There was a surprisingly powerful reaction to my Sunday morning post about foreign service officers’ duty or lackthereof. I especially appreciated the long comment made by the gentleman who says he is a retired FSO himself, who points out that the State Department regularly loses people to violence in foreign countries; their sacrifice is, of course, as worthy of respect as that of anyone who dies in service of their country. But I take it that some people think I fell on the same side of the issue as Bill Kristol because I agreed that refusing to go to Iraq — when thousands of others have to go — doesn’t look particularly noble.
All I can say is that I still think it doesn’t look particularly noble not to go when you have been asked to do so. (The example provided by “retired FSO” of the person who went to Iraq actually seems to prove my point in that it certainly seems noble to go.) But my point is different, I think, than what Kristol was doing: calling into question the patriotism and possibly treasonous motives of those that refuse to go. (Disregarding an oath is, literally, treason.) In any case, I admit that there are probably as many reasons for people refusing to go as there are people who might be called to do so; some of these reasons don’t say anything about that person’s nobility one way or another (health, family). I should have been more mindful of that category in my post.
My main point (or what I thought my main point was), however, is unchanged: Civilians are supposed to question orders when appropriate, and accusing them of breaking a vow because they do so suggests an intolerance and authoritarianism that, at its core, is itself profoundly unAmerican. Foreign service officers, as civilians, have every right to refuse to go to Iraq; whether they’re behaving nobly or not a distinction only they will have to live with.
