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U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
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.
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.
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*waves at Belldandy*
Send us a postcard! It won't be same without you. I might actually not get p155-bored halfway throught threads now.
Send us a postcard! It won't be same without you. I might actually not get p155-bored halfway throught threads now.
With an added question mark.
Just to clear something up, is Star Fury the same as Belldandy.
Nah, he's too busy pretending to himself that his opinion matters. The only way he can preserve that illusion is by going somewhere where his beliefs won't be challenged, and where whatever he says will be accepted as fact. So the Woolies staff room will probably be ablaze with his opinions from now...
Dear oh dear Bell; just take your ball and go home if you don't want to play. Your petulance demeans you almost as much as your sneering dismissal of anyone whom you disagree with.
Dear oh dear Bell; just take your ball and go home if you don't want to play. Your petulance demeans you almost as much as your sneering dismissal of anyone whom you disagree with.
Get back here, you scumbag, and defend your beliefs! Otherwise what's the point in all you've written?
When we write here, we know it doesn't change anything but it might influence other person's thinking. And that's a good thing. So back up your beliefs and start as you mean to go on.
Or hold up your hands and admit you're wrong or too set in your ways to look at things from a different perspective.
When we write here, we know it doesn't change anything but it might influence other person's thinking. And that's a good thing. So back up your beliefs and start as you mean to go on.
Or hold up your hands and admit you're wrong or too set in your ways to look at things from a different perspective.
Star Fury wrote:
where
> as the other forums are actually fun, rather than selective history of
> the world time...
--
Yet again with the putting down of others opinions whilst acting like the Lone Soldier.
Get over yourself Bell.
where
> as the other forums are actually fun, rather than selective history of
> the world time...
--
Yet again with the putting down of others opinions whilst acting like the Lone Soldier.
Get over yourself Bell.
Insane Bartender wrote:
> According to something he posted in the XBOX forum, Belldandy will no
> longer be frequenting Life...
Yep, this is my very last post as of this day, savour it and have fun agreeing with yourselves, especially Light, you can all continue unapposed with whatever you want, then look at the real world and see you made fluff all difference. It's actually Goatboy who pointed this out to me many a time, so I'm heeding that advice, Life - the forum - is a waste of time because nothing ever changes because of it, where as the other forums are actually fun, rather than selective history of the world time...
Adios,
> According to something he posted in the XBOX forum, Belldandy will no
> longer be frequenting Life...
Yep, this is my very last post as of this day, savour it and have fun agreeing with yourselves, especially Light, you can all continue unapposed with whatever you want, then look at the real world and see you made fluff all difference. It's actually Goatboy who pointed this out to me many a time, so I'm heeding that advice, Life - the forum - is a waste of time because nothing ever changes because of it, where as the other forums are actually fun, rather than selective history of the world time...
Adios,
Is that like the last time he 'quit'? Running away crying "I'm not playing any more" to an overwhelming chorus of indifference? Spoilt little brat; he'll be back the second he feels the need to be self important.
Ah well; maybe now when I get into silly little bitchslap fights over god knows what, it won't be taken to heart by whomever I'm arguing with.
And maybe when I get into a proper debate, it will actually be two sides arguing. Not just one person generating an idea and the other one saying "You don't believe that. You're wrong. Waaah!"
Come to think of it, maybe I just won't be arguing with people as self important as...well, as me I guess, but you get the idea...
~thinks~
I still haven't replied to Blank about that Prostitution thread! Doh!
Ah well; maybe now when I get into silly little bitchslap fights over god knows what, it won't be taken to heart by whomever I'm arguing with.
And maybe when I get into a proper debate, it will actually be two sides arguing. Not just one person generating an idea and the other one saying "You don't believe that. You're wrong. Waaah!"
Come to think of it, maybe I just won't be arguing with people as self important as...well, as me I guess, but you get the idea...
~thinks~
I still haven't replied to Blank about that Prostitution thread! Doh!
According to something he posted in the XBOX forum, Belldandy will no longer be frequenting Life...
Thought provoking and VERY interesting.
Though in the interests of baiting the board's junior totalitarian, I note that Belldandy has failed to post any sort of comment on this. He usually blasts arcing ropes of manjuice all over his keyboard in his haste to condemn anything remotely anti-war, so I'm rather surprised he hasn't tried to dismiss this out of hand yet.
Though in the interests of baiting the board's junior totalitarian, I note that Belldandy has failed to post any sort of comment on this. He usually blasts arcing ropes of manjuice all over his keyboard in his haste to condemn anything remotely anti-war, so I'm rather surprised he hasn't tried to dismiss this out of hand yet.
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