Politico Wins The Morning With Some Henry Kissinger Knob-Gobbling

Withered garden gnome Henry Kissinger got himself a nice little write-up in Politico the other day. The thrust of the knob-swabbing was that even at his nursing home-appropriate age of 91, visits to his consulting office to kiss the old butcher’s ring remain de rigueur for any presidential candidate from either major party. Which is how you get the spectacle of such foreign policy savants as Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Chris Friggin’ Christie parading through Kissinger’s inner sanctum to toast him with a goblet of the freshly squeezed blood of orphaned Third World street urchins that keeps the Dark Lord’s atrophied heart beating.

Does anyone else hear that high-pitched whirring noise, as if Christopher Hitchens is spinning in his grave like the Tasmanian Devil on a meth binge?

It’s not that yr Wonkette is completely opposed to Kissinger’s theories of realpolitik if such thinking keeps us out of every potential foreign entanglement. If President Obama’s refusal to send American troops into the middle of the mess that is Syria can be traced to Kissinger’s advice, then hooray. It is just that there are plenty of non-interventionists who could be giving Obama the same advice. Some of them are not even war criminals!

Besides, it’s hard to read sentences like this without laughing:

Though some historians blame him for countless deaths in places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, Kissinger is more revered than ever in Washington.

Allow us to add to that list East Timor, Laos, Chile, South Africa, Angola, the Kurds in Iraq, the Jews in the Soviet Union, Cyprus … and that’s just off the top of our heads. Imagine if we had really thought about it. And it is a little facile to dismiss Kissinger’s role in the countless deaths in Vietnam with a case of “some say…” both-sides bullshit without mentioning his part in sabotaging the Paris peace talks in 1968 in order to help Nixon get elected, an act that prolonged America’s role in the Southeast Asia mess at least until the evacuation of Saigon seven years later. For that alone he should have been banished to the interior of Antarctica wearing nothing but a loincloth to fend for himself.

It’s also hard not to read passages like this without cracking up:

Kissinger summoned [Chris Christie] to his midtown Manhattan office in mid-2011 and urged him to run for president, saying he had a rare connection with voters. When Christie replied that he knew little about world affairs, his host told him not to worry. “We can work with you on that. Foreign policy is instinct, it’s character,” Christie recalled Kissinger saying.

Oh ho ho ho, that notoriously astute judge of character Henry Kissinger thinks Governor Meatballs, who can’t answer a question from a New Jersey schoolteacher without descending into a frothing ball of spittle and rage, could be molded into a cool, collected diplomat for American foreign policy. Sure thing. And we’ve got a commuter tunnel to New Jersey to sell you. Or we would, if Christie hadn’t cancelled it.

The sad thing is, Kissinger could actually be a moderating influence on today’s GOP. While the base may hunger for a president who will bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran, Kissinger counsels old-fashioned diplomacy and negotiation to keep the regime there from getting nukes. While the Republican base beat their chests and hooted like drunken silverbacks in defending Israel’s attack on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla in 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enlisted Kissinger to try to convince Bibi Netanyahu to apologize to Turkey.

So there you have it, folks. Well into his nineties, a man who once complained that not allowing presidents the legal power to order assassinations is “an act of insanity and national humiliation” will not only play a role in shaping our next president’s thinking on foreign policy, but he may be one of the more moderate voices in the conversation.

Now excuse us while we drink ourselves into a coma.

[ Politico ]