A Tribute To Honesty

Most of We the People like to think honesty is a good thing.  Heck, we may even try to be honest and open in our interpersonal dealings.  Sure, we are jaundiced--with good reason--with respect to the honesty of politicians, advertisers, journalists, and preachers of the frothing mouth persuasion.  In some areas we are even given to joking about the amount of honesty on the part of practitioners.

There is an old saw regarding diplomacy, "A diplomat is an honest person sent to a foreign country to lie on behalf of his own."  This mordant bit of semi-wit is undeserved.  More it is flat out wrong.

Two aspects of a country's foreign relations establishment depend upon blunt candor and utter honesty.  These are diplomacy and intelligence.  While it may be necessary to lie to outsiders in pursuit of the diplomat's or intelligence officer's mission, both must be fully and candidly frank and honest in their reporting from the field.  There is no room for fudging.  No tolerance for heaping sweeteners on underlying sour realities.  The diplomat must tell it like it is regardless of the hopes or fears of the denizens topside.  Any shading, no matter how slight, in deference to what the folks upchannel might want to read is a sin against the national interest.

The WikiLeaks cables demonstrate that our representatives are doing their job correctly.  The reports and accompanying assessments are bluntly honest.  We the People are, therefore, being well served.  The honesty, candor, and quality of the assessments are a very far cry from the sort of diplomatic traffic which passed from overseas to Foggy Bottom thirty and more years ago.  And, that is a very good thing for our country.

Because journalists and even the academic experts quoted in the MSM are apparently unacquainted with history, there has been an unfortunate silence regarding just how superior the leaked documents are in honesty, bluntness, and incisive analysis when compared with the tripe and pablum passing for diplomatic cables during the long dark years following the Republican attacks on the State Department and its personnel during the waning days of the Truman administration.

The shrill cries of "Communist!  Fellow traveler!  Commie dupe!" which echoed in the halls of Congress and through the media of the day served to totally emasculate American diplomats.  Diplomats high and low, accredited to countries great and small, were afraid to put the words of their interlocutors down on paper unless those words were precisely what the most ardent anti-communist in Congress or the press wanted to read.  Likewise, our Foreign Service personnel were scared to death to write an assessment which would not pass muster with the most rabid anti-communist crusaders.

The fear of being hailed before some Senate committee and accused of being the person who "lost" some country or another to the Global Communist Menace assured that the decision makers inside the Beltway--even in the Oval--flew blind, deprived of the necessary eyes on the ground and the counsel of situationally aware professionals.

As a result, American foreign policy for thirty years consisted of aligning the US with each and every authoritarian regime which delivered short term order.  As long as the local heavy promised to oppose Communism in all its many guises and kept a sufficiently strong lid on local discontent, one administration after another regardless of party pretended our "ally" was a staunch bastion of long term stability as well as free enterprise and, well, maybe, some sort of democratic appearances.

This approach--and all the many blunders which came with it--was not so much a policy as it was the default forced upon presidents and secretaries of state by sheer ignorance.  That ignorance resulted from the unwillingness of Foreign Service personnel to be honest, blunt, and candid.  The unwillingness of diplomats to be honest was the direct and completely predictable consequence of the unjustified and quite lethal attacks levied against their predecessors by totally irresponsible and self-seeking politicians riding the great wave of fear--fear of Communism.

The tree of ignorance bore us many poisoned fruits.  In some cases--think Iran--the toxin of these fruit continues to infect the world.  The Iranian object lesson by itself is proof positive of the crucial nature of honest reporting and frank assessments even when such is not welcomed in the rarefied air inside the Beltway.

Fortunately for our country and its interests, the professionals at State left the doldrums of cowardice some years ago as is illustrated convincingly in the WikiLeaks revelations.  Our people abroad are telling it like it is and offering assessments which are trenchant, well founded, and highly useful.  When Secretary of State Clinton argued the cables showed "diplomats doing the work of diplomacy," she spoke a truth of the highest order.

The worst impact of the data dump by Mr Assange's outfit is in its probable chilling effect upon both American diplomats and their foreign interlocutors.  For good and sufficient reason--the fear of future leaks--neither will be as willing to speak or write forthrightly.  While the impact may not be as devastating or long lasting as after the Republican scorched earth campaign of the McCarthy Era of Great Fear, any lowering of the candor quotient will harm our national interests.

The real work of diplomats is no more glitzy or glamorous than is the quotidian tasks of spooks.  It consists of talking to people and reading things.  It requires thinking.  Analysis.  Finally, it demands an ability to write and speak with cogency and effect.  Most of all, the work of diplomats needs intellectual and moral courage.

That is, the diplomat in all times and places must be able to see things as they actually are and not as they might be hoped or feared to be.  Then, the diplomat has to relay the results up the chain of command without any thought as to its impact on one's personal career let alone the opinions of those in Congress or the views of those who constitute the vast beast, the media.

Julian Assange as well as his media enablers at the NYT and other outlets and his source(s) such as the emotional and moral cripple Bradley Manning have conspired to impair the willingness and ability of our diplomatic personnel to do the job we pay them to do.  A job, the cables show clearly, that all hands have been doing with great skill and dedication.