Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2003, pages 11, 44

Special Report

Is the Time-Tested Kissinger Pattern Doomed to Repeat Itself?

By Richard H. Curtiss

Henry A. Kissinger was one of the lucky German refugees who immigrated to the United States in 1938, after his family realized that nothing good would happen as Adolf Hitler increased his influence in their native country. Born into a family of Orthodox Jews, he was called Heinz Alfred before he Americanized his name. It was a little too late for Kissinger to correct his thick German accent, however. In retrospect, it also was a little too late to change his pessimistic Old World views, which only increased as he grew older.

Almost as soon as Kissinger adopted his new identity he found himself in the U.S. Army. That is a sobering experience, even for those not handicapped by the problems of Americanization. He has written virtually nothing about those early years.

When his service was completed, Kissinger demonstrated his intelligence by eventually earning a doctorate at Harvard University and becoming a member of the faculty there. He later became a protégé of Republican New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.

When Richard Nixon reentered politics after his defeat by John F. Kennedy, the former vice president was aware that accusations of anti-Semitism that had shadowed that campaign—whether accurate or not—had to be expunged. Nixon was determined never to make the same mistake twice, so he chose Kissinger as his national security adviser and appointed William P. Rogers as his secretary of state.

It was then that Henry Kissinger revealed his conspiratorial tendencies by immediately setting out to denigrate and undercut his associates. Day in and day out, Kissinger plotted to increase his political stature at the expense of Rogers.

Kissinger took one prerogative after another from Rogers, eventually paring away most of Rogers’ responsibilities. Believing that Kissinger, being Jewish, would not be neutral, Nixon had said from the beginning of his administration that it was important that Rogers concentrate on the Middle East.

So, of course, control of Middle East policy became Henry Kissinger’s greatest goal. It was only after Nixon was reelected to a second term that Kissinger made his final move in promoting himself and elbowing Rogers out of any authority at all. When Rogers resigned, “Henry the K.,” as the national press had begun calling him, became the sole occupant of the two positions of secretary of state and national security adviser. This had never happened before.

In President Nixon’s first term, an amazing number of crises presented themselves, and very few were solved. Almost from the time that Nixon began his second term, however, a long and rapidly growing blight manifested itself. That was “Watergate,” the attempt to cover up the traces of an incipient scandal that eventually brought a disgraceful end to Nixon’s presidency.

Kissinger always had an excuse for being somewhere else when the going got tough.

Kissinger, however, convinced Nixon that it was essential that he, Kissinger, be kept at a distance from the scandal. This, he explained, would save Nixon’s presidency in the long run. Of course, this never happened.

In fact, it was a hallmark of Kissinger’s tenure that he always had an excuse for being somewhere else when the going got tough. Therefore, when Nixon resigned, an unblemished Kissinger continued on his Middle East journeys without dropping a stitch.

It was only two years later, when President Gerald Ford lost his own bid for election, that Kissinger retired. At that point, Kissinger seemed covered with honors. At the same time, however, he seemed to have virtually no close friends. The more one looked at the medals and trophies, the more Kissinger’s accomplishments seemed to lose their luster. One by one, most of those honors fell apart.

By then Kissinger was writing his memoirs, which eventually amounted to three volumes. These seemed largely to absolve the author of any blame for his failings, while keeping what little credit remained for himself. Meanwhile, Kissinger and some of his government colleagues founded Kissinger Associates, a very high-priced firm with a select clientele.

Kissinger has always remained exceedingly private, and this did not change when he was asked the day before Thanksgivingto undertake the chairmanship of a probe of 9/11 intelligence flaws. His vice-chairman is George J. Mitchell, who since his retirement as a long-time Senate leader has been appointed to help solve the long-standing problems in Northern Ireland and whose Mideast commission produced the eponymous Mitchell Plan.

It is ironic that President George W. Bush selected a person as controversial as Kissinger for the position. Normally, as time passes, the wounds of a life spent in the public eye are dulled or disappear. In Henry Kissinger’s case, however, he has just as many enemies now as he did at the end of the Watergate episode 28 years ago. In fact, new controversies pop up regularly, from Latin America to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The wounds, it seems, are still raw, and will almost certainly outlive Kissinger himself.

This writer has lived on the fringes of some of the major events of Kissinger’s eight years in office. These include the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Nixon’s restoration of diplomatic relations with Syria, the American evacuation of Beirut in 1975, by which he hoped to restore a rapidly vanishing presidency. In retrospect, each of these events eventually lowered American prestige.

Once Upon a Time…

There was a time when, according to polls, Kissinger was the most admired person in the United States. The more people became aware of Kissinger’s downsides, however, the less they thought of him, and his reputation continues to sink.

Personally, this writer once believed that Kissinger would solve the Arab-Israeli problem. I thought that Kissinger was the only man who could do the job, as he couldn’t be charged with anti-Semitism, and he realized that something had to be done.

When Kissinger resigned, of course, nothing had been done at all. It was only when I read his memoirs—and particularly volume two—that I realized Kissinger’s true intentions. Solving the Arab-Israeli dispute was the last thing on his mind. He worked to ensure that Israel received maximum benefits from all his actions.

I hope that Kissinger, Mitchell and the other members of the intelligence panel will do their work well and conscientiously. Unless Kissinger has changed into a totally different person, however, the report will be an exercise in damage control, from which the public will learn very little. That is the Kissinger pattern, and it is evident in everything he does. Don’t look for any breakthroughs or revelations this time around, just brace yourself for more of the same.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

sidebar

Elliott Abrams, Militant Zionist, Chosen for NSC Post

President George W. Bush has appointed a militant Zionist, who once pleaded guilty of lying to Congress, to the important position of overseeing White House policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict. National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice announced on Dec. 2 the appointment of Elliott Abrams as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and North African Affairs, includingArab/Israel relations and U.S. efforts to promote peace and security in the region.

Abrams, 54, was a major figure in the plot known as the Iran-Contra affair. As the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs during the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, Abrams helped arm the Nicaraguan rebels despite a congressional prohibition. The scheme involved encouraging Israel to sell U.S.-made weapons to Iran, which in turn secretly sent weapons to the Latin American rebels. Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information when he testified before Congress about the secret American supply network for the Contras. Former President George Bush pardoned Abrams in December 1992, near the end of his presidency.

In the words of The New York Times Abrams is “a passionate advocate of Israel.” Some of his family members live in Israel, and his wife, Rachel, is the daughter of Midge Decter and stepdaughter of Commentary editor-at-large N.P. Podhoretz. Decker and Podhoretz are pioneers of the neoconservative movement, which came into being after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, largely to justify Israel’s retention of occupied Palestinian land.

A prolific writer about Israel and Jews, Abrams’ 1997 book, Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in Christian America, criticizes intermarriage as a danger to the survival of Jews in America. On the other hand, he urged Jews to band with evangelical Christians mainly to rally support for Israel.

Abrams opposed the landmark Oslo peace negotiations of 1993 between Israel and Yasser Arafat, arguing that Arafat should not be trusted. Last June President Bush accepted that position and openly called for Arafat’s removal from leadership of the PLO. Abrams has supported Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s argument that there should be no peace negotiations until attacks by Palestinians completely stop.

All told, the appointment of Elliott Abrams strongly indicates that the Bush administration is abandoning any effort at finding a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

—Donald Nef