The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2013 31 rienced ambassadors, Thomas Pickering, summarized the damage done by those policies in an April 16 Washington Post op-ed: “By authorizing and permitting torture in response to a global terrorist threat, U.S. leaders committed a grave error that has undermined our values, principles and moral stature; eroded our global influence; and placed our soldiers, diplo- mats and intelligence officers in even greater jeopardy.” Yet whistleblowers who revealed the torture program years earlier have lost their jobs and even gone to jail. Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide In the decade since our resignations, John Brown, Brady Kiesling and I have spoken to thousands of groups, both in the United States and all over the world, about our decisions to resign from the Foreign Service. We are treated with great respect for that decision precisely because resignation on principle from the United States government is so rare. I have worked with many veterans and their families, and have traveled to countries to meet with families uprooted and destroyed by U.S. wars. I have visited Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria, and interviewed victims of torture in U.S. prisons in Iraq. I have met with families of prisoners who have been released from Guantanamo and with families of prisoners who have been cleared for release years ago, but are still held by the United States. And I have met in Pakistan and Afghanistan with families of victims of U.S. drones. I’ve also met hundreds of U.S. military personnel who did not have the luxury of resigning to protest war policies they decided were wrong. The consciences of these men and women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan would not allow them to continue killing others in wars they believed were based on lies. Many of them have gone to prison for their decisions to refuse to go along with policies they oppose. Their statements leave no doubt of the severe conflict they experienced after volunteering to join an organization imple- menting policies that were fundamentally wrong—and know- ing that refusal to help carry them out could mean jail time. That, of course, is the great dilemma inherent in confront- ing policies that one disagrees with—particularly when the policies concern life and death. There is no doubt that dissent may cut short your government career. But living dishonestly may cause you a lifetime of anxiety and grief. Ultimately, the nagging feeling you have in your stomach that something is profoundly wrong is a much better guide than the comments of senior government officials on whether policies are right or wrong, legal or illegal. n