“. . . .Until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests... September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to do to ourselves. . . .”

From John Brady Kiesling’s resignation letter to Colin Powell, dated February 27, 2003

Position: Foreign Service Diplomat in Morocco, Armenia, Israel and Greece
Tenure: 1983 to March 7, 2003

John Brady Kiesling was the first U.S. diplomat to resign in protest of U.S. policy toward Iraq. His resignation letter to then Secretary of State Colin Powell was dated February 27, 2003, preceding the invasion by about three weeks.

Why did Kiesling, who began service under Ronald Reagan, quit career diplomacy in 2003? He described the foreign service as a “dream job” in which he “was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided.”

Kiesling believed in civic duty. In 1994 he was among a group of twelve state department diplomats who pushed for intervention in Bosnia to prevent genocide. He was awarded the Rivkin Award by the Foreign Service Association for constructive dissent. Kiesling used the State Department's Dissent Channel to protest U.S. Balkan policy, but he considered that avenue of no use for protesting the impending invasion of Iraqi.

Stationed in Athens at the time of his resignation, Kiesling was in charge of conveying U.S. talking points to his Greek counterparts. No longer believing his own messages, he became increasingly alarmed as the Greeks’ view of the United States shifted. Affection and respect was replaced by fear. When he realized the Bush Administration was going to invade Iraq regardless of whether or not Saddam Hussein disarmed, he could no longer speak on behalf of U.S. policy.

Kiesling’s discontent was not restricted to Iraq policy. His resignation letter states, “We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security. The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam.”

Since his resignation, Kiesling has spent a year teaching at Princeton, written articles, and traveled giving lectures. He has also written “Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower,” in which Kiesling draws on his personal experiences to explain the world in which diplomats today must operate.