75 retired diplomats sign letter opposing Trump for president
WASHINGTON: A group of 75 retired career foreign service officers, including ambassadors and senior state department officials under Republican and Democratic presidents over nearly a half-century, have signed an open letter calling Donald Trump “entirely unqualified to serve as president and commander-in-chief ”.
The diplomats said “none of us” will vote for Trump. While they said not all of them agreed with every decision made by Hillary Clinton, they said they all supported her candidacy.
Unprecedented
“Because the stakes in this election are so high,” the letter said, “this is the first time many of us have publicly endorsed a candidate for president.”
The letter is the latest in an unprecedented number of joint public statements signed by retired high-level government officials and military officers this election cycle. Most have focused on national security, and most have been against Trump.
The most prominent exception was a letter early this month signed by 88 retired generals and other military officials who endorsed Trump as a “long overdue course correction in our national security posture”.
Earlier this year, more than 100 Republican national security experts signed a petition, even before Trump won the Republican nomination, saying they would never work for a Trump administration.
Last month, 50 more Republicans, including former top aides and cabinet members for the George W Bush administration, signed a letter saying Trump would be “the most reckless president in American history” and that none of them would vote for him.
Most of the diplomats who signed the new letter have never been publicly associated with a political party.
In their letter, they wrote that they “have proudly represented every president since Richard Nixon as ambassadors or senior state department officials in Senate-confirmed positions. We have served Republican and Democratic presidents with pride and enthusiasm”.
They had decided to speak out, the signatories said, because “very simply, this election is different from any election we can recall”.
Trump, they said, “is ignorant of the complex nature of the challenges facing our country, from Russia, to China, to the Islamic State, to nuclear proliferation, to refugees, to drugs, but he has expressed no interest in being educated”.
While the idea was initiated by Nelson Cunningham, a former adviser to Democratic administrations, and James Keith, a former ambassador to Malaysia – both of whom now work for the international consulting firm McLarty Associates – many signatories said they first saw it as it was widely distributed from friend to friend among the retired foreign policy community.
In interviews, several diplomats expressed broadly divergent reasons for signing.
“As a normal issue,” former ambassador Ryan Crocker said, “generals or their civilian equivalent shouldn’t be making endorsements. I served six times as ambassador – three Republicans, three times for Democratic administrations – and I’m proud of that.
“At the same time, looking at this campaign as I do through a national security optic, I am concerned enough to break my position as non-partisan,” said Crocker, whose ambassadorial posts included Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
“I know Hillary Clinton a bit from my time in Afghanistan. I thought she was a terrific boss. She’s smart, focused, she knows how to make decisions.”
The next president, he said, “is going to be dealing with a world of hurt, quite literally.
“I don’t know Donald Trump,” Crocker added.
“I don’t know what he’d do, but based on what he’s said, I know I don’t want to find out. This is scary.”
John Maisto, former ambassador to the Organisation of American States, Venezuela and Nicaragua, who also served on Bush’s National Security Council staff, said the letter was “the first time I’ve ever done anything like that. I’m a registered independent”. His reasons, Maisto said, “are pretty straightforward – what the letter says”.
Policy
“The Republican candidate, as so many of my Republican friends have said, does not have the qualifications to do the job, across the board. In any way. And the Democratic candidate does have the qualifications… She’s not perfect, but nobody is,” Maisto said.
Some said they signed for specific policy reasons. Edward Marks, the Ronald Reagan administration’s ambassador to Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, said, “I am upset by the fact that Trump as a candidate has formally said he will use torture and… collective punishment as elements of US policy. Those two pull him outside the normal US political boundaries.”
Dan Kurtzer, former ambassador to Egypt and to Israel, said he objected to Republican support for a measure allowing US citizens to sue foreign governments, which President Barack Obama has said he would veto.
He said he signed “not for the politics part, but literally for the protection that the measure would strip away” from US diplomats working overseas.
Others have already publicly indicated a preference for Clinton, including Laura Kennedy, Bush’s ambassador to Turkmenistan, who has volunteered for the Clinton campaign. Nicolas Burns, under-secretary of state for Bush and a former ambassador to Greece, is rumoured to be on a short list for Clinton’s secretary of state.
The list also includes Thomas Pickering, a veteran ambassador and senior diplomat who began his government work under president Harry Truman, and Marc Grossman, former ambassador to Turkey, who served as assistant secretary and under-secretary of state under Bush.
In statements about foreign countries, the diplomats wrote, “Mr Trump has expressed the most ignorant stereotypes of those countries; has inflamed their people; and has insulted our allies and comforted our enemies.”
And “shockingly, he has even offered praise and admiration for Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia whose international activities and reported intrusions into our democratic political process have been among the most damaging actions taken by any foreign leader since World War II”.
By contrast, they said, “Hillary Clinton’s handling of foreign affairs has consistently sought to advance fundamental US interests with a deep grounding in the work of the many tens of thousands of career officers on whom our national security depends.” – The Washington Post