Note: You can check out the article at the URL below; however if you
are not registered with NY Times yet, you'll have to be registered to
access the archives. Note, that if you don't want to give out private
information you are given the opportunity to tell them you are under 13
years old ... and I'll wager that allows registration with NO personal
data required.
Further Note: I cannot verify the contents of the letter (a purported
copy thereof which follows the article quotation), since I didn't find
a link to it from the NYT article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/middleeast/27NATI.html
----Article from New York Times-----
U.S. Diplomat Resigns, Protesting 'Our Fervent Pursuit of War'
By Felicity Barringer
New York Times
Thursday 27 February 2003
UNITED NATIONS - A career diplomat who has served in United States
embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan resigned this week in
protest against the country's policies on Iraq.
The diplomat, John Brady Kiesling, the political counselor at the
United States Embassy in Athens, said in his resignation letter, "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."
Mr. Kiesling, 45, who has been a diplomat for about 20 years, said
in a telephone interview tonight that he faxed the letter to Secretary
of State Colin L, Powell on Monday after informing Thomas Miller, the
ambassador in Athens, of his decision.
He said he had acted alone, but "I've been comforted by the
expressions of support I've gotten afterward" from colleagues. "No one
has any illusions that the policy will be changed," he said. "Too much
has been invested in the war."
Louis Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said he had no
information on Mr. Kiesling's decision and it was department policy
not to comment on personnel matters.
In his letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York
Times by a friend of Mr. Kiesling's, the diplomat wrote Mr. Powell:
"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."
-----------End NY Times Article-------
Source on the following unknown
-----------begin quote of commentary & of actual letter------------
What follows is a letter of resignation written by John Brady
Kiesling, a member of Bush's Foreign Service Corps and Political
Counselor to the American embassy in Greece. Kiesling has been a
diplomat for twenty years, a civil servant to four Presidents. The
letter below, delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is quite
possibly the most eloquent statement of dissent thus far put forth
regarding the issue of Iraq.
The New York Times story which reports on this remarkable event can
be found after Kiesling's letter. - wrp
U.S. Diplomat John Brady Kiesling
Letter of Resignation, to: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
ATHENS | Thursday 27 February 2003
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.
John Brady Kiesling
-- Arachne V1.71;UE01, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
