Antiwar Movement Embraces Diplomat Who Quit Over Iraq

Today, as missiles thunder down on Baghdad, the 45-year-old Californian is touring college campuses -- including the U.S. Military Academy, Harvard and, on Thursday, UC Berkeley -- speaking out against the same Bush administration policy.

Dismayed by what he describes as the "arrogance and blindness" of the Bush doctrine, Kiesling resigned last month after 20 years in the foreign service, which included postings in Armenia, Morocco and Israel.

He was joined last week by another veteran diplomat, John H. Brown and, on Wednesday, by foreign envoy Mary Wright, who said in a resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that U.S. foreign policies will make the world "more dangerous, not safer."

Kiesling has gone a step further in recent weeks, emerging as a subdued but influential voice in the American antiwar movement.

In his letter to Powell, Kiesling wrote: "Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon

The words of Kiesling, the U.S.-based Brown and Wright -- a former deputy chief of mission in Ulan Bator, Mongolia -- are repeated frequently by many in the peace movement.

All three can claim the authority of insiders who had access to U.S. intelligence. They also represent a rarity in U.S. government service: the principled resignation.

Even during the long Vietnam conflict, only a handful of low-level officials resigned. Senior officials who opposed the war, such as then-State Department Undersecretary George Ball, preferred to fight their battles from the inside. Kiesling, Brown and Wright are the first U.S. envoys to resign since a handful of Balkan experts quit in the early 1990s.

"I guess I grew up with this notion, maybe because of my classical education background," said Kiesling, that "civil servants should be prepared to resign on principle."

Besides being instantly adopted by the Internet-driven peace movement, Kiesling said, he has been supported by e-mails that have flooded U.S. embassy Web sites. The few negative responses, he said, tended to be along the lines of, "Don't let the door hit you on your way out."