AN HONEST STATEMENT OF rEALISM IS ALWAYS REPELLANT:

In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 12/10/10, NY Times)

An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.

But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

Granted, they were both vile men, but--aside from their honesty in private--how does what they said there differ from the views of any of those who opposed removing Saddam, because we shouldn't blow up the world over the regime's treatment of Kurds and Shi'a? And how many North Koreans have we let the Kims kill because safeguarding their lives "is not an objective of American foreign policy"? The reality is that once you strip away the talismanic quality of post-Holocaust Jews, there is no difference. The is what Realist foreign policy is: not caring about the other.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2010 4:13 PM