From: think-AT-riseup.net
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 03:59:44 -0800 (PST)
Subject: John Brady Kiesling's Resignation Letter


for your reading

regards
saeed urrehman

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The New York Review of Books
April 10, 2003

Letter
Iraq: A Letter of Resignation
By John Brady Kiesling
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation
to Secretary of State Colin 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 US 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 US 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 US
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 do 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?


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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 US
interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our
aims are 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 postwar 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 US 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 US and the 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 US 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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