Richard Reeves comments on the selection of Dr. Kissenger...
richardreeves.com
Ah! Dr. Kissenger, I Presume...
BY RICHARD REEVES
Universal Press Syndicate
December 5, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Tim Rutten, the media critic of the Los Angeles Times, attacked colleagues and profession last Wednesday for not yelling loud enough when President Bush named Henry Kissinger to be chairman of the official commission investigating United States intelligence failures before September 11.
What they should have been yelling, he wrote was, basically, "Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!"
More politely, his actual words were: "Where are the accounts of how Kissinger lied to Congress about the secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos, of how he deceived Sen. Frank Church’s committee about U.S. intelligence abuses, including the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected government?" -- and so on.
He’s right, of course. But one answer to his outraged question is that most reporters are too young to remember and one of the hallmarks of being American is that you are not held responsible for ignorance of anything or everything that happened before you came of age. Kissinger knows many secrets, and one of them is to outlive your enemies. In his case, however, he does have one persistent younger enemy. That would be Christopher Hitchens, a dogged devil who writes like an avenging angel and is crusading to have Dr. K. locked up as a war criminal.
Hitchens, author of the book and inspirer of the film, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", restated his opinions of the former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for the online magazine Slate. Citing the role of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the incubation of the terror of September 11, Hitchens says "Kissinger is now, and always has been, an errand boy and apologist for such regimes."
Then he adds that the Nobel Peace Prize winner is: "a proven cover-up artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar, and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions for the most vile of offenses."
Bush, who was just turning 21 during the secret bombings, may not know these things. Probably doesn’t. He’s not a big reader, you know. And, in fact, I would argue that Kissinger is more to be feared when he is telling the truth than when he’s lying. The lies are easier to catch and understand.
Here’s what I mean. In his memoir, "White House Years", Kissinger argues that Taiwan, more specifically United States support for Taiwan, was not a major obstacle to President Nixon’s historic opening to China in 1972. Deflecting arguments that Nixon and he sold out our ally, Nationalist China, exiled on Taiwan, Kissinger writes only a single sentence about it in his description of his own preliminary 1971 negotiations with Chinese Premier Chou En lai: "Taiwan was mentioned only briefly during the first session."
True. Kissinger began by telling Chou that the United States would no longer recognize Taiwan as anything other than a breakaway province of the real China, communist China. Chou smiled, and according to the official transcript, said: "Good, these talks may now proceed."
A clever fellow, Kissinger, mellowed a bit now that his own fiery ambition, insecurity and envy are in the embers of his former selves. But he is still too clever to be a real democrat. When Chile elected a Marxist president, Salvador Allende, National Security Adviser Kissinger handled the covert United States effort that ended in Allende’s violent death, saying then, in secret of course: "I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people."
I think he has about the same feelings for the American people. He is perfectly capable of lying to us as he lied to Nixon when it suited his purposes. The press, as Rutten says, should put him in perspective. But then, whatever he tells the rest of America, the best we can hope for is that he tells the President something like the truth.
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RICHARD REEVES is the author of 12 books, including President Nixon: Alone in the White House. He has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Esquire and dozens of other publications. E-mail him at rr@richardreeves.com. |
