John Brown

U.S. diplomat John Brown submitted his resignation on March 10, 2003, "in protest of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq." 

Brown's decision-making process commenced "in September 2002, when Bush chief of staff Andrew Card uttered the infamous words, 'you don't introduce new products in the summer.' 'That was a defining moment,'" Brown says, "'because I realized that these are parochial people. They're selling us a war, selling us a product for domestic purposes so W. can be Mr. Commander-in-Chief and on that we can win congressional elections,' Brown says. 'And that's when I said it stinks.' The final straw came on March 6, when Bush, as Brown later wrote in the Foreign Service Journal, 'speaking to a docile media in a faux-imperial White House setting, red carpet and all,' failed to explain why the United States needed to attack Iraq now. That night, inspired by John Brady Kiesling's impassioned and much-reprinted Feb. 27 letter of resignation, he began drafting his own and submitted it on March 10. 'At the time I was in the United States,' Brown says, 'but I couldn't see myself abroad defending this thing. I was in the Balkans from '95 to '98 and I was the press guy at the American embassy in Belgrade. I had reservations about our policy, but still, we were trying to stop a war. So I could go to bed and sleep. I have to thank Brady Kiesling for this,' Brown says, 'because I had never thought about the statement I could make until I saw his letter.'"

"John Brown is writing and teaching at Georgetown University." 

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