November 1, 2006
THE REAL IS EVERYTHING, THE REST IS FISHY:
The Unrealist: What lessons from Vietnam is the foreign policy guru teaching Bush? (Rick Perlstein, 11.01.06, New Republic)
For all its mind-blowing details of administration ineptitude, Bob Woodward's third installment in his Bush at War trilogy hardly tells you much that you didn't already know. Of course George W. Bush lacks intellectual curiosity. Of course Donald Rumsfeld is a villain for the ages. But there's one particular revelation in the book that stands out for its plain weirdness: Henry Kissinger's presence in the Oval Office. According to Woodward, Bush treats Kissinger "almost like a member of the family," free to visit as he pleases.It's strange to see him welcomed like a wise old uncle, because an entire generation of conservatives consider Kissinger an incarnation of Beelzebub. And that's a sentiment you would imagine the current administration feels even more deeply. "Kissingerian realism," after all, is the exact opposite of President Bush's "freedom agenda." It eschews gauzy sentimentalities like "freedom" in favor of global equilibrium and stability. [...]
To begin unraveling the true meaning of Kissinger's advice to the White House, we have to go back to August 3, 1972. On that date, President Nixon repeated to the good doctor, his national security adviser, what he'd been saying in private since 1966: America's war aim (standing up a pro-American and anti-Communist South Vietnamese government in Saigon) was a fantasy. "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway," the president sighed. But a presidential election was coming up. He had long before promised he was removing the U.S. presence, more-or-less victoriously (though "victory" was a word Nixon, by then, wisely avoided; instead, he called it "peace with honor").
It was Kissinger, who had been shuttling back and forth to Paris for peace negotiations with the enemy, who named the dilemma: "We've got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which--after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January '74, no one will give a damn." [...]
[I]n the passages Woodward attributes to Kissinger in State of Denial, you can see how he insinuated himself: with a masterful understanding of Bush's psychology. The passages that leap out are the ones that serve to salve an imperiled sense of presidential masculinity in the face of failure: "For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out"; "Even entertaining the idea of withdrawing any troops could create momentum for an exit that was less than victory"; "Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of weakened resolve"--the weakened resolve of others.
At least, that's what the book reports Kissinger told Bush.
The "others" were, of course, congressional Democrats led by Ted Kennedy, who yanked the rug out from under an embattled ally. You don't have to be as bright as Dr. Kissinger to figure out that the senator from MA would love to relive that moment. The difference this time is that there is no North Vietnam. Iraq isn't actually losable.
Friend Perlstein views the good Doctor with all the skepticism he earned over his checkered career, but it hardly seems surprising that he'd have shucked off the Realism that proved so disastrously wrong-headed in the Cold War and adopted instead the American idealism of Ronald Reagan, which succeeded so spectacularly. Presumably Dr. Kissinger supported the war on Iraq precisely because it was certain to be so destabilizing in a region where the status quo was so rotten. He may not be quite the Unrealist that the President is -- he's not an Evangelical after all -- but he may well have evolved towards Unrealism as a result of his own experiences.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 1, 2006 3:27 PMAnyone else thinks it's funny that the Rickster can refer to W. as as lacking "intellectual curiosity" in the midst of a paragraph where he regurgitates the most unimaginitive and thoughtless lefty boilerplate?
Physician, heal thyself.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 1, 2006 4:22 PMRummy put down two of the world's worst tyrranies (including one which was explicitly socialist) and has turned the US military into the deadliest force ever to walk this green Earth.
In Perlstein's world, that makes you a villain.
Posted by: Mike Morley at November 1, 2006 4:39 PM"intellectual curiosity"
Sounds suspiciously like the best and the brightest. No more of that, please.
One question, though - does Perlstein believe Woodward was being "curious" when he 'heard' Bill Casey speak from the deathbed?
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 1, 2006 9:57 PMIt's a token of the moral nullity that conservatism has become that TAPES of Kissinger and Nixon conspiring to sell out Saigon are trumped by fantasies about how it must be the liberals' fault.
Posted by: Rick Perlstein at November 1, 2006 10:04 PMNow now Rick, you're just sore about your gross misuse of the term "sea-change" the other day.
Btw: correlation or causation, the Rickster's editorial in the Trib and the company's subsequent troubles. Discuss.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 1, 2006 10:51 PMKissinger and Nixon were liberals.
Posted by: Mike Morley at November 1, 2006 11:04 PMRick:
Even if accidentally you make the case for Henry the K having outgrown Realism in your essay. The question is why the Left is so eager to backstab yet another struggling democracy. Dr. Kissinger has recognized the error of his ways. When will you guys?
Posted by: oj at November 1, 2006 11:13 PMRick:
Here's an easy one for you (not much curiosity required):
Who was more right about Vietnam - Barry G. or Henry K.? And who was more right about the Soviets - Curtis LeMay or Teddy K.?
Moral nullity, indeed. You are starting to remind me of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. A curious-looking fellow, but he has the brain of a raisin.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 1, 2006 11:23 PMRick Perlstein:
Oh, you got us there -- this blog is just swarming with Nixon and Kissinger apologists.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at November 2, 2006 12:24 AMI've never understood why the Left hates Nixon so. He gave them full-bore Keynesian economics, wage and price controls, the EPA, affirmative action, Harry Blackmun, retreat from Vietnam . . . I mean, hell, he accomplished more of the Liberal wish list than Carter and Clinton put together!
Posted by: Mike Morley at November 2, 2006 1:40 AMThat's the problem, Nixon was a liberal, not a leftie. He might have pulled it off too if he had some charisma. That the leftwing media hate him so much is proof that they aren't liberal, they support leftwing politics as defined by the Soviets.
Dr. K resembled Werner Von Braum in that neither had a lot of integrity and would have worked for any game in town. I love Tom Lehrer's line "... once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down." http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/vonbraun.htm
Just during my lifetime, we survived, FDR, JFK, LBJ, RMN, and bubba. Is this a great country or what!
Nixon was conservative in a very important sense though: he wanted to keep the Welfare State and the USSR because they both provided stability. Realists always want to conserve the status quo they know.
Posted by: oj at November 2, 2006 8:14 AMAlger Hiss.
Posted by: oj at November 2, 2006 8:20 AMThe Welfare State is conservative?
I think Nixon bought into the lie that the Soviets were superior militarily and he didn't have the guts to push them like Reagan did. To give him what little credit he's due, he was anti-Soviet, but he was also so dangerous, he caused me to vote for the two most uber-nutso leftie incompetents in recent memory, McGovern and Humphrey.
Didn't do any good, tho, they both lost big.
erp:
Remember, Humphrey almost won - had the election been a week later, he would have. IL didn't go for the GOP until about 8:00 AM Weds. morning.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 2, 2006 10:09 AMConserving the Welfare State is conservative by definition--recall both that Reagan conserved it and that such early writers of the modern conservative era as Peter Viereck thought the new Deal itself conservative because it "saved capitalism."
Posted by: oj at November 2, 2006 10:42 AM