Two former State Department diplomats denounced the Bush administration's foreign policy Thursday night.
John Kiesling and Ann Wright, both career foreign service officers and members of Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, recounted their story of dissent to a packed Mitchell Hall auditorium.
Gov. Bill Richardson sent his regards to the diplomats in a letter ASUNM President Kevin Stevenson read aloud.
Richardson wrote Wright and Kiesling are "outstanding, courageous individuals who proudly served their country during distinguished careers."
During President Clinton's administration, Richardson served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
"I've seen him in action, and he's very good with foreigners," Kiesling said.
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Kiesling resigned in February 2003 after 20 years as a diplomat, five years away from his pension. He was the first diplomat to resign in protest of the Iraq War.
DMCC is a bipartisan group of 27 career chiefs of mission and four-star military leaders, including the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President H.W. Bush and the former Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a member of the National Security Council under President Reagan.
Kiesling said he is proud of the foreign service and regrets the damage the Bush administration has caused it since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
He urged students in the audience to consider working for the State Department and called for the reconstruction of the department to restore its prestige.
He said he would like to see a new generation of "idealistic, motivated, young Americans from the American heartland" take charge of the service, which promotes American political and business interests abroad.
"I decided this president has so screwed up diplomacy, has pushed the State Department out of the process and has made my job so repulsive," he said. "The talking points I was asked to deliver would damage the image of the United States with our allies, would lead the world away from this international system that 50 years of American presidents, including Bush's father, built, and would destabilize the situation. If the job I was doing was making Americans less safe rather than more safe, I'd rather not do it."
Wright said she first tried to make a case against the Iraq War before issuing her resignation.
Wright served in the U.S. Army for 26 years and the State Department for 18 years before resigning in March 2003.
She said she wrote a "cable of dissent" saying the Iraq War would be a disaster, which worked its way through the State Department, but the cable was dismissed at once.
Soon after, Wright resigned "with a heavy heart" to avoid participating in a war with no connection to America's national interest or the war on terrorism, she said.
Asked why more diplomats and other U.S. officials have not spoken out against the Bush administration's foreign policy, and specifically the Iraq War, the diplomats said it required losing one's job and "borders on insubordination" in the military.
Wright said she received numerous e-mails of support from within the State Department after she resigned, but was glad more diplomats did not resign, because the Bush administration would have replaced them with ideologues from right-wing thinktanks.
The diplomats are scheduled to speak next in Taos and Santa Fe.
