03/03/2003 | Serhiy Hrysch

New York Times
February 27, 2003
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.