is one of America’s most important outposts, representing American interests to a strategically vital democratic ally and economic partner in an increasingly troubled region. Japan faces a militarizing, expansionist, and economically roiled China, an aggressively rearming Russia, and a nuclear-arming North Korea.
But almost two years into Kennedy’s ambassadorship, the U.S. Embassy in Japan is a mess.
We are learning this from the report “Inspection of Embassy Tokyo, Japan“, just released by the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General.
Much more at the site - quite the shopping list of problems. Ours has morphed into a culture of celebrity, not hiring the proper people for the job.
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