Posted on 10/18/2002 2:08:44 PM PDT by Utah Girl
The desire to do something about Henry Kissinger is, for many, a popular pursuit; for some, an obsession. He is the enemy, for reasons many of them obvious: He is a Harvard intellectual who served Richard Nixon intimately and survived. And of course he was at the right hand of the president for three years of the reviled war in Vietnam. Resentment is certainly fostered by facial expressions seen as registering Shylockean self-satisfaction, and verbal adroitness that sometimes seems to be bent on squaring circles, a demeanor that enemies will liken to that of the Vicar of Bray, and advocating what they see as Johnnie Cochran explaining the innocence of O. J. Simpson.
The latest expeditionary force against the enemy was initiated by Christopher Hitchens, a learned and resourceful moralist of exhibitionist inclinations who picks his enemies with brio and, a few years ago, undertook a book to the effect that Mother Teresa was a mountebank. The Kissinger offensive was done in Harper's magazine, and became a book. The call, no less, was to declare Henry Kissinger a war criminal and urge international courts to try him for, among other things, murder and kidnapping.
That was a tall order of Hitchens, perhaps even outdoing the call to defrock Mother Teresa — but the anti-Kissinger reserves were there, anxious to serve.
What then happened was that the BBC thought the whole idea cinematic, which it is: The Trials of Henry Kissinger is playing in art movie houses. Movie clips of Kissinger and the company he has kept, and the public-policy contentions in which he has figured, are abundant, and compliant in gathering together grand prosecutorial mosaics. The complaints are that Kissinger was culpable in illegal bombings of Cambodia resulting in 3 million deaths; in the invasion of East Timor by the Indonesian military resulting in 100,000 deaths; and in subverting 1968 peace talks which, if concluded, would have spared the 200,000+ lives lost before the Vietnam War's end in 1972.
There isn't, of course, going to be any such war-crimes trial of Henry Kissinger — forget that, just to begin with. The man responsible for Vietnam and Cambodia was President Richard Nixon. The man responsible for East Timor is President Gerald Ford. Nixon is gone, but why isn't Hitchens calling for the trial of Gerald Ford as a war criminal? The answer is that Mr. Ford is not, so to speak, a photogenic war criminal, someone the sight of whom behind bars or swinging on a noose would give Jacobinical satisfaction. What is contemplated by the Hitchens offensive is, quite simply, denigration.
Henry Kissinger, in the Hitchens-BBC production, is called "the most conspicuous American statesman of the 20th century." That's true, as also the adage that the bigger they come the harder they fall. Kissinger's extraordinary ascendancy and his spectacular achievements rouse the iconoclastic spirits. In order to achieve the desired effects, the prosecution had to decry not only his policies, but his character. Thus it is said that he was ambitious — which is certainly true, as also of Abraham Lincoln. That he was duplicitous, dishonest, deceptive, and, strange to add, disloyal. If he was disloyal, why did he stick by Nixon until the end? And how explain that as soon as Nixon was out of office, President Ford immediately renewed Kissinger's franchise? There are people around who know something about Kissinger's loyalty who were not invited to testify in the BBC production.
If the book and the movie had settled for charging that Kissinger was from time to time detected speaking out of both sides of his mouth, the reader and viewer might have nodded and said: Yes: That is what diplomats are often called upon to do. Another word for it is: They negotiate. People who refuse to do that, meet the fate of Coriolanus.
Amazon.com lists 935 entries under "Nixon," and the wars will rage 100 years from now on the great events in which his secretary of state figured. Was the bombing of Cambodia a legitimate exercise of military power, in a contest in which no declaration of war had been voted? Was the shipment of arms to the generals in Indonesia an endorsement of the genocidal policies to which they were put? Was the shipment of arms to Chilean dissidents a warrant for the execution of a Chilean general?
These questions can be explored usefully, but not in phony theatrical arraignments done mostly for the satisfaction of people engaged in private wars against Henry Kissinger. A Canadian reviewer of the Kissinger film wrote wryly, "If one considers Dr. Kissinger's policies of accommodation with various Communist powers, it would be easier to suggest he is a peace criminal." The historic view that will prevail is that he was the most consistent and resourceful anti-Communist on the scene during a decade in which two presidents sought out his counsel, and the republic profited from it.
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Uh, I seem to remember Kennedy pumping a load of people into Viet Nam. I remember Lyndon Johnson pumping piles o men into Viet Nam. Viet Nam was a full blown botched operation handed to Nixon. Whoever wrote this is nuts.
Exactly! And good old "Corn-Pone" Johnson was the monster who made certain the military could not conduct the war without his constant, destructive meddling.
I'll not open this can of worms any further because i don't want to get bogged down in yet another non-productive Vietnam uproar. Some of us saw "up close and very personal" what LBJ interference brought down on military personnel trying to conduct that war successfully.
"Frag Johnson" crossed my mind many times in the midst of that hideous war. LBJ was way more destructive than Jane Fonda could even dream up IMO.
The politicians where culpable, however, for not admitting to the American people (or possibly to themselves) that we were losing the war in Vietnam. Sure, we could have continued to successfuly defend South Vietnam as long was we stayed in the war, but the politcal will to do so was not there. The American people will never support a war of attrition that has no end in sight.
Transforming Vietnam from a war of attrition to one with a postive and achievable objective was absolutely essential. In my view Nixon, on entering office, should have insisted that the North Vietnamese formally concede, in principle, the right of South Vietnamese independence, formally and unabiguously renounce their policy of reunification under communist rule by war or subversion, and negotiate, in good faith, a peace agreement ensuring mutual security and nonaggression between North and South Vietnam. Nixon should have announced that failure of the North Vietnamese to immediately and effectively pursue such a peace would force him to seek a declaration of war from Congress, and change American war aims from the defense of South Vietnam to the CONQUEST of North Vietnam and the removal of the communists from power.
That would have been risky. There would have been the chance that such a bluff would have been called, and that congress would not then come through, but I betcha Ruskies would have compelled the North Vietnamese to stand down first and make peace.
This is what was passed on to Nixon and what he had to work with. The nation teetered on the verge of lrftist revolution.
Nixon didn't have the power to do what you recommend.
Nixon didn't have the power to do what you recommend.
I understand that, at some level anyway, but maybe as you suggest not adequately. Even at the time, though, I remember sitting in class in the first grade and shouting out the window at hippies and McGovern supporters that Nixon was going to win the election.
The response to American leftists should have been (and maybe this was said) that North Vietnam was the aggressor nation. Indeed was so quite openly and unequivocally, by its own testimony. South Vietnam had no policy of violent reunification, but the North most certainly did. That's why I suggest that the war should have been transformed into one that would either compel peace, or forceably impose it and punish those, by removal from power, who refused to make peace.
The Whitehouse should have put the leftists in the position of opposing a definite peace initiative, and defending a regime that was rejecting a peaceful settlement. The other half of the policy, the promise to wage a war of conquest if the North refused to make peace, and thereby end the pointless accumulation of corpses by attrition, might have awakened the "silent majority".
I thought I was agreeing with you, when you said the politicians should have done more to actually win. But how would we have "won" a defensive war when the North was obviously willing and able to continue such a conflict indefinitely? It seems to me that an effort was called for to fundamentally change the aims and nature of the war. That effort was never made. We continued to fight Uncle Ho's war rather than fight on terms favorable to us.
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