Dissent in Democracy
(A Presentation by Ann Wright)

October 22, 2004
Summary by Phoebe Hoss

On Friday evening, October 22, 2004, the Peace Task Force and Not in Our Name sponsored a talk by Ann Wright, a distinguished career diplomat and a colonel in the U.S.Army/Army Reserve.

Ms. Wright could well take her place among the array of activists Paul Rogat Loeb has recently reported on, both here at All Souls and in his book The Impossible Will Take a Little While . She -- quiet, clear, an apparently ordinary woman -- told us of her decision to resign from the foreign service in principled opposition to the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. It was an act that took great courage, especially in the male-dominated foreign service and after her thirty-five years service to this nation in the foreign service and army combined.

After joining the foreign service in 1987, Ann Wright served in embassies in many of the world's most isolated and dangerous countries: Micronesia, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Sierra Leone. For her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people inSierra Leone, she received the State Department's Award for Heroism. She was serving in Mongolia at the time of her resignation, which was brought on by her opposition to the economic pressure the U.S. government was putting on that nation to join President Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" to take part in the Iraq war.

Her resignation letter was the longest in State Department history. In it, not only did she protest our government's decision to go to war in Iraq, as putting the United States at risk. She also protested our lack of effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, our lack of policy in North Korea, and our unnecessary curtailment of rights in America. Although she was only one of three foreign service officers to resign in protest over our determination to go to war in Iraq, she told us that many in the foreign service and the State Department feel as she does, and are working hard within the system to try to change our short-sighted and dangerous policies.

In the discussion after her talk, Ann Wright spoke forcefully about the need to do something positive about the millions of angry young Muslim men who hate us. We need to recognize and try to ameliorate their concerns. It's not our freedom they resent, as our President claims, but our apparent greediness in respect to their great commodity -- oil-- and our unbalanced policy in respect to Israel and the Palestinians.

In respect to the latter, she feels that they need to stop fighting right now and sit down to negotiate a viable way to live together.

Ann Wright's message to us: Continue your work! Get out to vote! Force Congress to live up to its responsibilities. Choose a government we can trust and respect!