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State Department Official Sets Example for All Public
Officials as the World Teeters at the Brink.When
the People Learn How to Support Men and Women Like
This, More of Them Will Do the Same Thing.
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter
of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr.
Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United
States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign
Service of the United States and from my position as Political
Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I
do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing
included a felt obligation to give something back to my
country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I
was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures,
to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists,
and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally
coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the
most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.
It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State
Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical
about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that
sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it
is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human
nature. But until this Administration it had been possible
to believe that by upholding the policies of my president
I was also upholding the interests of the American people
and the world. I believe it no longer.
The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible
not only with American values but also with American interests.
Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander
the international legitimacy that has been America’s
most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the
days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the
largest and most effective web of international relationships
the world has ever known. Our current course will bring
instability and danger, not security.
The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics
and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it
is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we
have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence,
such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since
the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger
than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition
to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against
the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for
those successes and build on them, this Administration
has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool,
enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as
its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror
and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the
unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and
perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation
of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken
the safeguards that protect American citizens from the
heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much
damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined
to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs
really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing
toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status
quo?
We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade
more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We
have over the past two years done too much to assert to
our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests
override the cherished values of our partners. Even where
our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue.
The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering
on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in
whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind,
as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the
Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming
military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the
shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny
and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks
with Micronesia to follow where we lead.
We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many
of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral
capital built up over a century. But our closest allies
are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would
be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism.
Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone
the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends
and allies this Administration is fostering, including
among its most senior officials. Has "oderint dum
metuant" really become our motto?
I urge you to listen to America’s friends around
the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European
anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than
the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even
when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know
that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and
they want a strong international system, with the U.S.
and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid
of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now
they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the
United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security,
and justice for the planet?
Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character
and ability. You have preserved more international credibility
for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something
positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving
Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes
too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international
system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws,
treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits
on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained
America’s ability to defend its interests.
I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile
my conscience with my ability to represent the current
U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic
process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in
a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies
that better serve the security and prosperity of the American
people and the world we share.
