The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2013 29 Haass added: “Dissent is difficult. It can constitute a real dilemma for the person who dis- agrees. On one hand, you owe it to your conscience and to your bosses to tell themwhat they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Speaking truth to power is actually a form of loyalty. It is the best and at times only way to make sure that government (or any organization) lives up to its potential. “No matter how good the advice, however, there will be times when it is resented or rejected,” Haass concluded. “It may be rebuffed on the merits, or because of politics or personalities. Some- times, smart people just see things differently. It doesn’t matter.” But in issues of war and peace, it does matter—to the thousands who will kill and be killed, or spend the rest of their lives maimed physi- cally or emotionally, due to the decisions of those in power. It also matters to the rest of the world, symbolically and practi- cally, when the country with the strongest military in the world decides to attack and occupy a small, oil-rich country that had been under extreme sanctions and inspections for 10 years. And it matters that even a handful of U.S. government employ- ees resigned in opposition to that policy. We became symbols to the rest of the world that not everyone in the U.S. government was willing to go along with a war opposed by the member-states of the United Nations, and by the people who voiced their concerns in the largest stop-the-war marches in history. The Lessons of History We now know the lengths to which Bush administration officials went to ensure the silence of those who opposed their policies, by classifying controversial and illegal policies and operations. As a result, anyone trying to challenge those policies in public automatically risked being charged with revealing clas- sified information. Those brave souls who challenge such policies anyway have seldom fared well. Here is just a partial list of U.S. government employees who have experienced retaliation, either for trying to work within the system to end these practices or becoming whistleblowers: Peter Van Buren and Matt Hoh (State); Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Tamm (Justice); Mike Gorman, Coleen Rowley and Sibel Edmonds (FBI); Bunnatine Greenhouse, Commander Matthew Diaz, Specialist Joe Darby and Specialist Samuel Provence (Defense); John Kiriakou (CIA); and Russell Tice and Thomas Drake (National Security Agency). One can add to this list Katharine Gun and Craig Murray, both British whistleblowers, and Danish Major Frank Grevil, all of whom were accused of criminal acts. Murray was fired from his job, Grevil was court-martialed, and Gun was threatened with prosecution in civilian court, though the British govern- ment dropped the charges against her the night before the trial. In addition, Private First Class Bradley Manning was court- martialed in June for releasing classified cables from both Defense and State that have rounded out our knowledge of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other coun- tries. While I recognize that many Journal readers may be extremely concerned about his disclosure of a large volume iStockphoto.com/Ayzek Can one continue working for a government carrying out policies it claims are critical to national security, if one believes they constitute moral, ethical or legal failures?