Athens, Greece
February 24, 2003
The Honorable Colin Powell
Secretary of State
Washington, D.C.
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 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?
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.
Sincerely,
John Brady Kiesling
U.S. Embassy Athens
