Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon

In a recent New York Times book review, Henry Kissinger says that according to Dean Acheson, “leaving high office is like the end of a great love affair—a void left by the disappearance of heightened sensibilities and focused concerns.”

Dr. K. should know. He is famous for saying that “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” He was a swinger in his younger days and knew quite a few beauties in his time. He then married the very graceful and extremely supportive Nancy and has lived happily ever after. I am a great fan of his and consider him a modern Machiavelli—meant in the best possible way.

In the aforementioned review of a George F. Kennan biography—Kennan was a giant among giants of the immediate postwar period who predicted the Soviet Union’s implosion forty years before it happened—Kissinger gives generous credit to other foreign secretaries, especially the two great ones: Dean Acheson under Truman and John Foster Dulles under Eisenhower. Acheson helped devise the Marshall Plan. He created NATO and brought West Germany into the fold. John Foster Dulles strengthened the alliance through the Baghdad Pact (Middle East) and SEATO (Southeast Asia), the latter of which bottled up the then-belligerent Soviets without firing a shot.

Kissinger was fortunate to serve an intelligent president such as Nixon. I believe the much-maligned Nixon was the greatest postwar president, with his inroads to China and the Soviets eventually leading to the latter’s collapse. In Kissinger, Nixon found the greatest and most learned adviser, something for which the Beltway morons and leftist media will never forgive Dr. Henry. What I have never understood was the reasoning behind their hate. What was Hank supposed to do? Sabotage Uncle Sam because old bag Katharine Graham didn’t like the president and preferred the company of a tart such as Pamela Harriman?

Think of today’s bunch—starting with Clinton and W.—and really, really weep. Clinton the draft-dodger bombed Serbia for 73 days and nights, while Bush and Cheney, who between them took more draft deferments than I’ve known hookers in my life, began the bloodiest of wars for absolutely no reason except to make Likud sleep better at night. One trillion dollars later and millions of refugees, plus dead and wounded in the hundreds of thousands, these two clowns are not only walking around free, they even find publishers to justify their monstrous acts against humanity. Go figure, as they used to say in Piraeus. Kissinger said that wars are “fought because the prospect of accommodation seemed more onerous than the consequences of defeat.” The Wolfowitzes and their ilk knew this, and they managed to convince the idiotic Dubya that Saddam had the bomb and was ready to use it. And it is exactly what is happening where Tehran is concerned. The Likudists are on the march again and need dumb Uncle Sam to bomb Iran.