foggybottom.jpgA lot of people fantasize about telling off the boss. Every so often, someone does it. But rare is the time when it gets done en masse, and the tapes of the telling off become public.

I’m guessing that the top floor at State is not a happy place. The career people downstairs are getting restless . . . and the political people upstairs haven’t a clue about how to deal with it. If they’d been paying attention, though, they could have seen this coming.

Four and a half years ago, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, a twenty year veteran of the State Department named John Brady Kiesling, wrote a scathing letter of resignation to then-Secretary Powell:

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.

. . . [U]ntil 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. . .

Kiesling’s letter went not only to Powell, but also through the diplomatic grapevine. Two other FSOs joined Kiesling and wrote their own letters of resignation, citing similar reasons. Said 22 year veteran John Brown:

The president has failed:

  • To explain clearly why our brave men and women in uniform should be ready to sacrifice their lives in a war on Iraq at this time;
  • To lay out the full ramifications of this war, including the extent of innocent civilian casualties;
  • To specify the economic costs of the war for ordinary Americans;
  • To clarify how the war would help rid the world of terror;
  • To take international public opinion against the war into serious consideration.

Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president’s disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century.

I joined the Foreign Service because I love our country. Respectfully, Mr. Secretary, I am now bringing this calling to a close, with a heavy heart but for the same reason that I embraced it.

But most personally painful for Powell was probably the letter from Mary Wright:

When I last saw you in Kabul in January, 2002 you arrived to officially open the U.S. Embassy that I had helped reestablish in December, 2001 as the first political officer. At that time I could not have imagined that I would be writing a year later to resign from the Foreign Service because of U.S. policies. All my adult life I have been in service to the United States. I have been a diplomat for fifteen years and the Deputy Chief of Mission in our Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan (briefly) and Mongolia. I have also had assignments in Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada and Nicaragua. I received the State Department’s Award for Heroism as Charge d’Affaires during the evacuation of Sierra Leone in 1997. I was 26 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and participated in civil reconstruction projects after military operations in Grenada, Panama and Somalia. I attained the rank of Colonel during my military service.

This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I cannot represent the policies of an Administration of the United States. I disagree with the Administration’s policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I believe the Administration’s policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them. . .

Things don’t seem to have improved in the last four years, and the career folks don’t have much of a stomach for going into a battle zone without the proper tools, training, and support to do their jobs. Sending them emails late on a Friday probably didn’t help much.

This is not just bureacratic whining. It is not too much of a stretch to compare career officers at State with their career professional counterparts at the DOD or the DOJ. There is a rigorous selection process, followed by 3 months to a year of training, and then a five year probation period, to see if your language skills are up to snuff and to observe your skills as a consular officer. These are not people who lack commitment or dedication.

Secretary Rice, these people are now turning their commitment and dedication on you. You are on the verge of a mutiny, because the Bush Administration has failed and failed and failed yet again to listen to highly trained career employees when they challenge the political spinmeisters at the White House. If you force 48 of them to accept an involuntary posting to Iraq, you will achieve nothing except the destruction of any last shred of support from those who work at Foggy Bottom and in US embassies around the world.

But don’t lose hope, Madam Secretary — there are some State Department folks who apparently really want to go to Iraq. Despite what some of his underlings are telling Henry Waxman, Inspector General Howard Krongard says he would just love to go to Iraq but doesn’t have the budget for it. Maybe you could scale back the budget for political attaches in Iraq next year, and use the savings to send IG Krongard instead.

(Photo via magandafille.)

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