More from 'Frontline' Interviews: Carl Bernstein on Nixon vs. Bush
By E&P Staff
Published: February 14, 2007 12:15 PM ET
Excerpt
"I think what we're talking about with the Bush administration is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth -- a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself -- is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale."
--MORE--
Showing posts with label Nixon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nixon. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon
Published: January 24, 2007 4:00 PM ET
NEW YORK In an online chat at washingtonpost.com this afternoon, Carl Bernstein, the famed Watergate reporter at that paper and now writing articles for Vanity Fair, took several hard shots at the current Bush administration -- almost every time he was asked about the Nixon era. It came just as news of the death of former Watergate ringleader E. Howard Hunt was circulating widely.
After a long explanation of how the American system "worked," eventually, with Watergate, Bernstein said:
"In the case George W. Bush, the American system has obviously failed -- tragically -- about which we can talk more in a minute. But imagine the difference in our worldview today, had the institutions -- particularly of government -- done their job to insure that a mendacious and dangerous president (as has since been proven many times over-beyond mere assertion) be restrained in a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers, brought turmoil to the lives of millions, and constrained the goodwill towards the United States in much of the world."
Later, asked if the Nixon administration was unique in hiring disreputable characters, he replied: "Until the Bush-43 administration, I had believed that the Nixon presidency was sui generis in modern American history in terms of your question...
"In terms of small-bore (but dangerous) characters like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy with their schemes, I doubt that any presidency approaches the criminality of the Nixon White House. But the Watergate conspiracy--to undermine the constitution and use illegal methods to hurt Nixon's political opponents and even undermine the electoral system--was supervised by those at the very top.
"In the current administration we have seen from the President down--especially Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, donald Rumsfeld--a willingness to ignore the great constitutional history of the United States -- to suspend, really, the many of the constitutional guarantees that have made us a nation apart, with real freedoms unknown elsewhere, unrestricted by short-term political objectives of our leaders.
"Then there are th Geneva conventions: Who would have dreamed that, in our lifetime, our leaders would permit their flagrant abuse, would authorize torture, 'renditions' to foreign-torture chambers, suspension of habeus corpus, illegal surveillance of our own citizens....
"But perhaps worst, has been the lying and mendacity of the president and his men and women--in the reasons they cited for going to war, their conduct of the war, their attempts to smear their political opponents.
"Nixon and his men lied and abused the constitution to horrible effect, but they were stopped.
"The Bush Administration -- especially its top officials named above and others familiar to most Americans -- was not stopped, and has done far greater damage. As a (Republican) bumper-sticker of the day proclaimed, 'Nobody died at Watergate.' If only we could say that about the era of George W. Bush, and that our elected representatives in Congress and our judiciary had been courageous enough to do their duty and hold the President and his aides accountable."
Bernstein was also asked about thE CIA leak case and the leaking of Valerie Plame's name, which he called "a truly Nixonian event, a happenstance not atypical of the take-no-prisoners politics of the Bush presidency. But it pales in comparison to the larger questions of the Constitution, of life and death, of the Geneva conventions, of the expectation that our leaders -- from Condoleeza Rice to Dick Cheney, to the attorney(s) general to Paul Wolfowitz and on down and up the line speak truthfully to the American people and the Congress. They have consistently failed to do so."
Friday, January 12, 2007
Rebellion (and Why This is not the 1970s)
"Only a handful of 'radicals' in Congress were talking about Nixon the same way that virtually all members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talk about Bush today."
---Thursday, January 11, 2007
I'm not going to present a lot of tidbits with sources concerning the Bush plan for Iraq and the subsequent nearly unanimous disapproval, but some overall impressions. Even before antiwar protestors could begin mobilizing--and there are reports of demonstrations planned or accomplished in all fifty states--the reception given to the Bush plan, especially in the hearings featuring the new Defense Secretary and the old Sec. of State, Condi Rice, was nothing short of eviscerating.
Particularly striking were the Republicans and past Bush supporters, one of whom added that he not only was parting company with the Bushwar but was tired of being lied to. And he said this to Rice. While Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell talked with the confidence of old about using a fillibuster to stop the attempt to pass a resolution of (essentially) no confidence in the President's plan, it soon appeared that there were already the 60+ votes to stop that, and vote on the resolution, which at the moment seems all but certain to pass.In other words, the Congress was in open rebellion. Tom Ricks of the Washington Post said on Charlie Rose that of all the armed forces officers who are either in Iraq or were, and who emailed him after the speech, not one thought the plan would work. The polls show overwhelming public skepticism if not outright opposition. And on and on.
There seem to be two main schools of thought about the why of this policy. The first is that Bush is sincerely messianic, and his reference to aggressive moves against Syria and Iran (which other administration figures minimized today) show a very dangerous intention to widen the conflict, perhaps to divert attention from Iraq, or simply to carry out a general attempt to impose American power in that part of the world.
The second possibility is that this is cover, a face-saving measure, for troop withdrawal by the end of the year, when the Iraqis and particularly the current government don't make good on their part of the bargain in the "pacification" of Baghdad.The closest historical precedent for both of these possibilities is ironically the same event: Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in 1970. Nixon both widened the war (as he would several more times) and claimed it was in order to facilitate the withdrawal of American troops.
The 1970s also offer the precedent of Congress cutting off funds for a war that the President wouldn't end, though it took another five years after Cambodia. This and more led Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to say that the President's speech represents the worst foreign policy catastrophe since Vietnam.There are plenty of other similarities, and we're likely to see more, like large scale protests. Keith Olbermann's charge in his special comment Thursday that Bush's approach is insane recalls the feeling that Nixon was nuts, and this was pre-Watergate. Firesign Theatre ran a fake candidate for president in 1972 (George Papoon) whose campaign slogan was "Not Insane."
But there are differences. One is the speed. Everything is accelerated--especially the response of establishment politicians. Only a handful of "radicals" in Congress were talking about Nixon the same way that virtually all members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talked about Bush today. No one in the news media was so openly, relentlessly and vociferously against the president's war as Keith Olbermann has been, or that Chris Matthews has become.This speed may be reflected in the likelihood that Congress is going to search for and perhaps find a way to cut off money to conduct this war.
There are other differences on policy that reflect the experience of Vietnam, and not only on the part of Vietnam vets like Chuck Hagel. But there is yet another difference that I find striking. That's the often repeated reason for opposition to this temporary surge or anything short of taking troops out of Iraq: it's not worth the lives of American soldiers. The idea that troops would be committed as a face-saving gesture leading to withdrawal that didn't damage American power or prestige as much as a "retreat" would have been perfectly acceptable to most Washington officials, media and academics.
It is not acceptable now, and that I believe is a consequence of antiwar activity in the Vietnam era, especially by those of my generation. This was something we stressed from the beginning, even though it would be John Kerry's testimony in 1971 or so that remains the most memorable formulation of that belief--how do you ask a soldier to be the last one to die for a mistake?
This is some progress, though not yet to the level of another of our contentions--that the war was immoral because of the death and destruction it brought to Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. There are very few voices these days outside the peace movement that make this point about Iraq and Iraqis.But these differences are not nothing. They are differences from the 1970s, caused in part by what we went through, and what we did, in the 1960s and 1970s.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
What The Media Have Not Said Upon Ford's Passing
January 3, 2007
By Lawrence R. Velvel
Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law
The death of Richard Nixon led to an outpouring of praise for him. You would have thought a saint had died. It was not until awhile later that people began to publicly remember that Nixon had been an evil man, had been, in his own famous description of what he claimed he was not, "a crook."
The death of Ronald Reagan was met by a more balanced assessment than Nixon's. This was surprising because, though people of my own views disliked most of what he was and did -- except, of course, for what is generally though not universally thought to be his role in causing the collapse of the Soviet Union -- the fact is that a large portion of the country regards him as Saint Ron. For a balanced assessment upon death to be made of Saint Ron, when only huzzahs for his accomplishments greeted the passing of the aptly nicknamed Dick Nixon, struck one as unusual.
The passing of Gerald Ford has generally been met, one thinks, with the same kind of balanced assessment as was Reagan's. At least this seems true as I write, on Friday, December 29th. Yet there are two points which give pause, one of which was passed over very lightly in the media, the other of which has been the subject of extensive discussion.
The matter given hardly a lick and a promise is Ford's effort to impeach Justice William Douglas.
In recent years, conservatives in departments of history or political science, and in the judiciary, have done their best to savage Douglas. They accuse him of being a liar, of being a philanderer, of not caring about judicial craft, and of almost any other sin or alleged sin you can think of. Maybe there is something to what they say, maybe not. Maybe there is something, but less than they claim (or pretend). I personally met Douglas twice, once at a dinner honoring him, attended by about two dozen people, in my home in Lawrence, Kansas, before he made a speech at the University of Kansas, and once afterwards in his chambers (i.e., his office) for lunch when I was visiting Washington. Both times he was a very charming, very nice fellow, and on the first occasion he showed himself especially percipient about the future course of Harry Blackmun. So I can't really comment on the conservative claims of turpitude. I can say, however, that back in the '50s, '60s and early '70s, the attempts to "get" Douglas were basically motivated by a conservative-to-reactionary attempt to hold back the tide that swept over mid-late and late 20th century America. Nor would I be surprised if at least some -- who knows what percentage? -- of the recent efforts to savage him have been motivated by, or at least reflect, pique, or anger, that things Douglas stood for have prevailed.
Jerry Ford was prominent -- was a ringleader -- among those who tried to "get" Douglas because the Justice was in the forefront of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, both before and after Earl Warren, as well as during the Warren Court. In attempting this the reactionaries and the conservatives wanted to reverse or nullify, if they could, the Court's rulings on reapportionment, on voting rights, on free speech, on religion, on rights of privacy (which culminated in that famous case about alternative choices of waterborne movement, Roe v. Wade), on criminal rights, and who knows what else. Ford was one of the reactionaries who desired some or all of these reversals, and was in the van of the movement to try to impeach and get rid of Douglas because of the Court's decisions. Yet many of the decisions or perhaps even most of them -- one would guess there are people who think all of them -- became part and parcel of the America of today. Douglas was a man who was on the right side (meaning the correct side) of everything. Ford was a man who was on the politically right (and therefore the wrong) side of lots of things, most things in fact. What Ford attempted to do to Douglas was unforgivable, and should not be forgiven. But we have heard very little of it upon his passing. Perhaps this is precisely because what Ford did was unforgivable.
The matter which has received extensive treatment is, of course, Ford's pardon of Nixon. I am willing to take at face value Ford's denials that there was a deal in advance for a pardon, and am willing to do so despite Alexander Haig's discussion with Ford, and the two relevant pieces of paper he gave Ford a week or so before Nixon resigned (one of the papers was a blank pardon.) In this connection I'll accept either or both of two non-mutually exclusive propositions: that Ford was honest and that he was unintelligent enough to fail to comprehend the possible implications of Haig's comments. But even accepting the denial of a deal, the pardon was inexcusable and is to this day unforgivable.
One is aware, of course, that after being greeted with a huge outcry -- even Ford's Press Secretary resigned rather than defend it -- the pardon came to be seen as a good and courageous thing, and is thusly lauded today. (Even Ted Kennedy, who at first opposed it, ultimately changed his mind about it.) One is likewise aware that Ford, and people who now approve it, think the pardon helped to supposedly "heal" this country, as it is said, and to further put an end to what Ford had called our "long national nightmare." None of this moves me one bit. I think that in the long run, and considered in the light of what has happened and what America has become, the pardon was a disaster -- or, perhaps more accurately, was another in a train of disasters.
The pardon showed, once again, -- in fact I think it publicly showed for the first time, really -- that in America we do not punish criminals in high office or, for that matter, people at somewhat lower levels if they are acting in accordance with the wishes of those in high office. There have been some exceptions to this, of course -- Iran Contra being a major one, although even there no punishment was imposed on the people at the very top, including Reagan. But by large, if you are high enough, and if what you've done is bad enough, you can expect to get off scot-free in this country. So Johnson, McNamara, Bush, Nixon, Kissinger, Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al -- unlike the soon to be hung (or, by the time this appears, perhaps the recently hung) Saddam -- will never see the inside of a dock or a prison let alone stand on a gallows. That the truly big time miscreants inevitably get off scot-free here is one of the reasons many Americans (justifiably) have little or no faith in our government. It is also one of the main reasons our leaders all-too-blithely take us into wars, uselessly bomb large sections of other countries to smithereens, order up torture, mess over and suppress civil rights, and so forth. There is nothing holding them back, you see. There will be no trial, no punishment, and, for that matter, not even an impeachment. Neither will their own children or relatives get caught up in a war. So this cautionary possibility does not hold them back either. And the lesson that our home grown warmongers will never suffer trial and punishment for their illegal deeds was driven home -- maybe, as I say, for the very first time -- by Gerald Ford's (precedent setting?) pardon of Nixon.
In this greater scheme of things, it is mere irony that Ford also committed the basest hypocrisy by saying, earlier in his speech announcing the pardon, that he believes people must be treated equally before the law.
One knows, of course, that Ford and persons who approve of the pardon have said it saved us the divisiveness that would have been caused by the sight of a President defending himself against criminal charges for a year or three. This could be true, but in a larger sense is just a bunch of humbuggery. The pardon may have spared us that particular divisive sight, but it certainly did not spare us the most bitter division over the years. The conservatives on the right have never gotten over the '60s and for years tried, and may still be trying, to roll us back to the '50s or even the 1890s. There is still a tremendous and bitter division in this country over such things as the Viet Nam war, the place of religion, sexual matters, abortion, permissible infringements on civil liberties, economic regulation versus almost wholly unregulated capitalism, and, most importantly of all because it has the most profound impact of all, militarism and world wide interventionism. The pardon stopped none of this bitterly fought division and may even have implicitly encouraged the crucially important warmongering and imperialistically interventionist segment of it by making clear that Presidents and their top men would never pay any criminal penalty for any of it. And, as a fillip, it is no little irony that Ford, who claimed he pardoned Nixon to heal divisions, raised to their first stint in truly high places a number of people who have been instrumental in kindling or throwing gas on profound divisions or who gave us a child who did so (and who, but for the father, couldn't have been elected dogcatcher). I speak of course, of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the first George Bush.
Ford's horrid act of making plain that evil men would not be punished has repercussions even as I sit writing this. Knowing there will be no punishment, not only have our top officials committed indubitable crimes in Iraq and throughout the world in connection with their so-called war on terror, but one is hard pressed to doubt that, notwithstanding the electoral verdict of November 7th, George Bush will soon be sending more troops to Iraq, probably tens of thousands more. This will not be a crime because Congress passed on authorization of war which allows it, but it will nonetheless be a truly terrible thing to do. But what will stop the true believer, the pretender-in-chief, the man who gets his orders from a higher father than his earth bound father? He knows that, as the Nixon pardon shows, and as also shown by the failure to prosecute Johnson or Nixon or Rusk or McNamara or Kissinger or Bush himself or Cheney, etc, there is no true price, and certainly no criminal price, to be paid for anything he does. If you ask me, the price that we as a people have been and will continue to pay, at least in part because of the pardon, far exceeds any supposed, and heavily nonexistent, benefit from it.
* * * *
The week that I write this, C-Span is carrying tapes of a conference on Viet Nam held at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library last March. There were academics speaking at the conference who as much as said, based in part on documents that only recently have seen the light of day one gathers, that Nixon and Kissinger prolonged the Viet Nam war for years, and caused the deaths of perhaps another 25,000 or 30,000 Americans plus uncountable number of Vietnamese, so that the ultimately pardoned-by- Ford Richard Nixon would be reelected in 1972. If you ask me, this is, in effect, and even if not intended as such, an accusation of mass murder for political purposes, and it probably is not incorrect. But on one panel, consisting of Theodore Sorenson, Jack Valente, Kissinger, and Alexander Haig, Kissinger (and Haig too, but especially Kissinger) showed no remorse whatever, apologized for nothing at all, used his large, McNamarish -- type, if evil, brain to bring up, one after another, purported facts and claims supposedly supporting everything he did, and leveled defacto accusations of bad faith and ignorance at members of the immediate audience who thought him wrong, evil, or just plain a schmuck (all of which could include me in my living room watching him on tape many months after the conference). The only man of the four who seemed to have truly learned from the horrid experience of Viet Nam was Jack Valente. Yet Valente, admirable as he otherwise seemed, made one want to puke at the end by sympathizing with Kissinger, who many of us think the epitome of an evil genius, and by calling him a great man. So, as the conference at the Kennedy Library showed, today we have a guy like Kissinger (and to a lesser intent Haig) who, because we follow Ford's pardoning precedent and do not prosecute the evil doers at the top, gets to write books, speak at prestigious venues and make a bundle of money -- in the millions no doubt -- instead of preceding or following Saddam to the gallows or at least spending decades in the slammer. The latter fates are the types which, at least morally if not legally, and, for all I know, legally -- speaking too (and sometimes I am sure legally speaking too) would have been appropriate for Kissinger, his Democrat and Republican colleagues at the top with regard to Viet Nam over the course of ten years, and for the top officials of today's American government who have given us torture, kidnapping, crime, and massive deaths in Iraq and throughout the world during the last six years. Yet somehow (he says tongue in cheek) none of this seems to have made it into the mainstream media in connection with Ford's passing and the consequent discussion of the pardon. What a surprise, eh?
Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and editor of the blog Velvel on National Affairs. He can be reached at velvel@mslaw.edu.
By Lawrence R. Velvel
Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law
The death of Richard Nixon led to an outpouring of praise for him. You would have thought a saint had died. It was not until awhile later that people began to publicly remember that Nixon had been an evil man, had been, in his own famous description of what he claimed he was not, "a crook."
The death of Ronald Reagan was met by a more balanced assessment than Nixon's. This was surprising because, though people of my own views disliked most of what he was and did -- except, of course, for what is generally though not universally thought to be his role in causing the collapse of the Soviet Union -- the fact is that a large portion of the country regards him as Saint Ron. For a balanced assessment upon death to be made of Saint Ron, when only huzzahs for his accomplishments greeted the passing of the aptly nicknamed Dick Nixon, struck one as unusual.
The passing of Gerald Ford has generally been met, one thinks, with the same kind of balanced assessment as was Reagan's. At least this seems true as I write, on Friday, December 29th. Yet there are two points which give pause, one of which was passed over very lightly in the media, the other of which has been the subject of extensive discussion.
The matter given hardly a lick and a promise is Ford's effort to impeach Justice William Douglas.
In recent years, conservatives in departments of history or political science, and in the judiciary, have done their best to savage Douglas. They accuse him of being a liar, of being a philanderer, of not caring about judicial craft, and of almost any other sin or alleged sin you can think of. Maybe there is something to what they say, maybe not. Maybe there is something, but less than they claim (or pretend). I personally met Douglas twice, once at a dinner honoring him, attended by about two dozen people, in my home in Lawrence, Kansas, before he made a speech at the University of Kansas, and once afterwards in his chambers (i.e., his office) for lunch when I was visiting Washington. Both times he was a very charming, very nice fellow, and on the first occasion he showed himself especially percipient about the future course of Harry Blackmun. So I can't really comment on the conservative claims of turpitude. I can say, however, that back in the '50s, '60s and early '70s, the attempts to "get" Douglas were basically motivated by a conservative-to-reactionary attempt to hold back the tide that swept over mid-late and late 20th century America. Nor would I be surprised if at least some -- who knows what percentage? -- of the recent efforts to savage him have been motivated by, or at least reflect, pique, or anger, that things Douglas stood for have prevailed.
Jerry Ford was prominent -- was a ringleader -- among those who tried to "get" Douglas because the Justice was in the forefront of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, both before and after Earl Warren, as well as during the Warren Court. In attempting this the reactionaries and the conservatives wanted to reverse or nullify, if they could, the Court's rulings on reapportionment, on voting rights, on free speech, on religion, on rights of privacy (which culminated in that famous case about alternative choices of waterborne movement, Roe v. Wade), on criminal rights, and who knows what else. Ford was one of the reactionaries who desired some or all of these reversals, and was in the van of the movement to try to impeach and get rid of Douglas because of the Court's decisions. Yet many of the decisions or perhaps even most of them -- one would guess there are people who think all of them -- became part and parcel of the America of today. Douglas was a man who was on the right side (meaning the correct side) of everything. Ford was a man who was on the politically right (and therefore the wrong) side of lots of things, most things in fact. What Ford attempted to do to Douglas was unforgivable, and should not be forgiven. But we have heard very little of it upon his passing. Perhaps this is precisely because what Ford did was unforgivable.
The matter which has received extensive treatment is, of course, Ford's pardon of Nixon. I am willing to take at face value Ford's denials that there was a deal in advance for a pardon, and am willing to do so despite Alexander Haig's discussion with Ford, and the two relevant pieces of paper he gave Ford a week or so before Nixon resigned (one of the papers was a blank pardon.) In this connection I'll accept either or both of two non-mutually exclusive propositions: that Ford was honest and that he was unintelligent enough to fail to comprehend the possible implications of Haig's comments. But even accepting the denial of a deal, the pardon was inexcusable and is to this day unforgivable.
One is aware, of course, that after being greeted with a huge outcry -- even Ford's Press Secretary resigned rather than defend it -- the pardon came to be seen as a good and courageous thing, and is thusly lauded today. (Even Ted Kennedy, who at first opposed it, ultimately changed his mind about it.) One is likewise aware that Ford, and people who now approve it, think the pardon helped to supposedly "heal" this country, as it is said, and to further put an end to what Ford had called our "long national nightmare." None of this moves me one bit. I think that in the long run, and considered in the light of what has happened and what America has become, the pardon was a disaster -- or, perhaps more accurately, was another in a train of disasters.
The pardon showed, once again, -- in fact I think it publicly showed for the first time, really -- that in America we do not punish criminals in high office or, for that matter, people at somewhat lower levels if they are acting in accordance with the wishes of those in high office. There have been some exceptions to this, of course -- Iran Contra being a major one, although even there no punishment was imposed on the people at the very top, including Reagan. But by large, if you are high enough, and if what you've done is bad enough, you can expect to get off scot-free in this country. So Johnson, McNamara, Bush, Nixon, Kissinger, Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al -- unlike the soon to be hung (or, by the time this appears, perhaps the recently hung) Saddam -- will never see the inside of a dock or a prison let alone stand on a gallows. That the truly big time miscreants inevitably get off scot-free here is one of the reasons many Americans (justifiably) have little or no faith in our government. It is also one of the main reasons our leaders all-too-blithely take us into wars, uselessly bomb large sections of other countries to smithereens, order up torture, mess over and suppress civil rights, and so forth. There is nothing holding them back, you see. There will be no trial, no punishment, and, for that matter, not even an impeachment. Neither will their own children or relatives get caught up in a war. So this cautionary possibility does not hold them back either. And the lesson that our home grown warmongers will never suffer trial and punishment for their illegal deeds was driven home -- maybe, as I say, for the very first time -- by Gerald Ford's (precedent setting?) pardon of Nixon.
In this greater scheme of things, it is mere irony that Ford also committed the basest hypocrisy by saying, earlier in his speech announcing the pardon, that he believes people must be treated equally before the law.
One knows, of course, that Ford and persons who approve of the pardon have said it saved us the divisiveness that would have been caused by the sight of a President defending himself against criminal charges for a year or three. This could be true, but in a larger sense is just a bunch of humbuggery. The pardon may have spared us that particular divisive sight, but it certainly did not spare us the most bitter division over the years. The conservatives on the right have never gotten over the '60s and for years tried, and may still be trying, to roll us back to the '50s or even the 1890s. There is still a tremendous and bitter division in this country over such things as the Viet Nam war, the place of religion, sexual matters, abortion, permissible infringements on civil liberties, economic regulation versus almost wholly unregulated capitalism, and, most importantly of all because it has the most profound impact of all, militarism and world wide interventionism. The pardon stopped none of this bitterly fought division and may even have implicitly encouraged the crucially important warmongering and imperialistically interventionist segment of it by making clear that Presidents and their top men would never pay any criminal penalty for any of it. And, as a fillip, it is no little irony that Ford, who claimed he pardoned Nixon to heal divisions, raised to their first stint in truly high places a number of people who have been instrumental in kindling or throwing gas on profound divisions or who gave us a child who did so (and who, but for the father, couldn't have been elected dogcatcher). I speak of course, of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the first George Bush.
Ford's horrid act of making plain that evil men would not be punished has repercussions even as I sit writing this. Knowing there will be no punishment, not only have our top officials committed indubitable crimes in Iraq and throughout the world in connection with their so-called war on terror, but one is hard pressed to doubt that, notwithstanding the electoral verdict of November 7th, George Bush will soon be sending more troops to Iraq, probably tens of thousands more. This will not be a crime because Congress passed on authorization of war which allows it, but it will nonetheless be a truly terrible thing to do. But what will stop the true believer, the pretender-in-chief, the man who gets his orders from a higher father than his earth bound father? He knows that, as the Nixon pardon shows, and as also shown by the failure to prosecute Johnson or Nixon or Rusk or McNamara or Kissinger or Bush himself or Cheney, etc, there is no true price, and certainly no criminal price, to be paid for anything he does. If you ask me, the price that we as a people have been and will continue to pay, at least in part because of the pardon, far exceeds any supposed, and heavily nonexistent, benefit from it.
* * * *
The week that I write this, C-Span is carrying tapes of a conference on Viet Nam held at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library last March. There were academics speaking at the conference who as much as said, based in part on documents that only recently have seen the light of day one gathers, that Nixon and Kissinger prolonged the Viet Nam war for years, and caused the deaths of perhaps another 25,000 or 30,000 Americans plus uncountable number of Vietnamese, so that the ultimately pardoned-by- Ford Richard Nixon would be reelected in 1972. If you ask me, this is, in effect, and even if not intended as such, an accusation of mass murder for political purposes, and it probably is not incorrect. But on one panel, consisting of Theodore Sorenson, Jack Valente, Kissinger, and Alexander Haig, Kissinger (and Haig too, but especially Kissinger) showed no remorse whatever, apologized for nothing at all, used his large, McNamarish -- type, if evil, brain to bring up, one after another, purported facts and claims supposedly supporting everything he did, and leveled defacto accusations of bad faith and ignorance at members of the immediate audience who thought him wrong, evil, or just plain a schmuck (all of which could include me in my living room watching him on tape many months after the conference). The only man of the four who seemed to have truly learned from the horrid experience of Viet Nam was Jack Valente. Yet Valente, admirable as he otherwise seemed, made one want to puke at the end by sympathizing with Kissinger, who many of us think the epitome of an evil genius, and by calling him a great man. So, as the conference at the Kennedy Library showed, today we have a guy like Kissinger (and to a lesser intent Haig) who, because we follow Ford's pardoning precedent and do not prosecute the evil doers at the top, gets to write books, speak at prestigious venues and make a bundle of money -- in the millions no doubt -- instead of preceding or following Saddam to the gallows or at least spending decades in the slammer. The latter fates are the types which, at least morally if not legally, and, for all I know, legally -- speaking too (and sometimes I am sure legally speaking too) would have been appropriate for Kissinger, his Democrat and Republican colleagues at the top with regard to Viet Nam over the course of ten years, and for the top officials of today's American government who have given us torture, kidnapping, crime, and massive deaths in Iraq and throughout the world during the last six years. Yet somehow (he says tongue in cheek) none of this seems to have made it into the mainstream media in connection with Ford's passing and the consequent discussion of the pardon. What a surprise, eh?
Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and editor of the blog Velvel on National Affairs. He can be reached at velvel@mslaw.edu.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Iraq: Kissinger's 'decent interval', take two
The prospect of seeing Henry Kissinger's principles and methods of realpolitik applied to the mess in the Middle East makes one shudder, yet at age 83 he seems determined to recapture former glory - or ignominy. This is the statesman who was able to give South Vietnam to the communists after a "decent interval". In the present Middle East, there's unlikely to be a decent interval to provide the illusion of achieving "peace with honor".
Nov 23, 2006
By Marc Erikson
At age 83, Henry Kissinger aims to recapture former glory - or ignominy as it were. Thirty-three years after being honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Vietnam (he didn't), he is insinuating himself into the row over US Iraq policy. The prospect of seeing Kissingerian principles and methods of realpolitik applied to the mess in the Middle East makes one shudder.
Kissinger role models Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck hardly made Central Europe a safer or better place in the 19th century. An inspection of Vietnam-era secret documents now declassified after the lapse of the mandatory 30-year period does not make for encouraging reading. On June 20, 1972, then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger told Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in the course of a four-hour meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing:
So we should find a way to end the war, to stop it from being an international situation, and then permit a situation to develop in which the future of Indochina can be returned to the Indochinese people. And I can assure you that this is the only object we have in Indochina, and I do not believe this can be so different from yours. We want nothing for ourselves there. And while we cannot bring a communist government to power, if as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina. (Emphasis added) [1]
A month and a half later (August 3, 1972), Kissinger explained to president Richard Nixon:
We will agree to a historical process or a political process in which the real forces in Vietnam will assert themselves, whatever these forces are. 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. [2]
The "strategy" - if you want to call it that - summarized here by Kissinger had been conceived at least a year earlier. As noted in the Indochina section of the briefing book for Kissinger's July 1971 China trip:
On behalf of President Nixon I want to assure the prime minister [Zhou] solemnly that the United States is prepared to make a settlement that will truly leave the political evolution of South Vietnam to the Vietnamese alone. We are ready to withdraw all of our forces by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future
... We want a decent interval. You have our assurance. [Marginal notation in Kissinger's hand.] If the Vietnamese people themselves decide to change the present government, we shall accept it. But we will not make that decision for them. [3]
One wonders what exactly the United States' South Vietnamese allies would have thought or done had they known the substance of Kissinger's "diplomacy" - if you want to call it that - on behalf of their future.
Well, that was then. What about Iraq and the wider Middle East region now? Turn Iraq over to the communists? Unhappily for Kissinger-style strategy, there are no communists in the vicinity to turn it over to; and the Chinese communists are unlikely takers.
But no need to despair. Referencing alleged recommendations of the Iraq Study Group co-led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton to be issued in the near future, Kissinger writes in a November 17 op-ed in the Khaleej Times ("What do we do with Iran?"):
The argument has become widespread that Iran (and Syria) should be drawn into a negotiating process, hopefully to bring about a change of their attitudes as happened, for example, in the opening to China a generation ago. This, it is said, will facilitate a retreat by the US to more strategically sustainable positions.
But after a swipe at the Bush administration's refusal to negotiate with members of the "axis of evil" ("A diplomacy that excludes adversaries is clearly a contradiction in terms"), Kissinger cautions:
The argument on behalf of negotiating too often focuses on the opening of talks rather than their substance. The fact of talks is assumed to represent a psychological breakthrough. The relief supplied by a change of atmosphere is bound to be temporary, however. Diplomacy - especially with an adversary - can succeed only if it brings about a balance of interests. Failing that, it runs the risks of turning into an alibi for procrastination or a palliative to ease the process of defeat without, however, eliminating the consequences of defeat.
That, no doubt, is a point well taken. Following the logic of his own argument and method, Kissinger thus looks for a worthy adversary with whom to balance interests and make a deal, and finds two - Iran and Russia.
The present problem with Iran, he says, is that it views itself as a crusade, not a nation, and you can't make deals or negotiate with a crusade. Hence "Iran needs to be encouraged to act as a nation, not a cause" to become a negotiating partner.
Might that include toleration of Iran's becoming a nuclear power? That's where Russia comes in in the Kissinger scheme of things. "Probably no country ... fears an Iranian nuclear capability more than Russia, whose large Islamic population lies just north of the borders of Iran," writes Kissinger.
He believes that the Europeans are unlikely to put tough sanctions on Iran and does not believe that the US will become more deeply involved, let alone resort to military action, in the last two years of the Bush administration. Which leaves Russia. The difference between Russia and the Europeans is that "if matters reach a final crunch, Russia is more likely to take a stand, especially when an Iranian nuclear capability begins to look inevitable, even more when it emerges as imminent".
Bottom line? Let Russia cope with Iran as it becomes a nation state and nuclear power. Unspoken conclusion: an Iran contained and made to behave by Russia can play the role of regional arbiter, notably if the moderate Sunni states of the region - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Gulf states - act as counterbalances. And presto, the US can withdraw.
It's of course precisely such balance-of-power arithmetic that - when something didn't quite compute - led straight from Bismarck's complex alliances to World War I.
In the 1970s, with an apparently stable Soviet Union as the principal adversary and the opportunity of making a balance-of-power deal with Mao Zedong's China, after a "decent interval" Kissinger was able to write off South Vietnam as a lost cause. In the present Middle East, there's unlikely to be a decent interval to provide for the illusion of achieving "peace with honor".
Note
[1] Quoted from the transcript (pp 27-37) of Henry Kissinger's meeting with Zhou Enlai, June 20, 1972. Source: The National Security Archive; George Washington University; "Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, June 20, 1972". Date and time: Tuesday, June 20, 1972, 2:05-6:05pm. Place: Great Hall of the People, Peking.
[2] Source: Transcript of White House tapes.
[3] Excerpt from the Indochina section of the briefing book for Kissinger's July 1971 trip; National Security Archive.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK23Ak04.html
Nov 23, 2006
By Marc Erikson
At age 83, Henry Kissinger aims to recapture former glory - or ignominy as it were. Thirty-three years after being honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Vietnam (he didn't), he is insinuating himself into the row over US Iraq policy. The prospect of seeing Kissingerian principles and methods of realpolitik applied to the mess in the Middle East makes one shudder.
Kissinger role models Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck hardly made Central Europe a safer or better place in the 19th century. An inspection of Vietnam-era secret documents now declassified after the lapse of the mandatory 30-year period does not make for encouraging reading. On June 20, 1972, then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger told Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in the course of a four-hour meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing:
So we should find a way to end the war, to stop it from being an international situation, and then permit a situation to develop in which the future of Indochina can be returned to the Indochinese people. And I can assure you that this is the only object we have in Indochina, and I do not believe this can be so different from yours. We want nothing for ourselves there. And while we cannot bring a communist government to power, if as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina. (Emphasis added) [1]
A month and a half later (August 3, 1972), Kissinger explained to president Richard Nixon:
We will agree to a historical process or a political process in which the real forces in Vietnam will assert themselves, whatever these forces are. 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. [2]
The "strategy" - if you want to call it that - summarized here by Kissinger had been conceived at least a year earlier. As noted in the Indochina section of the briefing book for Kissinger's July 1971 China trip:
On behalf of President Nixon I want to assure the prime minister [Zhou] solemnly that the United States is prepared to make a settlement that will truly leave the political evolution of South Vietnam to the Vietnamese alone. We are ready to withdraw all of our forces by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future
... We want a decent interval. You have our assurance. [Marginal notation in Kissinger's hand.] If the Vietnamese people themselves decide to change the present government, we shall accept it. But we will not make that decision for them. [3]
One wonders what exactly the United States' South Vietnamese allies would have thought or done had they known the substance of Kissinger's "diplomacy" - if you want to call it that - on behalf of their future.
Well, that was then. What about Iraq and the wider Middle East region now? Turn Iraq over to the communists? Unhappily for Kissinger-style strategy, there are no communists in the vicinity to turn it over to; and the Chinese communists are unlikely takers.
But no need to despair. Referencing alleged recommendations of the Iraq Study Group co-led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton to be issued in the near future, Kissinger writes in a November 17 op-ed in the Khaleej Times ("What do we do with Iran?"):
The argument has become widespread that Iran (and Syria) should be drawn into a negotiating process, hopefully to bring about a change of their attitudes as happened, for example, in the opening to China a generation ago. This, it is said, will facilitate a retreat by the US to more strategically sustainable positions.
But after a swipe at the Bush administration's refusal to negotiate with members of the "axis of evil" ("A diplomacy that excludes adversaries is clearly a contradiction in terms"), Kissinger cautions:
The argument on behalf of negotiating too often focuses on the opening of talks rather than their substance. The fact of talks is assumed to represent a psychological breakthrough. The relief supplied by a change of atmosphere is bound to be temporary, however. Diplomacy - especially with an adversary - can succeed only if it brings about a balance of interests. Failing that, it runs the risks of turning into an alibi for procrastination or a palliative to ease the process of defeat without, however, eliminating the consequences of defeat.
That, no doubt, is a point well taken. Following the logic of his own argument and method, Kissinger thus looks for a worthy adversary with whom to balance interests and make a deal, and finds two - Iran and Russia.
The present problem with Iran, he says, is that it views itself as a crusade, not a nation, and you can't make deals or negotiate with a crusade. Hence "Iran needs to be encouraged to act as a nation, not a cause" to become a negotiating partner.
Might that include toleration of Iran's becoming a nuclear power? That's where Russia comes in in the Kissinger scheme of things. "Probably no country ... fears an Iranian nuclear capability more than Russia, whose large Islamic population lies just north of the borders of Iran," writes Kissinger.
He believes that the Europeans are unlikely to put tough sanctions on Iran and does not believe that the US will become more deeply involved, let alone resort to military action, in the last two years of the Bush administration. Which leaves Russia. The difference between Russia and the Europeans is that "if matters reach a final crunch, Russia is more likely to take a stand, especially when an Iranian nuclear capability begins to look inevitable, even more when it emerges as imminent".
Bottom line? Let Russia cope with Iran as it becomes a nation state and nuclear power. Unspoken conclusion: an Iran contained and made to behave by Russia can play the role of regional arbiter, notably if the moderate Sunni states of the region - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Gulf states - act as counterbalances. And presto, the US can withdraw.
It's of course precisely such balance-of-power arithmetic that - when something didn't quite compute - led straight from Bismarck's complex alliances to World War I.
In the 1970s, with an apparently stable Soviet Union as the principal adversary and the opportunity of making a balance-of-power deal with Mao Zedong's China, after a "decent interval" Kissinger was able to write off South Vietnam as a lost cause. In the present Middle East, there's unlikely to be a decent interval to provide for the illusion of achieving "peace with honor".
Note
[1] Quoted from the transcript (pp 27-37) of Henry Kissinger's meeting with Zhou Enlai, June 20, 1972. Source: The National Security Archive; George Washington University; "Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, June 20, 1972". Date and time: Tuesday, June 20, 1972, 2:05-6:05pm. Place: Great Hall of the People, Peking.
[2] Source: Transcript of White House tapes.
[3] Excerpt from the Indochina section of the briefing book for Kissinger's July 1971 trip; National Security Archive.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK23Ak04.html
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