Brady
A long, stirring and well-deserved tribute by Digby co-blogger tristero to Brady Kiesling, author of Diplomacy Lessons:realism for an unloved superpower
Heroes are always a rare thing. But one of the greatest of our time surely is John Brady Kiesling, the career diplomat in Greece who dramatically resigned in 2003 rather than continue to support the Bush/Iraq war.
On occasion, both digby and tristero let loose with a brilliant essay on the American political climate. This is one of them. Tristero's central point is that something very real has changed in our political life.
Given both his pragmatic approach to diplomacy and the overall tenor of his writing, Kiesling is the kind of person who, at one point, would probably have been labelled a conservative. Quiet, principled, uninterested in revolutionary change, loyal to his country, aware of America's foibles, but never seriously questioning its core ideas. I used to meet people like him, registered Republicans, people who I strongly disagreed with on many, many issues but whose basic decency and integrity was simply beyond question. That was a very long time ago.