Thursday, November 30, 2023

The Nicest Thing I Can Say About Henry The K Is That He Won’t Be Missed

People who don’t remember the’60’s are doomed to repeat it:
From yet another vantage point, Kissinger is at the heart of bookshelves of books that a generation of baby boomers wrote about Vietnam and Watergate, two of the three formative events of their generational memory (the third being the Kennedy assassination). Many of those books are quite good. If you haven’t read Time of Illusion by Jonathan Schell, absolutely go read it. Everybody may hate the baby boomers now. But in their day, with their admittedly sometimes self-obsessed wrestling with the things that happened in their 20s, the early baby boomers generated quite a lot of literary and popular culture heat. Kissinger managed to do enough when relatively young enough to be at the center of a lot of that heat and then live enough into the age of social media for all that heat surrounding him to … well, splatter all over everything in a new way before he finally died. 
The other part of the story is that from the start of his time on the national political stage, Kissinger inserted himself into the popular culture in ways that were then and remain now all but unheard of. Kissinger was a single man from 1964 and 1974 and he made sure you knew it. His personal life was the topic of the gossip columns and intrigue. Late last night The Washington Post published this article, The surprising dating life of Henry Kissinger, a West Wing ‘playboy’. He reputedly dated countless high profile actresses and female celebrities. He made appearances at Studio 54. He’s publicly credited with originating the phrase “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
How you can get through an entire article (as Josh does) without mentioning realpolitik is simply astounding. Joy Reid tonight noted that Jimmy Carter lived long enough “to outlive that SOB,” if only because Carter introduced human rights to American foreign policy. Kissinger had no time for such mamby-pamby nonsense. At least that’s the way he saw it.
In a numerical body count as a measure of criminal evil, the rightly infamous and reviled Pol Pot comes somewhat after Kissinger in the millions of deaths attributable to him because Kissinger and Nixon share responsibility for the illegal expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia which brought Pol Pot to power. The duly elected president, Richard Nixon and his appointee, Kissinger share in that alongside the millions murdered through the action and encouragement of Nixon and Ford and Kissinger in East Timor, East Pakistan (Bangladesh), the fascist takeovers in Chile and Argentina (Kissinger complained to the generals in the "Dirty War" that they weren't killing People fast enough) and in many other places. Especially after he cashed in on his governmental climb over millions of bodies, Kissinger had a business career and among the things he and his associates did was arm many murderous regimes and movements in Africa and, of course Latin America and Asia.
Yeah, but Josh points out at least Chile and Argentina didn’t go Commie. Domino theory, donchaknow. Or Monroe Doctrine, I could never be sure in the’60’s.

Kissinger does prove that if you live long enough, you escape your critics because you leave them behind, and newer generations never know what they did. Josh cites a book by Christopher Hitchens from 2002, and Anthony Bourdain’s critique from the same year. Almost 30 years after Kissinger’s last job in official D.C. And neither of them are foreign policy experts or serious historians. Need I also note Josh doesn’t remember Nixon in the White House, or Vietnam?

Henry Kissinger earned the enmity, decision by decision.

I do find it funny Josh and WaPo have to underline that Kissinger was the Playboy of the Western World for a decade. It’s only surprising to those who only know Kissinger since 2000.  Those of us older remember Kissinger coining the famous phrase “Power is an aphrodisiac,” and applying it to himself. It was also Kissinger who wielded power to go from Nixon’s National Security Adviser to his, and then Ford’s, Secretary of State. Kissinger wanted to be the power behind the throne, and he did so as ruthlessly as he directed Nixon’s, and then Ford’s, foreign policy. After Nixon was deposed, he said Nixon had a “meatball mind.” Being a publicly arrogant figure never wins hearts and minds. Being the man unapologetically responsible for ramping up Vietnam just made it worse. Even Robert McNamara recanted his cheerleading of that war, and apologized for his responsibility for it. Kissinger just cashed in.
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