Good People Of Conscience Flee US Government Murder Machine
It is important to recognize the heroes among us who speak truth and at personal cost walk away from jobs and professions drained of ethical legitimacy.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (12/28/24)
As anyone who has worked in a profession or for an organization supposedly grounded on high ideals and ethical integrity knows, the dirty laundry in the basement can be pretty icky, rank and stained.
No organization, no profession — or professional — is perfect. Having worked in education, journalism and mental health care my entire professional life, I have experienced up close the professional, organizational and personal aspects of falling short. There were times I took a stand at personal cost … and there were times I stepped back.
In perhaps a fitting capstone to my professional life, in the final months before retirement I became secondhand aware of a questionable situation that I took up the chain of command only to have the situation ignored. I could have taken it further, outside the organization, but, frankly, I was exhausted; pretty much drained and just needed to get through to my retirement date. I accept my decision but I’d be bullshitting that I don’t feel somewhat conflicted.
My personal experience is one reason I so deeply respect Edward Snowden, who literally had to walk off into the unknown in order to let us know just how duplicitous and threatening the government is to each of us.
Easy to criticize
It’s easy from the outside to criticize those who work in institutions that are falling short, but critics don’t know the full personal story of ethical people who stay in their jobs. Some may have a child with medical issues and they can’t lose health insurance coverage for their family. Some may have dependent extended family nearby and can’t leave their community. Others might be within a few years of retirement and their future personal financial stability could be at risk. Despite such risks, many do speak up, push back and try to maintain — or regain — integrity within the organization or profession only to lose or leave their jobs.
The following are five courageous people who spoke up and walked away from careers and institutions they had believed in and invested years of their lives. As the media is actively memory-holing our genocide of the Palestinians and ginning us up for more wars grounded in lies, it is important to recognize the heroes among us who speak truth and at personal cost walk away from jobs and professions drained of ethical legitimacy.
Their courage is a model for all at such dark, immoral times.
Meet State Dept. Official Michael Casey, Who Resigned Over Gaza After U.S. Ignored Israeli Abuses
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Take notice of Casey’s opening statement of trying to get journalists to report on his resignation and what he learned about the rules of State Department diplomacy when it comes to Israel. — Mark Taylor]
“Our policy is just completely backwards. We start from the point of we need to sell weapons to Israel, and then we backtrack and make the facts the way we need it to be in order to make that happen, which is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.”
Democracy Now (12/26/24)
After a 15-year career in the Foreign Service, Michael Casey resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza and is now speaking out publicly for the first time. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before he left. Casey says he resigned after “getting no action from Washington” for his recommendations on humanitarian actions for Palestinians and toward a workable two-state solution.
“We don’t believe Palestinian sources of information,” Casey says about U.S. policymakers. “We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.” He also discusses what to expect for Gaza under the incoming Trump administration.
‘Tired of writing about dead kids’: Why US State Department Worker Resigned Over Israel-Gaza Policy
“I got so tired of writing about dead kids. Just constantly having to prove to Washington that these children actually died and then watching nothing happen.”
“We don’t have a policy on Palestine. We just do what the Israelis want us to do.”
By Joseph Gideon
The Guardian (12/18/24)
When Mike Casey arrived in Jerusalem in 2020, he wasn’t looking for a fight.
An army veteran with a stint in Iraq who joined the state department for over a decade of postings across Asia, he came with the measured optimism of a career diplomat – two years of Arabic training ahead, a potential change in administration, and a chance to make a difference. He’d eventually work his way up the ranks to become the state department’s deputy political counselor on Gaza.
What he didn’t anticipate was becoming a key witness to what he describes as a systematic failure of US foreign policy.
“In Malaysia, if you didn’t cooperate, you could get sanctioned,” he explains. “With Pakistan, we could pull training programs, stop certain aid. But with the Israelis, it’s completely different. They just have to drag out negotiations and we’ll eventually agree to whatever they want.”
“The more informed you become on this issue, you can’t avoid realizing how bad it is,” Casey told the Guardian.
Casey resigned from the state department in July after four years at the job, discreetly leaving the post unlike other recent high-profile government departures. Now seated at his kitchen table in the quiet suburbs of northern Michigan, Casey reflected on how, as one of only two people in the entire US government explicitly focused on Gaza, he became an unwilling chronicler of a humanitarian catastrophe.
“I got so tired of writing about dead kids,” he said. “Just constantly having to prove to Washington that these children actually died and then watching nothing happen.”
Casey’s work function included documenting the humanitarian and political landscape through classified cables, research and reporting. But his disillusionment wasn’t sudden. It was a slow accumulation of bureaucratic betrayals – each report dismissed, each humanitarian concern bulldozed by political expediency.
“We would write daily updates on Gaza,” he said. Colleagues used to joke, he said, that they could attach cash to the reports and still nobody would read them. …
I Served 16 Years In The Air Force And Left Because Of Gaza
“I think just the arrogance of the IDF. They're posting this stuff, right? They're flaunting it, honestly. They don't care. It's just so – evil.”
AJ+/Al Jazeera (10/27/24)
What would you do if you joined the Air Force to defend the United States but realized your job made you complicit in ruining the lives of innocent Palestinians? Former Air Force engineer Riley Livermore talks about what led him to end his 16 year career. It's the second episode in a series of interviews with Americans who quit their jobs over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
7-minute video
Quitting The Biden Administration Over Gaza: “Any senior person who says, ‘I just wasn't aware is lying.’”
AJ+/Al Jazeera (10/24/24)
What would you do if you joined the government to help save lives; but realized your bosses were helping kill thousands of people instead? This is the first in a series of interviews with American officials who have quit over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Reflections On American Reality…
“Inside the State Department, to me and to many of my colleagues, it became clear very early on what the U.S. was going to do as far as this kind of unconditional support and what Israel was going to do as far as really just essentially trying to destroy Gaza. That became clear extremely early on.”
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“I felt complicit to the extent that by not speaking out about it that I was participating.”
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“But it was in conversations with colleagues who themselves were horrified by what was happening but who were not in a position to resign, or who did feel that by staying on the inside, they were able to have an impact. And they said, ‘Please go public with your resignation.’”
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“I think that the way the United States uses human rights, which is what I observed inside the State Department, the U.S. uses it selectively. We criticize our adversaries. We criticize Syria. We criticize Iran. We criticize China. We don't criticize Israel. We don't criticize Saudi Arabia. These violations are documented, but it doesn't lead to any sort of change in policy.
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“Maintaining the U.S. as the military hegemon on the global stage is the primary thing driving U.S. foreign policy. We are undermining the idea of human rights writ large and delegitimizing it as a concept, which is extremely alarming.”
“The Human Rights Report was legislated in the 1970s to prevent arms sales. Congress was worried about the U.S. sending weapons to these horrific human rights abusers in the context of the Cold War, and yet the Human Rights Reports have never been used to block an arms sale. There's never been a single arms sale that Congress has blocked on the basis of human rights concerns or really any concern because U.S. military power remains the primary objective.”
10-minute video
"I Was Shocked": Meet The State Dept. Official Who Quit After Report Denies Israel Blocking Gaza Aid
Democracy Now! (5/31/24)
After working at the U.S. State Department for over 20 years, Stacy Gilbert quit the Biden administration this week after a report she contributed to concluded Israel was not obstructing humanitarian assistance to Gaza. Gilbert served as a senior civil military adviser in the State Department's chief humanitarian office, which features heavily in internal policy discussions over Gaza.
Despite "abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid," the report concluded the opposite and was used by the Biden administration to justify continuing to send billions of dollars of weapons to Israel.
Gilbert says she was "shocked" to find that the report concluded Israel was not not blocking humanitarian assistance: "That is not the view of subject matter experts at the State Department, at USAID, nor among the humanitarian community. And that was known. That was absolutely known to the administration for a very long time."
Gilbert says there is a clear pattern by Israel "of arbitrarily limiting, restricting or just outright blocking assistance going in that has caused the very grave situation in Gaza."
10-minute video
“We Have Lost All Credibility”: Hala Rharrit On Quitting State Dept. & Ending U.S. Complicity In Gaza Genocide
“We continue to empower a right-wing extremist prime minister, when we should be doing is supporting civil society on both sides that are actually seeking to promote humanity for both peoples.”
Democracy Now! (10/23/24)
As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel. We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. [Note other State Department resignations above. — MT]
“We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza. Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”
22-minute video
Thank you for collecting all these testimonials of government employees who listened to their conscience and spoke out against the genocide. It's good to know that there are decent folks out there!
Courage is in short supply in the military and civil service and it’s easy to understand why. The specter of ruin has silenced many who would stand up but feel entirely alone and exposed. I’m not saying this is right, only predictable. They saw the treatment people got who defied taking the mRNA shot and how ruthless the government was prepared to be. I’m grateful there are people who stand alone or find like-minded friends and speak the truth. Julian Assange should inspire every journalist in the world to expose genocide in Gaza.