January 03, 2011
Henry Kissinger
“I’ve always acted alone,” Kissinger once told Oriana Fallaci. “Americans admire the cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, the cowboy entering a village or city alone on his horse. He acts, that’s all: aiming at the right spot at the right time.”
The “right spots” included Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Iraqi Kurdistan, Chile, and Argentina. As chairman in the early 1980s of the Commission on Central America, Kissinger discovered new “right spots” such as Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras. Total dead and maimed: impossible to be sure. Laotian peasants are still being killed by American bombs planted during Kissinger’s watch.
Kissinger receives grudging admiration in otherwise critical quarters for his realpolitik, the tough-guy stance for American interests over humanitarian nonsense. Yet in real terms, his politics don”t stand up. Look at the date of the “gas chamber” conversation at the White House: March 1, 1973. The previous September, following the PLO attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Rogers wanted to show American sympathy with Israel. George Washington University’s National Security Archive has published a transcript of the discussion:
Nixon: What does Rogers think we should do?
Kissinger: Well, Rogers thinks we should declare a national day of mourning. I”m against even that. It’s not our day of mourning, Mr. President. It’s easy enough now to do a number of grandstanding”
Nixon: [Unclear] But I don”t think that works.
Kissinger: And also, God, I am Jewish. I”ve had 13 members of my family killed. So I can”t be insensitive to this. But I think you have to think also of the anti-Semitic woes in this country. If we let our policy be run by the Jewish community”
Nixon: By the radical Jewish community”
Kissinger: By the radical Jewish community…
Kissinger’s realpolitik was wrong again. Rogers had been pursuing a peace plan between Israel and the Arab states that meant discussing Israeli withdrawal from the territories it conquered in June 1967. Kissinger was opposed to a comprehensive settlement, preferring a “step by step” approach he employed to ensure the steps led nowhere. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat sent regular messages to the Nixon White House offering to trade, as he eventually did, land for peace and recognition of Israel. Kissinger flatly said no again and again. Instead, he awarded additional advanced jets to Israel to deter Sadat. His assessment was that Egypt would not dare attack Israel, to which he added his assurance that the Arabs would not impose an oil embargo on the United States.
Sadat invaded the Sinai on October 6, 1973, and the Arab oil states stopped selling oil to the West. An 0-for-2 batting average does not realpolitik make.
Indict him for his crimes against humanity or send him now into “the bleak, dark night” of political oblivion.
