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.