My mother once told me that her father, a retired career naval officer and a moderate Republican (tighter immigration controls, but also single-payer health care), would be very pleased if one of his grandchildren were to join the ‘establishment’ by becoming a Foreign Service officer.

At various times I’ve seriously considered it. I’m interested in politics, history, and economics; I have a talent for languages; I’m good at standardized tests, so the exam should be no trouble. Travel, glamour, excitement — what’s not to like? What’s stopped me?

What’s stopped me, is the knowledge — given what I know of American history — that sooner or later I’d find myself writing a letter like John Brady Kiesling’s.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

Salon has an interview with him up right now. I recommend it.

Q: What exactly do you mean when you say “the traditional internationalist foreign policy community?” Would that be considered — I hate to put simple tags on it — to have a mainstream political bent? Would it be liberal?

A: They’re mainstream foreign policy people, the ones who believe the United States is locked in a web of international interests and must protect those interests by a combination of unilateral force, but more importantly, by a set of institutions and relationships that we can control. There are very hard-nosed people in this community. But they were convinced that these institutions we set up served United States interests and their perspective has always been based on United States national interests.

It’s a good read; not just on the subject of the current unpleasantness, but on the conflicts between duty and conscience, and between organizational loyalty and professionalism, that are the lot of any honest man who tries to serve a country or a cause governed, in the end, by fallible human beings.