"GLOBAL ISSUES, LEADERSHIP CHOICES":

What do you do when you are asked to serve a government you disagree with?  Jon Alterman from the Center for Strategic & International Studies offers his perspective:

"For most in Washington, the current political changes are disorienting. The Obama administration incorporated veterans of previous administrations and fit well within the consensus of elite policy doctrine. The Bush administration did too, and so did the Clinton administration. There were differences but few big surprises. ... Donald Trump was an unlikely revolutionary, a self-proclaimed billionaire insider who played the elite game and now promised to blow it all up on the public’s behalf. His proud (and loud) parochialism has remained at the core of his appeal. He disdained the painstaking nuance of technocrats, and he said he knew better than them.

And now the United States has joined the ranks of countries with a cosmopolitan elite distrusted by the political leadership. Also among the ranks are countries in the Middle East. There, like here, leaders cozy up to parochial conservatives while keeping cosmopolitan liberal voices—inside the government and outside—at arm’s length. We have seen it many times. Consider Iran, which has a cadre of government employees that seek to soothe tensions with the outside world while other employees try to stoke them. Consider Saudi Arabia, whose diplomats sometimes live extremely liberal lives outside the Kingdom (and even within it) while defending a starkly orthodox social order to the rest of the world. Israel has had a cadre of diplomats who, for much of the last 40 years, have been considerably more liberal than the government that they represent. ... Libya had an atrocious government under Muammar el-Qaddafi, but it had men and women of good will and of conscience who quietly sought to prepare for a post-Qaddafi future. Yemen’s government was often rapacious under Ali Abdullah Saleh, but conscientious civil servants worked with foreign governments and international organizations to build human capacity and help lead the country out of poverty. Syria had its share of thuggish diplomats before the civil war broke out, but it had decent men and women, too. One Syrian ambassador I met in Europe insisted on showing respect to his fellow citizens, seeing them as equals and not as subjects. Work areas in the embassy were decorated with Arabic signs reminding employees of their responsibility to the public they served, and he himself operated with modesty and efficiency.   Why did these men and women stay? ...

Many of them saw themselves as serving their country, not serving their politicians. They felt both an affinity and a loyalty to their country that transcended whoever had political power. As I have talked with them through the years, many hope to outlive their governments, and to see their countries emerge even stronger. ...

Patriotism is to a country, not to any single political outcome. It is bigger than any leader, and it outlives any leader. However much one distrusts a political leader, opportunities arise to move history in a constructive direction. It’s a patriot’s job to do that, in some cases not because of the political leadership but despite it."

https://www.csis.org/analysis/middle-east-notes-and-comment-politics-and-patriotism