Salon: A Call to Conscience

A call to conscience
The diplomat who quit over Nixon's invasion of Cambodia asks Americans on the front lines of foreign service to resign from the "worst regime by far in the history of the republic."

By Roger Morris

Dear Trustees:

I am respectfully addressing you by your proper if little-used title. The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important.

A friend asked Secretary of State Dean Acheson how he felt when as a young official in the Treasury Department in the 1930s, he resigned rather than continue to work for a controversial fiscal policy he thought disastrous -- an act that seemed at the time to end the public service he cherished. "Oh, I had no choice," he answered. "It was a matter of national interest as well as personal honor. I might have gotten away with shirking one, but never both." As the tragedy of American foreign policy unfolded so graphically over the past months, I thought often of Acheson's words and of your challenge as public servants. No generation of foreign affairs professionals, including my own in the torment of the Vietnam War, has faced such anguishing realities or such a momentous choice.

I need not dwell on the obvious about foreign policy under President Bush -- and on what you on the inside, whatever your politics, know to be even worse than imagined by outsiders. The senior among you have seen the disgrace firsthand. In the corridor murmur by which a bureaucracy tells its secrets to itself, all of you have heard the stories.

You know how recklessly a cabal of political appointees and ideological zealots, led by the exceptionally powerful and furtively doctrinaire Vice President Cheney, corrupted intelligence and usurped policy on Iraq and other issues. You know the bitter departmental disputes in which a deeply politicized, parochial Pentagon overpowered or simply ignored any opposition in the State Department or the CIA, rushing us to unilateral aggressive war in Iraq and chaotic, fateful occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

more…
http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/05/21/resign/index.html

"Many of you are aware, for instance, that the torture at Abu Ghraib was an issue up and down not only the Pentagon but also State, the CIA and the National Security Council staff for nearly a year before the scandalous photos finally leaked."

How many people knew how much -- and how many of them will be willing to speak out about it?

I now see why some people are so afraid to speak out. They must go.

It really is as bad as I thought it was.

This is, to use a tired and over-worn phrase, a must read.