[PEN-L:32622] revenge of Henry the K

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Henry's revenge

This man is regarded by many outside the US as a war criminal. There are
countries he can't travel to for fear of arrest. Why has George Bush just
given him a major job? Julian Borger on the Phoenix-like rise of Henry
Kissinger

Friday November 29, 2002
The Guardian

The vastly different reactions on each side of the Atlantic to Henry
Kissinger's return to the political centre stage says a lot about the
constantly widening gap in political perceptions between the US and Europe.
Those Europeans who were aware that the old cold warrior was still alive
could be forgiven for assuming he was in a cell somewhere awaiting war
crimes charges, or living the life of a fugitive, never sleeping in the same
bed twice lest human rights investigators track him down.

In the US, the overwhelming response to Kissinger's appointment, at the age
of 79, to head the investigation into the catastrophic intelligence failure
that led to September 11 has been one of relief mixed with nostalgic
affection. For many Americans, he is the avuncular wise man with the funny
accent, secretary of state under presidents Nixon and Ford, the only man
ever to serve as secretary of state and national security adviser, and a
Nobel Peace Price winner to boot, who is now coming to the rescue bringing
half a century of international experience to bear on fixing the holes in
national security.

>From the point of view of the average citizen who has taken even a passing
interest in international affairs, Kissinger has never really been away.
Since September 11, he has been a regular on television talk shows and in
the opinion pages of the major newspapers, holding forth on the "war on
terror". His views are held in such high esteem that a row broke out during
the summer over the correct interpretation of a commentary he had written on
policy towards Iraq. He gave overwhelming approval to the decision to
confront Saddam Hussein over weapons of mass destruction, but advised the
Bush administration to seek as broad an international consensus as possible
before going to war. The New York Times interpreted this note of caution as
opposition, and was roundly lambasted on the right for doing so.

While Kissinger's place in the Washington mainstream has never seriously
been challenged, his principal detractor, the Washington-based British
journalist Christopher Hitchens, who chronicled the legal case against him
in his book, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, is generally treated here as an
oddball curiosity. His arguments have scant media attention, certainly in
comparison with their reception in Europe.

Kissinger has been canny in maintaining his celebrity status, appearing in a
string of advertisements, alongside the likes of Woody Allen, intended to
bring tourism back to New York. In Kissinger's ad, he is seen running around
the bases in an empty New York Yankees baseball stadium, clearly imagining
himself to be scoring a home run. The message was that the Big Apple was
somewhere to live out your dreams.

The prophet of realpolitik, who once famously claimed that power was the
ultimate aphrodisiac, now has a chance to live out his dreams again - a man
of ideas whose time has come once more in the harsh light of post-September
11 politics.

In that light, the secret bombing of Cambodia, which he orchestrated with
Richard Nixon, could be argued to be the ultimate act of preemption, a
concept on which the Bush administration's new national security doctrine is
based. The same goes for his role in helping oust Salvador Allende from
power in Chile, and his replacement by General Augusto Pinochet. The
prevailing climate in national security circles in the age of terrorism
favours early action against potential threats, before they pose direct
danger.

It is a climate that makes it politically risky to criticise even such a
controversial personality, and the chronically risk-averse Democrats have
mostly stood to attention behind Kissinger's nomination. "He brings a
stature to it, which is important," Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national
security adviser, told the New York Times. "He brings historical
perspective, which I think is equally important. And I think that he has a
wide-ranging experience, which is relevant... It is a very good choice."

Privately, the Democrats are consoling themselves that their own elder
statesman, former senator George Mitchell, will be at Kissinger's side in an
attempt to ensure that the inquiry is not a total whitewash.

They realise that Kissinger is such an old hand at national security policy
that he knows it is ultimately subordinate to domestic politics. There is
convincing evidence that he played a role in convincing the South Vietnamese
to reject a peace deal being negotiated by Lyndon Johnson in the dying
months of his administration, which might have saved the Democrats in the
1968 elections. Instead, the collapse of the talks helped elect Kissinger's
man, Nixon.

Kissinger now has another chance to be a player in the great game of
international strategy, a game in which truth will inevitably be traded off
against perceived national interest, a barter at which the American
Machiavelli is a master. At the heart of his deliberations will be the role
of Saudi Arabia, and the mysterious relationship between the kingdom's royal
family, its intelligence services and the 9/11 hijackers, 15 out of 19 of
whom were Saudi nationals.

On the other hand, the Saudi government is a long-term strategic ally, which
has facilities near-essential to a war against Iraq, provides a major source
of oil, and is a friend of the Bush family. It is a dilemma few would enjoy
as much as Kissinger.

The German-born statesman is also well placed to appreciate the interplay of
big money and politics, an alchemy that is at the heart of the Bush
administration. At the head of Kissinger Associates since 1982, he has sold
his expertise in the workings of the Washington policy machine and his
international contacts to corporate clients, most of whom choose to remain
anonymous, but who are thought to include Exxon Mobil, Arco and American
Express.

Kissinger is also on the "European Strategy Board" of a Dallas investment
company called Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, one of the biggest financial
contributors to George Bush's political career. Tom Hicks, one of its
partners, was instrumental in Bush's rise: his purchase of the Texas Rangers
baseball team, in which the president had a stake, helped make him a
millionaire.

All of the above may help explain why Kissinger is not a surprising choice
for the Bush administration. However, it does not explain the popular
acceptance, and even acclaim, his nomination has so far received.

This almost certainly has something to do with the national mood since
September 11, which has been defensive for obvious reasons, and particularly
ill-disposed to introspection and self-doubt. There is no longer an appetite
for the sort of harsh reassessment of the US role in the world that was so
prevalent in the 80s and early 90s in the form of books and films about
Vietnam and Latin America, Kissinger's old stomping ground. In Hollywood's
most recent Vietnam movie, the US is the hero once more. Meanwhile, the
CIA's adventures in Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua are largely forgotten.

It is worth remembering that Kissinger is not the sole beneficiary of this
particular form of national amnesia. Earlier this month, Admiral John
Poindexter, one of the central figures in the Iran-Contra scandal of the
80s, was appointed the head of a new Pentagon intelligence service, with Big
Brother-style access to the personal information of ordinary Americans.
Poindexter was formerly better known for destroying data than collecting it,
having admitted to Congress that he destroyed a document bearing Ronald
Reagan's signature authorising the sale of arms to Iran in return for the
release of American hostages. The revenue was used to fund Contra guerrillas
fighting the Nicaraguan government without the knowledge of Congress.
Poindexter was convicted for his role but later won an appeal on a legal
technicality. The motto of his new office is scientia est potentia -
knowledge is power.

Meanwhile, his celebrated subordinate, Colonel Oliver North, who carried out
much of the shredding of embarrassing documents and who took the legal rap
for the scandal, is also back on the Washington A list, as a television
talk-show host and pundit. Another Iran-Contra veteran, Elliott Abrams, who
as assistant secretary of state under Reagan was convicted of misleading
Congress, is now back in the national security council. Otto Reich, who
masterminded pro-Contra propaganda, has also risen again, as an assistant
secretary of state.

Consider, too, the strange career of G Gordon Liddy, the Watergate burglar
who went to jail for breaking into the Democratic Party offices at the
behest of Kissinger's boss, Nixon. He emerged from prison a born-again
Christian and is now a radio talk-show host with a faithful following. His
book of conservative rants again gun control and other liberal infringements
on liberty, entitled When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, was treated
with reverence on CNN. The financial news anchor, Lou Dobbs, recommended it
to his viewers "as a celebration of sorts of a time when boys could go
hunting with a pal, make their own fireworks and just burn leaves on an
autumn afternoon."

When he famously remarked that "there are no second acts in American lives",
F Scott Fitzgerald could not have conceived of the modern American right,
which - unlike its liberal adversaries - does not leave its wounded on the
political battlefield.

Like Liddy, Poindexter and North, Kissinger has been helped back from
eternal obscurity by a deep desire on the part of the nation's conservatives
to avenge past humiliations, when men they saw as heroes were forced to
answer to the law, and sometimes go to jail.

Kissinger's second act is sweeter than most - his murky past has not only
gone unpunished, it now looks like the unsettling prologue for US policy in
years to come.