dagblog - Comments for "Henry Kissinger’s “mad and illegal” bombing: What you need to know about his real history — and why the Sanders/Clinton exchange matters"

Agreed on the 8 year number

moat — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 21:04:05 +0000

In reply to I thought Hillary tried to

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.

I thought Hillary tried to

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:39:00 +0000

In reply to I take your point regarding

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.

I take your point regarding

moat — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:08:06 +0000

In reply to Yeah, well Chris has a legacy

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?

Debates are useful to see a

ocean-kat — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 22:59:17 +0000

In reply to Yeah, that excellent debate

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.

Yeah, that excellent debate

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 21:42:03 +0000

In reply to Hitchens was a brilliantly

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?

Hitchens was a brilliantly

ocean-kat — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 21:25:58 +0000

In reply to Yeah, well Chris has a legacy

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?

Yeah, well Chris has a legacy

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 20:53:43 +0000

In reply to While I have no doubt that

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.

While I have no doubt that

moat — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 20:08:32 +0000

In reply to Henry Kissinger’s “mad and illegal” bombing: What you need to know about his real history — and why the Sanders/Clinton exchange matters

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.

It's hard to see complaining

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 16:58:50 +0000

In reply to Hypocrisy is a stronger word

It's hard to see complaining about establishment and not including Colin Powells Iraq adventures. What am I missing?

Hypocrisy is a stronger word

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 14:20:51 +0000

In reply to It's the hypocrisy, Lulu - I

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.