Departing Ambassador to Panama: Why I could no longer serve this president

[Tanuki]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/why-i-could-no-longer-serve-this-president/2018/03/08/f444f086-225c-11e8-86f6-54bfff693d2b_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.a74fdb624ccf&__twitter_impression=true

"Shortly after the Charlottesville riots last August, I made the private decision to step down as President Trump’s personal representative and ambassador to the government of Panama. The president’s failure to condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who provoked the violence made me realize that my values were not his values. I never meant for my decision to resign to be a public political statement. Sadly, it became one.
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I resigned because the traditional core values of the United States, as manifested in the president’s National Security Strategy and his foreign policies, have been warped and betrayed. I could no longer represent him personally and remain faithful to my beliefs about what makes America truly great.

The amateurish promulgation of a country-specific travel ban, the push to build a “big, beautiful wall” and to expel the “dreamers” beyond it, the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the belligerent renegotiating of the North American Free Trade Agreement and counterproductive steel and aluminum tariffs are all making the United States weaker and less prosperous. America is undoubtedly less welcome in the world today, as the president pursues a unilateral and isolationist path.
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But immigration is never a binary proposition. Moreover, policy options based on fear and hashtags will only offer us a false dichotomy. And the immigration issue cannot be debated rationally when the president routinely encourages division and disparages today’s migrants with the same hateful language deployed a century ago to excoriate my Irish and Italian ancestors.

So, what does a private citizen do in the face of such wrenching polarization? I plan to speak to Americans and explore our nation’s fears and perceptions about the migration challenges we face. My goal is to create the conditions for respectful and nonconfrontational dialogue between supporters of the president’s immigration policy and the full panoply of migrants — from dreamers to day laborers, engineers to chambermaids, small business owners, artists and teachers.

We need to understand each other better. As someone who is fully and proudly American, and yet by life experience fully bilingual and bicultural, I will now do my best to help. Where the president seeks to build a wall, I seek to build a bridge. I now return to the United States of e pluribus unum. I am confident that we can heal the polarization that afflicts us — one conversation at a time.
(John D. Feeley, who retired this week as a U.S. diplomat, will soon be working with Univision and the Fusion Media Group on immigration-themed content.)
More at link

[MyOwnPeace]

1. They're glad he's gone.............

There's no room in this administration for a person with integrity.................