Free Republic

KABUL, Afghanistan – Anne Smedinghoff had a quiet ambition and displayed a love of global affairs from an early age, joining the U.S. Foreign Service straight out of college and volunteering for missions in perilous locations worldwide. So when the 25-year-old suburban Chicago woman was killed Saturday in southern Afghanistan — the first American diplomat to die on the job since last year's attack in Benghazi, Libya — her family took solace in the fact that she died doing something she loved.

A young diplomat is among the dead after a Taliban suicide car bombing branded "despicable" by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Taliban militants have killed six Americans, including a young female diplomat, in the deadliest day in Afghanistan for the US in eight months. Three members of the military, two US civilians and an Afghan doctor died after being hit by an explosion while travelling to donate books to a school in the south. In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry paid tribute to Anne Smedinghoff, a 25-year-old foreign service officer with the US State Department, who was...