The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

28 JULY-AUGUST 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL These issues transcend administrations. Despite the urging of President Barack Obama to “look forward, not backward” in terms of transparency and accountability for governmental actions, I firmly believe it is imperative to take a look back over the policies of the past 10 years. That is the only way to evalu- ate how to approach ethical, moral and legal challenges in the future. Ten years ago, I faced such a dilemma myself. I had been a federal government employee for more than 35 years, first in the U.S. military and then at the Department of State, serving eight presidents going back to Lyndon Johnson. Many of those adminis- trations, of both parties, espoused controversial policies that I did not agree with. But like many other public servants, I sought to carry out programs and poli- cies with which I concurred, morally and ethically. The Road to War In late 2002 and early 2003, I became increasingly concerned about the George W. Bush administration’s march to war in Iraq. I had just returned from Afghanistan—having been on the small team that reopened the U.S. embassy in Kabul in Decem- ber 2001 and remained there until the first permanent embassy staff arrived in April 2002—when I proceeded to my scheduled assignment as deputy chief of mission in Ulaanbaatar. The war rhetoric from President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Secu- rity Adviser Condoleezza Rice and my boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, increased weekly, as did my unease. I was unable to figure out how Iraq could still have had weapons of mass destruction after intense U.N. inspections, sanctions, quaran- tines and blockades for 10 years, the imposition of two no-fly zones and regular U.S. attacks on military and civilian installa- tions there. On Feb. 5, 2003, I watched live fromMongolia as Secretary of State Powell pitched to the United Nations the “evidence” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. His presentation did not convince me, and it did not convince the hundreds of Foreign Service colleagues who got in touch with me later. Nor did it deter the millions of U.S. citizens who marched in the streets, much less the U.N. member-states. They quickly voted against authorizing any military operations against Iraq. I used the Dissent Channel to express my concerns in a letter to Secretary Powell in early March 2003, just weeks before the war began. My concerns were dismissed in the response from the department, signed by Policy Planning Director Richard Haass. His response paralleled the daily press guidance from the department, which rehashed the administration’s rationale for why Saddam Hussein’s regime was dangerous to the interna- tional community and should be eliminated. After revising many drafts, on March 19, 2003—the eve of the invasion—I sent my letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell. I became one of only three U.S. government employees, all Foreign Service officers, to resign over the issue. Several other FSOs apparently resigned later for the same reason, but did not make their resignations public. In addition, an unknown number of FSOs retired from the Service much earlier than they had planned because of their opposition to the war. However, neither dissent within the government, nor else- where, affected the Bush administration’s decision to wage war on Iraq. “Dissent Is Difficult” A decade later, I still wonder whether the resignation of a senior policymaker might have had an effect on that decision. In a 2006 interview, Sec. Powell’s chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, reflected: “My participation in that presentation at the U.N. constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council.” Wilkerson went even further in 2011, when he said that his role in preparing the presentation was “probably the biggest mis- take of my life.” He regrets both his participation and his decision not to resign over it. Six years after the Iraq War began, Richard Haass—who had delivered the official response to my Dissent Channel mes- sage—described his own reservations about the decision to go to war in a 2009 Newsweek article, “The Dilemma of Dissent.” In it Haass, now chair of the Council on Foreign Relations, says: “Had I known then what I know now—namely, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the intervention would be carried out with a marked absence of good judgment and competence—I would have been inalterably opposed. Still, even then, I leaned against proceeding.” I believe it matters that even a handful of U.S. government employees resigned in opposition to Bush administration policy.