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Opinion: Why I’m resigning from the State Department | CNN

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/27/opinions/gaza-israel-resigning-state-department-sheline/index.html

I’m unable to serve an administration that enables the atrocities in Gaza, so I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State, writes Annelle Sheline.

Opinion: Why I’m resigning from the State Department | CNN

One more disillusioned by the lies.

Whatever credibility the United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished since the war began. Members of civil society have refused to respond to my efforts to contact them. Our office seeks to support journalists in the Middle East; yet when asked by NGOs if the US can help when Palestinian journalists are detained or killed in Gaza, I was disappointed that my government didn’t do more to protect them. Ninety Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed in the last five months, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That is the most recorded in any single conflict since the CPJ started collecting data in 1992.

10 comments

darkcalling

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You know what’s interesting about this? We’ve heard of numerous agents of government who feel this is a genocide in Gaza who have resigned, some publicly.

Yet where are the high ranking members of the press (supposedly people concerned with truth to power though we Marxists know better) with the same conscious who resign because their organizations are carrying water, reporting Zionist propaganda, hiding the genocide and being one-sided? Nowhere to be seen. Yet again I say the western press is criminal scum. More shamelessly so than even the state department.

DamarcusArt

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If a high ranking government official resigns, they probably have a job in the private sector already lined up, a disgraced journalist (which includes if they resign out of disgust for their profession) will struggle to find work in their field, and probably anywhere. The members of government who do this aren't risking anything by doing this. This is an empty token gesture.

darkcalling

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True. But a man did burn himself alive. Look I'm not saying these government types are great people now for doing this I just think it's telling that it happens here and not there. Because I have to be honest at least some of these people resigning 100% believe it. This isn't all a CIA op, these are dyed in the wool liberal believers who have a crack in their propaganda armor and are genuinely making what they perceive as a moral decision within the confines of their liberal ideology.

This is genocide we're talking about and these people have been enabling it and all other forms of monstrosity. Saving Jews in WW2 occupied Europe could mean the possibility of death or imprisonment, so I don't really care about the excuse about their job, they can get a job at Starbucks or I don't know figure something out. Western press are scum in my mind and this only further illustrates it.

If government officials can do these token gestures and if a man can burn himself alive where then are the good ones? They don't exist is the simplest answer and I'm tired of excuses. Fuck them. Fuck their career in propaganda servitude to the bourgeoisie and imperialist war machine. I don't care. They cloak themselves in lofty platitudes, they claim impartiality and a desire for truth and justice.

I'm sure high ranking Nazi propagandists would have been in trouble for job prospects too if they'd spoken out yet we don't allow them off the hook so it's amazing to me how many people want to offer excuses for this awful class, the propagandist class.

We hold the NYT to account for their brushing off the persecution of Jews, the papers of the day downplaying the holocaust as a Soviet myth, yet we see the same kind of denial. The same, in fact greater guilt, they didn't have tik-tok, they didn't have access to real videos of the suffering in an instant from their bedroom. Their guilt is far greater and deeper than that of the WW2 era media.

DamarcusArt

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I'm really not sure what you mean. I think these people, while they do consider their actions "moral" aren't making a huge risk in quitting their job, which makes the decision much easier for them. It's hard to say something is a genuinely "moral" decision when it doesn't actually put them in any danger or cause any issues to them, if it is a decision that ultimately just lets them keep coasting along with their comfortable life it isn't really a moral decision, it's a PR move. If they do actually put themselves at risk, they are actually willing to sacrifice their own comforts for others, they actually want to help others, then I would be comfortable calling it a proper moral decision.

But I'm not at all going to bat for western journalists, I agree with you completely on them. They care far more about their job security than they do actually making any sort of change in the world. They will gladly cheer on a genocide and try to trick the public into cheering it on too. They care more about money and their "career" than they do about human life. They're despicable ghouls. Or not even ghouls, they're foul maggots feasting on the scraps the ghouls leave behind.

Sorry if that wasn't clear in my earlier comment.

davel

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Besides the ones who are members of the Council on Foreign Relations, you mean? Probably trying to avoid never getting work again, like Phil Donahue and Chris Hedges.

Shrike502

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Really, so that was the line? Not stomping Yugoslavia into the ground? Not Iraq and Afghanistan? Not Korea and Vietnam? Not Somalia, Syria, Ukraine?

OK, cool.

United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished

Have fun clinging to the rest of your delusions, pal.

NikkiB

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I feel you're being extremely uncharitable to this person who has likely suffered enormous and lasting consequences for her actions or is about to. At the very least, she has stepped away from her likely substantial and reliable income and has no chance of being employed in a similar capacity. That is no small thing. Think about the effect this could have on the uninformed or undecided.

AdlachGyfiawn

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It's an objectively good thing they've done, but it's hard not to be frustrated when liberals treat "the USA has a hostile foreign policy" as some sort of revelation when we've been saying it for a hundred years.

LarkinDePark

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Not nearly enough of these.

MarxMadness

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This is a step in the right direction for this person, and losing people usually makes an organization's work harder for those who remain. We want to support both of those things even if it's also fair to ask questions like "what took so long?" or "why aren't you doing more?" One might even call it critical support.