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I remember when, as an American diplomat, I realized that my White House was no longer credible. We may be at the same point in the Trump presidency
My moment was in 2006, in Hong Kong, where I was assigned to the US consulate.
America was torturing people. US troops invaded Iraq under a blanket of lies. And America opened a prison at Guantanamo
It is here that the United States detained Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old Canadian who seized the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002 and that would have killed an American soldier. Upon learning that the teenager had been tortured, Canadians wanted him to be transferred to their care for his own safety and, in 2006, they ordered their diplomats to apply to all positions. American diplomats.
I had never heard of Khadr before. Canadians how he had been treated, I realized that America had no more credibility when, among other things, she criticized Saddam Hussein for hurting his own people and used this behavior as a secondary justification for the Iraqi invasion. Hong Kong, we knew that none of us would release Omar Khadr, but Canadians did their job and I did mine.
(Khadr was returned to Canada in 2012 and released to Canada in 2015.)
I hear of the former col leagues of diplomacy and intelligence that Helsinki may have been a similar moment, requiring a resolution of some kind to maintain credibility in the international interactions of America.
As a diplomat, you represent your own complicated country, and all parties understand it. But on the part of the secretary of state, credibility is a crucial tool for getting things done.
Can you trust, not only personally, but convey exactly what Washington means to his allies, his friends and those he negotiates against
If you explain an American policy today , and that the other party is acting on it only to find the president tweeting something else, so close that is your relationship with your counterparts, you become a non-entity
I know these foreign diplomats read the same media as me: a New York Times columnist calling Mr. Trump a traitor, an article in the New York magazine speculating about Mr. Putin was his intelligence agent, a call from a former CIA after what at best can be called a weird performance by Mr. Trump in Helsinki, how can American diplomats assure their counterparts that they know who is in charge, what they claim to be US policy is- what the politics of the allies, and in a way, the president of the United States is not more sympathetic to an opponent than to his allies?
No American diplomat today can answer these questions. So it's no surprise that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had little to say in Helsinki
The global needs of the United States can not wait for a Trump presidency and they do not seem capable to wait for the ongoing investigation process. US intelligence officials began to look at "Russiagate" two years ago, with little concrete action taken by the Obama administration
The process has continued on the side of intelligence without being disturbed, as well as by new efforts of the Congress. Robert Mueller
Multiple sons do not seem animated by a sense of crisis, and that's wrong
The message from Helsinki is that it's time for Washington investigators to present evidence that Mr. Trump or his close associates actively worked with the Russian government, and thus remain indebted to him, or to clarify that this is not the case.
Now is the time to put away the pursuers They will never see inside a courtroom, those that relate to financial crimes unrelated to the campaign, and a clumsy series of perjury
After Helsinki, we – the American diplomats, his allies, his people – must know who runs the United States
The author is a veteran of the State Department 24 years old.
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