It's not really about religion, is it
BBC World News – 17 April 2011
US Ambassador Douglas Kmiec quits Malta post
The US ambassador to Malta has said he will resign after being criticised for spending too much time writing and speaking about his Catholic faith.
The US state department had said Douglas Kmiec devoted several hours a day to his unofficial writings.
Mr Kmiec, a former dean at the Catholic University of America, was appointed to head the US mission in Malta in 2009.
In a letter to US President Barack Obama, he said he would quit his job on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption.
A well-known conservative law professor and commentator, Mr Kmiec had been a key Catholic supporter of Obama.
Malta is the European Union’s closest member state to Libya, and reports say the profile of the US embassy there has been raised during the ongoing crisis in the North African country.
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The US Ambassador is a nice man by all accounts, but he strikes me as being particularly unsuited to the role of ambassador because his interests and abilities appear to lie elsewhere.
It was unfortunate for him and the United States that his ‘tour of duty’ in Malta happened to coincidence with such tremendous upheaval among our most proximate neighbours and with coalition action against Libya.
The United States, since things eased up in Malta post-Mintoff and KMB, has stopped posting career diplomats as ambassadors to Malta and has instead made a habit of using the Malta ambassadorship as a ‘reward’ for men and women who are considered to have been helpful in helping the President win office.
That is why, over the last couple of decades or so, US ambassadors to Malta have been business people and not diplomats. They were all, to a man and woman, campaign fundraisers.
Douglas Kmiec was one of Barack Obama’s ’10 most important faith leaders’, helping him win over the Roman Catholic vote – which tends to stick with the Republicans – by means of testimonials and especially his 2008 book ‘Can a Catholic support him?’
The results of Washington’s diplomatic choices for Malta have been mixed, but it never really mattered because since the end of the Cold War and Mintoff’s and KMB’s flirting with international Reds and Gaddafi, Malta hasn’t been a particularly taxing or strategic post.
But that has changed again. Turbulence in North Africa, I suspect, means the return of career diplomats to head the US mission in Malta. When Douglas Kmiec leaves in August, I rather think he will not be replaced by a campaign fundraiser or somebody who put forward testimonials for Barack Obama.
The US embassy in Malta is large and staffed by career diplomats and others with long experience in the foreign service, and while, strictly speaking, it can run perfectly well without an ambassador and has done so for longish periods, it must be terribly demoralising to have an ambassador who is a distraction – at least according to the review report – and not a motivating force.
It’s not really about religion, is it. It’s about the fact that Dr Kmiec is here to do a job and instead of doing it, he’s doing what he wants to do instead. He might have spent hours every day reading and writing about football, not religion, and the consequences would have been the same – or rather, they would have been harsher, because where religon is concerned, overseers are reluctant to clamp down or criticise lest they be misinterpreted, as has in fact happened.
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Obama’s re-election campaign for 2012 has recently started. Maybe Douglas Kmiec is needed.back in the US for that purpose.
http://mondediplo.com/2011/04/01libyawar (only one free pageview per day)
there are noises that Libya will become a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Seems a bit farfetched. BBC’s Dateline London offered a cold shower yesterday, raising the spectre of Salafists and Al Qaida being at the forefront of the Libyan uprising. The Algerian journalist offered a cogent argument that the western trio will in the end abandon the middle class that supported them to whoever wins: gaddafi or the fundies. I didn’t like her much last time she appeared on the programme but this time she pushed some compelling insights.
I’m afraid that the UK and France have the worst intelligence of the relevant constituents of libyan society. It wasn’t the first time and will definitely not be the last. Worst case scenario is France and England leaving with a bloodied nose leaving us to deal with an explosive frontier.
By us, do you mean Malta?
Malta and the region around us. Who would have thought we’d be back to the threat of terrorist acts like the 70s and early 80s? Maybe avoiding the bellicose rhetoric by the Maltese goverment is the best action.
I have to note though that the air-strikes and intervention to protect civilians were a must. Hafez Al Assad trashed a popular uprising by killing 5,000+ at the first inkling of destabilisation. His son seems to be avoiding that course of action, though I’m sure Syria is to be watched closely as Iran and Saudi have more interest in meddling around their borders.
I am impressed with the effort France is undertaking to help stabilise the Ivory Coast. They have been fighting Gaddafi on Chad’s side. I’m not trying to accuse the interventionists of being unscrupulous warmongers.
To Baxxter: you talk so much about having a well resources army. That works well for a large nation. I strongly believe we need a very well trained and very large diplomatic corps spread all around with the resources to protect our interests in the region and maybe bring change silently behind closed doors.
Our diplomatic corps – what a fancy word! – is mostly staffed by incompetent “sons/boyfriends/friends of” who’ve no idea how they came to be propelled to power and showered with perks.
I don’t exactly talk about having a well-resourced army, whatever that is. But now that you mention it, I would rather see the budget for our diplomatic clown-corps spent to raise salaries in the AFM. They deserve it, because they work without seeking publicity, unlike the suit-wearing numpters in our diplomatic corps.
I stopped believing in change, silent or not, when I was sixteen. That’s when I realised we are – well, I am – in a sea of shit and there’s nothing we can do about it.
That’s an excellent article by Serge Halimi. You should all read it. It is a prologue to what you ought to know about the unfolding charade – and I use my words carefully here.
Before you understand Halimi’s line of thought you can never understand the wider implicatons. Meanwhile, the best you can do to avoid a confused state of mind is to bear in mind that Western declarations and statements are only meant to fool you, and the ones telling you these lies are not the ones who are calling the shots.
Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy – they are all minions with better things to do should they be allowed.
If the BBC thought it fit to praise the USA Ambassador D Kmiec because “reports say the profile of the US embassy there has been raised during the ongoing crisis in the North African country” there can be no doubt that he had fulfilled his duties of a USA ambassador much better than his critics.
[Daphne – “Reports say the profile of the US embassy there has been raised during the ongoing crisis in the North African country” is not praise for the ambassador. It just means that the profile of the US embassy in Malta is higher because of the Libyan crisis – which is pretty much the same thing I wrote above. The US led the coalition action Libya, so that would have placed quite a burden on the US embassy in Malta.]
Assuming that the changing political situation in the Central Mediterranean would demand a USA ambassador with different qualities there still would be no need to employ an audit inspector to dredge up defamatory excuses for recalling the ambassador or to post him elsewhere.
[Daphne – I don’t think they were at all defamatory, Dr Saliba. I think Dr Kmiec is a decent and well-meaning man, but really not cut out to be an ambassador, not even in times when there is nothing going on, let alone with all this happening. His interview with The Times about a ‘far-fetched’ solution for the Libyan crisis was really out of order. He seems to have forgotten that he speaks for the United States and not as Douglas Kmiec.]
The Roman Catholic vote in the USA, traditionally comprising Irish and Italian blue-collar workers and now Latino immigrants, tends to lean towards the Democrats. It is only relatively recently with the hardening of pro-life issues, notably after the Terry Schiavo incident, that orthodox Roman Catholics have started to incline towards the Republicans.
South Park defined the Schiavo incident thus:
“an issue dividing those who want to do the right thing for the wrong reasons from those who want to do the wrong thing for the right reasons”.
Ah, getting South Park is the ultimate litmus test of a real education.
Exactly. Same thing when an employee gets fired for spending hours during the working day visiting porn sites on the internet. Fine, no arguing about that. But the real issue isn’t the porn sites; it’s the fact that he was not doing what he was being paid to do.
The crisis in Libya has placed a spotlight on his ambassadorship as far as the US state department is concerned, and Dr Kmiec’s embassy work has been found wanting.
I read Professor Kmiec’s resignation letter.
He’s stating that he was doing his duties as an ambassador together with other things which you here are describing as “what he wants to do”.
He’s asking President Obama to come and see for himself what he and his team are doing.
[Daphne – Actually, as I understand it he’s not quite resigning at all. He says that he has resigned with effect from August, but that means his three-year tour of duty will be almost over anyway. When you resign, it’s not you who decides when to leave, unless you are asked to stay on until a replacement is found. I thought that was a bit peculiar.]
In these last years the US Malta Mission has been constructing a state of the art embassy in Ta’ Qali (which will be officially opened next July), and is also involved in the Libyan crisis.
No need to tell you that under his ambassadorship the biggest amount of ‘illegal immigrants’ were sent to start a new life in the US.
He’s not a warmonger: ” With the fighting intensifying, it is worth exploring whether a bona fide ceasefire can be found.”
[Daphne – I guess nobody thought of that, not even his president. Come on, John. It’s not like France, Britain and the United States said to themselves ‘Oh goody, now’s our chance to spend gadzillions which we don’t have, firing rockets at Gaddafi. There’s a lot he says and does which leaves him open to the accusation that he’s out to lunch.]
“As the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, you told us always to be alert for the opening of a clenched fist. Whether those who could unclench the hatreds afoot in Libya today that wrongfully deny what virtually all desire – namely, an honest economy and participatory democracy in Libya today can be found – requires the careful deliberation for which you are respected.”
He’s also claiming that the this OIG “rebuke” is a “sting-back”.
“When I directed the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 1989, I authored an opinion confining OIG jurisdiction to that which Congress intended – the rooting out of waste, fraud and abuse, and not an evaluation of an agency’s substantive policies.”
“That opinion stung the OIG and I suspect I have just experienced a “sting-back.”
It is worth noting that Professor Kmiec had a very bad traffic accident last summer while in the US where two other passengers in the car he was in, died.
[Daphne – Yes, and it was particularly obvious that he should have resigned there and then. He was severely jet-lagged when he drove that car off the road, and he’s damned fortunate that nobody mentioned it or talked about liability. I was quite put off by the way he spoke about the disaster as though it was an inexplicable act of God rather than a very explicable human error caused by attention failure. Cars don’t drive themselves off the road. He had just flown from Malta to California and immediately back again for Guido de Marco’s funeral, which apparently he just had to attend even though he didn’t know him, then back again to southern California, all in the space of a few days. That kind of killer triple would leave a young man incapable of functioning for a few days, let alone somebody of Dr Kmiec’s age. I met a member of his staff by chance in Sicily at the time and she was thoroughly exasperated.]
It’s irresponsible to drive while jet-lagged.
Ambassador Douglas Kmiec is a God-fearing man, as described to me by one of his men at the embassy. He would have been better off heading one of the churches in the States than an embassy.
New Embassy-New Ambassador
You got that one right, Daphne. I met one of these ‘ambassadors’ working out in the gym at the old Holiday Inn. Got to know him quite well. Was appointed by Clinton back in the 90s. An East Coast fundraiser. Nice guy, a bit chunky though–guess that’s why he was working out–every day. Divided most of his time between working out and preying on ‘liberated’, separated Sliema chicks. (Bet you won’t post this) Nice to be back on the Rock.
[Daphne – I did. And I remember the one. His wife had a lot on her hands there.]
Yes, receptions at his residence were somewhat embarrassing. However, the food and drink were excellent.
At least we didn’t have this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353671/U-S-ambassador-Luxembourg-quits-year-dogged-leadership-deficiencies-personality-conflicts-dodgy-expenses.html
Pity such a gentleman is leaving – we could learn a thing or two as to how to practise our religion seriously.
Prof. Kmiec is a decent man and this tasteless internal report was not necessary. The US state department showed no class. Ironically, they exercised no diplomacy. They could have channeled their message quietly and more good would have come out of it..
Somebody in the US department had an axe to grind.
I wish the Ambassador well.
Mr Kmiec was very lacking in diplomatic technique.
Publishing his letter to Obama was to my mind quite farcicaL.
The response was quite prompt.
But I suppose he will be delighted to have got an excellent reference from our Foreign Minister Tonio Borg.
Here’s a twist to this sorry story: the Maltese government should employ him to lobby for our interests in Washington.
Star Trek main actor Sir Patrick Steward has accepted to become a patron for ‘Dignity in dying’.
Following a close friend’s agonising death Sir Patrick has been quoted as saying, ‘having had no role in my birth, I would like there to be a choice I might make about my death.’
Sir Patrick backs proposed changes to legislation for assisted deaths enabling people to make the choice of ending their lives without the fear of legal troubles to family, partners and friends.
Is this island ready to at least discuss the above following the divorce shambles on a national scale?
Quite frankly, the man was more interested in spreading the faith than living up to his ambassadorial responsibilities. He had to go and his ” resignation” is a face-saving manoeuvre.
Professor Kmiec – Mr.Impatient – was not at all lacking in diplomatic technique. Professor Kmiec evaluated his decision to leave on account of the lack of esteem towards his religion.
Totally off topic – Did you read about the voting documents fiasco?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110421/local/undelivered-voting-documents-thrown-away-or-hidden.361666
Fiasco? The postman lost the voting documents, made a report and they were found later. The electoral commission and Maltapost are doing a good job in my opinion. I prefer to have a postman rather than a policeman accompanied with two party spies on my doorstep knocking at my door and taking notes. There are more than enough checks and balances to prevent foul play in our electoral system.
My sources tell me that his ultimate aim was to become his country’s ambassador to the Holy See. He was hoping to use Malta as his launching pad. Methinks there is more to his resignation than meets the eye !
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110421/local/Lawyer-floored.361593 I would have loved to be there!
Letter in the Times today, Saturday , regarding Professor Kmiec is really disgusting and shameful. I really hope that this scribbler has not got the support he thinks he has.