The resignation of State Department official Mike Casey over the U.S. policy towards Gaza happened in July but, although he reports that he has tried to get his story out in the mainstream media, it has taken this long to get covered. He gave an interview to The Guardian, which was published on Dec. 18, and to Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” on Dec. 26.
Casey is an Iraq War veteran who came to the State Department with the measured optimism of a career diplomat who had two years of Arabic training. He looked ahead to the Administration of Joe Biden as a potential “chance to make a difference,” reported The Guardian. He’d eventually work his way up the ranks to become the State Department’s deputy political counselor on Gaza.
What he didn’t anticipate, The Guardian says, was becoming a key witness to what he describes as a systematic failure of U.S. foreign policy. “The more informed you become on this issue, you can’t avoid realizing how bad it is,” Casey told The Guardian.
Casey reflected on how, as one of only two people in the entire U.S. government explicitly focused on Gaza, he became an unwilling chronicler of a humanitarian catastrophe. “I got so tired of writing about dead kids,” he said. “Just constantly having to prove to Washington that these children actually died and then watching nothing happen.”
