Ex-diplomat sees Bush blunders
He quit over Iraq policy, but with war on, he bridles his criticism
Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, March 21, 2003
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Less than three weeks before the outbreak of war, John Brady Kiesling, a career U.S. diplomat, resigned to protest the Bush administration's policies on Iraq.
With the war now gathering steam, Kiesling is unrepentant.
"I'm disappointed and worse that this is taking place," Kiesling said in an interview Thursday. "Like every other American, all I can do is pray to God that it's fast and bloodless and that the collateral damage is at a minimum."
Kiesling was in the Bay Area to give a speech on the UC Berkeley campus Thursday night, titled "Preserving America's Moral Capital."
A former political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Kiesling, 45, believes that capital has been badly squandered by the Bush administration.
"The United States emerged from the Cold War with an amazing reservoir of moral capital and goodwill, but over the past two years, we have systematically plundered what remained of it through bad policies that were badly articulated," Kiesling said. "We paid the price for that when we could not persuade the rest of the world that our concerns (in Iraq) were justified."
But Kiesling is tempering his criticism of President Bush, now that a war with Iraq has begun. He declined to speak about comments he made before the war about Bush, "since he is not intellectually equipped to understand why such a huge part of the world could have these negative feelings about us. He's looking for a simple answer, and I think he's been manipulated by his Cabinet."
Kiesling said he was disappointed that more elected leaders in the United States didn't protest the buildup to the war in Iraq, and that the U.S.-led effort against Hussein ultimately ignored the concerns of the United Nations --
a body that the United States must work with to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and other diplomatic and political stalemates.
"In the long-term, if this administration really has no interest in international organizations, then the world is in deep trouble," he said. "I'm hoping that the American people will be outraged that we would be giving up on the U.N., giving up on NATO and giving up on other things that have supported us over the years -- so angry that the administration will be forced to backtrack on that."
Kiesling acknowledged that the limits of debate had shrunk now that there is a war on. "But there's going to be a serious debate about what happens next, " he said, "and the American people had better be more involved in it."
E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com. |
