Kissinger: The Root of All Failure?

Charlie Rose devoted his entire show Wednesday 12/13/2006 to an interview with Henry Kissinger. You can watch it here:

http://www.charlierose.com/

After listening to Kissinger for any period longer than about 20 seconds, one question has to be asked.

Why is anyone willing to waste any time listening to this guy?

Besides being easily the single most annoying public figure to actually LISTEN to for any period of time, there's a more obvious reason no one should have to listen to this man. If you strung all of the strategic and moral failures of our foreign policy over the last 40 years into a movie, he'd be the Forrest Gump character appearing somewhere in the frame in nearly every scene.

Here's the saddest comment from the Charlie Rose interview:

This was my view in 2003. What I meant to say was we had to go in there for three strategic reasons. That challenging America would have disastrous consequences. That Afghanistan was not enough to make that point. We had to make that point to the incipient movement that was spreading through the region, of which 9/11 was the expression.

Read that again. Regardless of WHO WAS AT FAULT FOR THE ATTACK ON SEPTEMBER 11, the people advising our government felt THE MOST IMPORTANT THING was that SOMEONE paid a price for SOMEONE attacking the United States. No concern about ensuring the two SOMEONES were the SAME someone.

Well, he was certainly right about one thing. We certainly proved that disastrous consequences would result from attacking America.

Also, he never really stated THREE strategic reasons for going into Iraq that existed PRIOR to going into Iraq. His subsequent comments only cite motivations for stabilizing the region to protect it from the chaos we induced by our execution of the war. Flawed, bankrupt circular logic. "We needed to go into Iraq because we're in Iraq and things aren't going well."

Here are two other gems of geopolitical hypocrisy from the interview:

Nothing will be gained by looking at the past mistakes. we must look at the present situation and go forward. --- Certainly no change in Bush Administration policy called for there.

Iran must operate as a country, not as a crusade. --- We certainly don't want Iran fomenting Shia-bent Islamic theocracies in the region, but is toppling a dictator in an attempt to grow democracy like some sort of dime-store Chia Pet any more legitimate?

America will continue to have much to worry about as long as people with track records as consistently disastrous as Kissinger continue to have the ear of current decision makers to help dig a few more feet in the holes they started digging decades ago.