April 2008

You may remember Strauss from his NYT article damning the Peace Corps back in January. It made the point that the increasing numbers of volunteers is decreasing the agency's effectiveness and that the agency itself was too stuck on its mission to improve and adapt. Strauss has been a volunteer, and also a country director, with the Peace Corps, and I as a returned volunteer can agree with some of his points.

He's back now in April with a much longer attack in Foreign Policy.com, where he sets up a series of strawmen to knock down.

For example;

"The Peace Corps Is a Potent Diplomatic Weapon"

No. With diplomats stuck inside barricaded compounds or loath to venture from expatriate residential ghettos, a Peace Corps volunteer is likely to be the only representative of the U.S. government that poor, rural populations ever see. As the State Department cuts back on its public diplomacy and cultural exchange programs, the Peace Corps' predominantly young volunteers wind up carrying more and more of the responsibility for demonstrating that the United States still has good intentions abroad.