Dignitaries Fault Bush Administration : Seek Change In Security Policy

[jbfam4]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37557-2004Jun12.html

Group Seeks Change In Security Policy
Dignitaries Fault Bush Administration
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 13, 2004; Page A20


Angered by President Bush's conduct of foreign policy and dismayed about America's diminished reputation abroad, more than two dozen former top diplomats and military leaders will release a statement this week calling for a change in U.S. national security policy.


"We all have this extremely strong feeling that this administration has failed in its responsibilities to the nation," H. Allen Holmes, former assistant secretary of defense for special operations, said yesterday. "We have never been so isolated in the world, and feared. It's incredible that the United States should be in that position."

As a group, they are the latest and most prominent collection of former national security figures to complain about the direction of Bush administration foreign policy. They came together at a moment of growing public doubt about Bush's handling of foreign affairs and the war in Iraq.



"We've lost a lot of our international partnerships. We've lost a lot of lives. We've lost a lot of money for something that wasn't justified," said Ronald Spiers, former ambassador to Pakistan and Turkey, referring to the Iraq war. "This concept of transplanting democracy is a 'fool's rush in where angels fear to tread' idea."

[Senior citizen]

1. I suppose it is encouraging to see dignitaries

trying to regain some dignity. Where have they been all this time?

[GOPFighter]

2. Three resigned rather than support the war

Three State Department workers resigned from the government during the buildup to the Iraq war, saying they could no longer represent official U.S. policy in good conscience. The most senior figure was Mary A. Wright, a decorated and widely traveled diplomat then serving as the number two U.S. official in Mongolia.

"I have served my country for almost 30 years in some of the most isolated and dangerous parts of the world," Wright wrote Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "I want to continue to serve America. However, I do not believe in the policies of the administration and cannot defend or implement them."

John Brady Kiesling, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, wrote in his resignation to Powell that the pursuit of war in Iraq was "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. . . . Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."

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These three chose to end their careers rather than represent an America bent on invading a sovereign nation. And this was before the war went bad and Americans began to realize the terrible mistake this Administration made. I salute them and hope they can sway even more Americans to wake up and smell the crap.