MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Henry Kissinger’s “mad and illegal” bombing: What you need to know about his real history — and why the Sanders/Clinton exchange matters
By A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 02/12/2016 - 9:26pm |Vote Hillary, get Henry. That seemed to be the message Hillary Clinton wants to send; she’s spoken highly of Kissinger in her last two debates with Bernie Sanders. Last night, Sanders fired back at Clinton for seeking foreign-policy wisdom from the Vietnam-era secretary of state.
URL:
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/12/henry_kissingers_mad_and_illegal_bombing_what_you_need_to_know_about_his_real_history_and_why_the_sandersclinton_exchange_matters/?source=newsletter
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Comments
Did anyone else think this was an important part f the debate? Just wondering.
by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 02/12/2016 - 9:26pm
I did. So did the largest peace organization in the country - Peace Action - which has endorsed Sanders. You can listen to my interview of Executive Director Jon Rainwater of Peace Action West about the endorsement here. For more reading on this topic, Rainwater recommended Lawrence Korb's Politico article published yesterday.
by HSG on Fri, 02/12/2016 - 9:34pm
Thanks Hal. I am pretty hit and miss on anything internet right now. I am traveling and right now in Esteli Nicaragua. Sometimes no connection, sometimes intermittent power. Luck had the electricity come on just into the debate last night and go off just after it ended. Sounds worse than it is maybe, for the most part the country seems to have made tremendous progress since the Sandinista revolution. Tomorrow is a travel day but I am sure I will get to those reads soon and I hope others do too.
by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 02/12/2016 - 10:06pm
I have edited the headline summary to kill the link that was embedded within it because it led to a uselessly short mention of the subject. The title link is the one worth investing a few minutes in for those who think policies leading to millions of deaths should be an issue in choosing our CiC.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 6:15am
Deleted double post.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 6:17am
The regard which Clinton has for Kissinger certainly validates the view of her as an "establishment" candidate in regards to foreign policy. Just as Kerry is an agent of the "establishment" when he praises the Henry:
I am glad to see the Sanders campaign remind us of all the great work HK did stepping over bodies in the name of national security. On the hand, I would like to hear Sanders answer Clinton's challenge to name who he listens to on foreign policy issues.
by moat on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 7:26pm
Very fair point MOAT. Sanders does need to flesh out his foreign policy theory/strategy somewhat. Naming several putative advisors would be a good step. Here are people I'd recommend: Ramsey Clark, Joseph Wilson, Morton Halperin, Colin Powell, Ret. Army Colonel Ann Wright (whom I had the good fortune to hear speak), Scott Ritter, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Richard Clarke, and Brent Scowcroft. It's important for Sanders to say he doesn't agree with all of these people on every issue but they have a long and distinguished record of public service and most were right more often than not.
by HSG on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 7:47pm
Your list is interesting and I can see a number of ways that those people could counter positions Clinton takes (or might take if elected).
On the other hand, the list is composed of "establishment" players too. If you are looking for a sharp departure to the American Exceptionalist point of view, the list comprises critics of how that view was acted upon, not a rejection of the idea itself.
I am comfortable with the idea that an official can agree with some part of what somebody has done without owning the rest. If you give that latitude to Sanders, how is that different from Clinton claiming the same right to do the same with her list?
Let me be clear about my point of view. I don't like Clinton because I figure she will be business as usual in the foreign policy department. But the buzz that she will bring about ww3 leaves me unimpressed because the narrative invokes and revokes the inertia of the past as needed to blacken her name.
So, there is room at the top. But as long as Sanders just sticks to demonizing the past without putting forth a different process, it is rhetoric without substance.
by moat on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 8:38pm
Kissinger's actions in Chile, overthrowing a democratically-elected President and installing a murderous dictator, and in Cambodia, as detailed by Sanders, were so destructive and so far beyond the pale of justifiable foreign policy that they render Kissinger an unacceptable advisor.
Regarding my list, I probably leaned too heavily on "establishment" figures. How about we add Edward Snowden?
by HSG on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 8:59pm
Your list is neither here nor there. The question is for Sanders to definitively answer.
by barefooted on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 9:24pm
Of course you're right. I put out these names to show there are many very qualified honorable people with whom Sanders could consult.
by HSG on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 9:28pm
Strike Colin Powell from that list first thing and add Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 02/13/2016 - 9:52pm
Colin fucking Powell? He's the establishment chump who let himself be used delivering the lies at the UN to falsely justify us going to war. Plus he covered up My Lai atrocities for years.
As usual, Hal, your contradictions are amazing.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 6:14am
Pretty strong reaction to Powell [who can at least claim for the most part that he was following orders like a good soldier, though that is not said to excuse him ] being on Hal's list but so far no reaction at all to Clinton, who has been in a position to make or otherwise push for murderous policies seeking advice and counsel about those policies from Kissinger, a known sociopathic, psychopathic, morally corrupt, no good, scumbag, warmongering lunatic, with a track record that proves beyond doubt every name and more that I just called him. And yeah, Kissinger is a shit eating prick bastard that belongs in hell, too. How anyone's opinion can differ is completely beyond my understanding.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 7:26am
It's the hypocrisy, Lulu - I understand both Kissinger and Powell are on the esteemed establishment list. It's when Hal still can't forgive Hillary for voting *primarily* for inspections and was lied to about the real intent, but he wants to ask advice from one of the chief warmongering liars in 2003. Hawk, spit, get away - I think I need a shower after all this faux sanctimony.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 8:02am
Hypocrisy is a stronger word than I would use, unless maybe I was pissed, but it is the one which has leapt to mind about a thousand times when reading here at Dag an excuse or an apology or some kind of justification for every single criticism that has been leveled at Hillary even though the same ones leveled at any Republican would seem obviously worth stating and would be considered by some as sufficient reason to vote against them. Not that every person covers and disputes all criticisms of Hillary but the ven overlap does.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 9:20am
It's hard to see complaining about establishment and not including Colin Powells Iraq adventures. What am I missing?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 11:58am
While I have no doubt that there is a circle of hell being remodeled to accommodate the impending arrival of Henry Kissinger, his intellectual legacy is unfortunately still germane to the formation of policy. That legacy involves contradictions in his advocacy of "realpolitik" versus the "idealism" involved with the projection of national influence. Back in the day, HK was hated by the GH Bush crowd for his talk of balance of power. HK has since revised his thinking so much that it suspiciously looks like the GW Bush doctrine with a few caveats. Gilbert Doctorow has written a good description of the shift from the Russian perspective.
Apart from whatever guilt may be transmitted through association with Kissinger, his legacy is not self consistent enough to shed light on the thinking of his admirers.
I would like to expand on this point as a measure of the opacity of our national discourse on foreign policy but I just got all these angry text messages from Christopher Hitchens and he isn't the kind of guy you keep waiting.
by moat on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 3:08pm
Yeah, well Chris has a legacy that's not "self-consistent enough" as well - though Salon gives a try - seems he just got bored with the left. Not sure I blame him, but can't accept his career change.
Kissinger for me largely proves that being a very smart man doesn't go very far ultimately. Aside from a fairly glib pronouncement of realpolitik and a lot of yucky seat-of-the-pants backroom agreements in Vietnam, Indonesia and wherever, what's the real plan, Stan? Apparently not much at all. But he is on the checklists of elder statesman, so what's an aspiring 68-ish debutante to do? Even here Hitchens' comport falls apart - if he & Henry meet in Iraq, is Henry still a war criminal, or did Chris find reconciliation? or neither, one would hope.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 3:53pm
Hitchens was a brilliantly witty and sarcastic debater. Some of his comments were so biting, devastating, and funny at the same time that he destroyed his opponents. It made him a good debater on the atheist circuit. But he wasn't always consistent. He pretty much advocated the same policies against fundamentalist Muslims that Kissinger used against some South East Asian and South American countries. But then isn't a foolish consistency the hobgoblin of little minds?
by ocean-kat on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 4:25pm
Yeah, that excellent debate technique doesn't always get to the real nib re: is it a good idea. Are there any big minds left, or are we always trifling with little self-serving details?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 4:42pm
Debates are useful to see a clash of ideas or to judge how quick the participants are at thinking on their feet. But to truly understand a subject in all it's complexity and nuance a person still has to read.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 5:59pm
I take your point regarding Hitchens' lack of self consistency but I wouldn't put that in the balance regarding his charge that Kissinger is a war criminal. Hitchens may have abandoned the "Left" but he never was a noninterventionist for its own sake. He excoriated Bill Clinton for not intervening in Rwanda and Sarajevo.
As a self appointed guardian of all things Orwell, Hitchens would have done well to have re-read Homage to Catalonia after being wooed by Wolfowitz. That story shows how the machinery of Empire can co-opt fights against oppression. I think Hitchens had a Kipling complex, not an Orwellian one.
Be that as it may, the point I was trying to make about Kissinger's legacy is that criticism and praise of it do not lead to any kind of clarity of thought. So the obscurity I charged Sanders with also applies to Clinton.
The Salon article points out: "Instead of internationalism, we find among the Left now a sort of affectless, neutralist, smirking isolationism,” he wrote in the Washington Post in October of 2002, a week after he quit his column at the Nation." Fourteen years later, has any progress had been made to correct that condition?
by moat on Wed, 02/17/2016 - 11:08am
I thought Hillary tried to break the left's endless isolation/non-committal, though I'm not terribly impressed with name-dropping Kissinger nor turned off by it - he's just grandpa Henry at this point missing most of his teeth. The depth of our foreign policy discussions was much greater 8 years ago, and now it's largely "I told you so" "did not" and who voted 1 time for what, as if congressional votes mean fuck all in the real scheme of things - they're CYA for done deals. So depends on how cynical I am that day I guess.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/17/2016 - 11:39am
Agreed on the 8 year number if considered as a minimum mark. It doesn't seem to me to be a matter of cynicism. I propose the dysfunction is a symptom of an overriding will to compartmentalize. The thesis is either on to something or full of hooey.
Hillary did move away from an isolationist standpoint but more as an abandonment of the Left in the manner of Hitchens than a reclaim of lost territory.
I am trying to maintain a thought experiment wherein Hitchens' Last Word on the future is overturned by new ideas.
by moat on Wed, 02/17/2016 - 4:04pm