Former leaders say U.S. security policy a failure

By Peter Slevin
The Washington Post

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Members of the group — a mix of Republicans and Democrats — have served in capitals from Moscow to Tel Aviv and from Lima to Kinshasa. The list includes a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former head of U.S. Central Command, a former CIA director and a decorated array of former ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state and defense.

"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.

A senior official at the Bush re-election campaign said he did not wish to comment on the statement until it is released. But administration officials have emphatically rejected charges that Bush has isolated America in the world, pointing to the countries contributing troops in Iraq and such signs of support for the administration as the unanimous passage last week of the U.N. resolution authorizing the interim Iraqi government.

While the group's views are largely shared by Bush's Democratic rival, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the group avoided including people connected to the Kerry campaign. To gain the maximum impact, organizers said, they also tried not to enlist figures whose anti-administration views are well-advertised.

"Our ethos is that we're professionals. We serve the president, whatever party. It's very unlike the vast majority of people in our group to do this," Holmes said. "If you're working for Kerry, we don't really want you in the group. This is supposed to be independent."

Among the signatories are former ambassadors to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock and Arthur Hartman. Also voicing support are former CIA Director Adm. Stansfield Turner, former Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe Jr., former Air Force chief of staff Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak and former Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Hoar.

Others include Phyllis Oakley, former chief of the State Department's intelligence operation, as well as former ambassadors Avis Bohlen and Charles Freeman and onetime U.N. Ambassador Donald McHenry.

The group calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change.

The one-page statement, which will be released formally Wednesday at a Washington, D.C., news conference, criticizes the Bush administration for ineffectiveness in its approach to the world. It mentions Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — on which the White House has strongly backed hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — and cites evidence of increasing anti-American attitudes among Muslim young people.
 
The statement also mentions a range of other issues, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and U.S. approaches to HIV-AIDS, the environment and the distribution of wealth.

"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."

Spiers added, "The damage we've done to key and valuable alliances is going to take a long time to fix."

Bill Harrop, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Kenya, said he and his co-signers became "extremely disillusioned with the administration." He says the Bush administration exhibits "scorn for multilateral organizations, the United Nations and, to some extent, even NATO." He described a "sense of unilateralism, the haughty style of international affairs."

"I really am essentially a Republican. I voted for George Bush's father, and I voted for George Bush," Harrop said. "But what we got was not the George Bush we voted for.

"There is a feeling that the administration from the very outset took a righteous black-and-white view toward diplomacy," said Harrop, who referred to administration "dissembling" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a "complete failure to prepare for the aftermath" of war.

"It's called the war against terrorism," Harrop said, "but in fact it has created terrorism in Iraq. It has made Iraq itself a very dangerous place."

Three State Department workers resigned 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 Wright, a decorated diplomat then serving as the No. 2 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 to Secretary of State Colin 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 letter 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."

Material from the Los Angeles Times in included in this report.