Antidemocratic?
IN “JOHN KERRY, REACTIONARY” (July 19), Tom Donnelly and Vance Serchuk write: “Richard Kerry spent much of his professional life as a foreign service officer, and seems to have imbibed the antidemocratic habits of that trade.”
Where do Donnelly and Serchuk get the idea that the foreign service trade is inherently “antidemocratic”? Are the foreign service officers currently implementing President Bush’s policies in Kabul and Baghdad antidemocratic? What about the foreign service officers who fought for the release of political prisoners behind the Iron Curtain during the twilight days of the Cold War? (Indeed, many officers who told the truth about Stalin’s tyranny during the 1930s did so at great professional risk.)
In 1979-81, American foreign service officers were among those held hostage for 444 days in Iran. During the following two decades, foreign service workers were murdered by Islamic terrorists in, among other places, Beirut, Kenya, and Tanzania. Were all these officials antidemocratic?
Thousands of working-level foreign service officers are promoting and implementing America’s agenda every day on every continent around the world. They often perform their duties under incredibly trying circumstances. Sometimes they even pay the ultimate price, and their names are carved into a wall at the State Department that no one but their families, colleagues, and C-SPAN ever visit.
For Donnelly and Serchuk to so casually and thoughtlessly smear these patriotic Americans as “antidemocratic” is beneath contempt.
Kerem Bilge
Alexandria, VA
Spies Like Us
REUEL MARC GERECHT’S diagnosis of the CIA’s institutional ailments (“The Sorry State of the CIA,” July 19) is right on the mark. His article exhaustively details the causes of our recent intelligence failures, and also correctly posits the need for a change in the bureaucratic culture at Langley.
But I was disappointed that Gerecht didn’t offer any specific policy prescriptions for reforming the agency. I would ask him: What, exactly, should the next CIA director do in the first 36 months of his tenure?
If Gerecht writes a follow-up piece answering that question, there is at least one reader eagerly looking forward to it.
Pedro N. Taborga
Great Falls, VA
REUEL MARC GERECHT’S article on the CIA reminded me of a book I read some 30 years ago, called The Game of the Foxes. The author, Ladislas Farago, wrote about pre-World War II intelligence organizations in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. He noted that prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States did not have a spy agency. Our belief regarding espionage, in the famous phrase attributed to Secretary of State Stimson, was that “gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail.”
After the war, in order to counter the Soviet challenge, we established the CIA. But our instinctive aversion to spy agencies endured. Indeed, over the years we put up a communications barrier between the FBI and the CIA, to prevent the federal government from spying on Americans. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Patriot Act breached this barrier, although many prominent Democrats are now calling for that legislation to be scaled back, if not outright repealed.
Americans know that foreign espionage is often a necessary evil. But it is also an activity with which we would rather not be too closely connected. Spying will always carry with it the implicit connotation of dirty dealing and scheming. That we don’t always spy as well as other countries is testament, in large part, to our undying belief in individual liberty, justice, and truth.
Robert L. Wichterman
Lancaster, PA
Why Bush is Losing
THE ARTICLE BY Jeffrey Bell and Frank Cannon, “Why Bush is Losing” (July 19), made several excellent points. What Bell and Cannon should have added, however, is that Bush is running a terribly unimaginative campaign. The president has missed opportunity after opportunity to make points that would help his candidacy.
Three issues in particular stand out. Bush has failed to fight for school vouchers, which are overwhelmingly supported by inner-city parents. (This would have given him a better chance of siphoning off some African-American votes from Kerry.) He has yet to truly use the bully pulpit to fight for any of his judicial nominees. And, to date, he has not vetoed any of the pork-filled appropriations bills that have crossed his desk.
Bush may be genuinely trying to “change the tone” in Washington, but by doing so he’s needlessly hurting his chances for reelection.
John A. DeGroat
Landenberg, PA
