While clearing out my e-mail storage, I came across this screed I felt prompted to write when Henry Kissinger celebrated his 100th birthday, a year ago next month. Never posted it, for some reason - don't know why.
It still rings true to how I feel about the man, so let me risk beating a dead horse (what a horrible metaphor!) and send it now.
Mostly I'm trying to figure out what's worse. being led by a self-serving narcissist, like the charlatan now on trial in New York City, or being led by a proponent of Realpolitik, as Kissinger was - the notion that you can't fight city hall and might as well lie down in the road and let the enemy tanks roll over you. What a choice! Surrender your better self to a liar-manipulator Führer type, because you see no reason to doubt the imagined paradise you want so much to believe in is reality. Or congratulate yourself for seeing things as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.
If you go the Realpolitik route, you'll find yourself in good Republican company. I'm not talking about the morons like MTG but about those who your gut tells you know know better: the new crop of Enablers, led by the likes of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, Republicans who represent not the party of Lincoln, but of his successor, Andrew Johnson, whose approach to reality was to act as if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Less risky in the long run than running down traitors and putting them on trial.
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"Sometimes you have to choke the dog to get the medicine down its throat."
I remember hearing a Japanese official utter that useful cliché when defending Japan's invasion of Manchuria, way back when I was first acquainting myself with recent Japanese history, as I prepared (not knowing what I was doing or where I was going) for a life in Japan.
To argue that the ends justify the means, that sometimes you have to do bad things to arrive at a good outcome, is the routine defence used by proponents of Realpolitik.
A parallel argument is made in philosophy discussions when you haul out the "lesser evil" examples in morality and ethics seminars. "If you see a train about to run over twelve people and you have the chance to pull a switch which would divert the train and make it run over only three people instead, do you pull the switch?"
People who say yes are utilitarians - people who say we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest number of people - and people who say no are Kantians - people who argue we should be governed by principles - and the overriding principle here is that one should never engage in any activity that leads to treating other human beings as a means to an end.
I prefer the Kantian approach; I retain the conviction that there is such a thing as evil, and that there are good guys and bad guys in the world, and that we should align ourselves with the good guys and "fight the good fight" whether we believe we will win in the end or not. I don't know who put that notion into my head. I probably got that conviction in Sunday School. Or maybe from my grandmother, who had a marvelously practical worldview and refused to let people complicate things she saw as simple and clear.
People are complex. Most people, even the good ones, do bad things at times. And one should, I think, not reject anybody out of hand. I like the Christian narrative, in that regard, the notion that God forgives you and once he does he wipes away all your sins, the notion that plagued Hamlet and kept him from killing his uncle when he found him praying, because his goal was to avenge his father, not to facilitate the uncle's entrance into heaven.
On the other hand, I part ways with the Christians - and other people who tell you that forgiveness is good for you because holding a grudge will only eat away at your soul in the long run. I don't believe in forgiving people if they don't ask for it and show some evidence that they have seen the error of their ways. I place a much greater weight on the Jewish valuation of justice. Bad things need to be put right. Forgiving somebody who doesn't seek it and doesn't deserve it merely prolongs the injustice and maybe even encourages the wrongdoer to do wrong again. No, I'm in favor of arresting criminals and locking them up - if we're talking legality here - and shunning them - if we're talking simple morality.
Mostly I'm in favor of spotting the bad guys and reminding ourselves constantly who they are, watching to keep them from getting away with doing bad things. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and others who have caused widespread misery need to be held accountable by history.
For reasons I've never fully understood, I've always found Augusto Pinochet to be the quintessential bad guy. If you don't want him in the Number One position, can we at least agree that he deserves recognition as a leading contender among the Bad People of History.
Right up there in my book with torturing dogs and cats is dropping people from airplanes into the sea - something that happened during the time of the Argentine dictatura, when Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean heads of state were all competing for the role of chief bad guy of South America. While living in Argentina, I was glued to the TV watching the trial of a priest who joined the junta's efforts to eliminate political opposition by throwing them from planes and helicopters. And according to a Guardian article in 2001, Chilean authorities followed the same practice.
All of them, you can be sure, surrounded themselves with others who shared their mindset that, as harsh as their methods got, they were ultimately serving a greater good. Ditto Henry Kissinger.
And, while we're at it, let me give a nod to another Enabler of Henry Kissinger's ilk, Jeane Kirkpatrick. I once heard her coming out of a meeting with Pinochet respond to a question about what she thought of him, respond, "Amable. Muy amable." I maintain that it's not necessarily the killers who shoot or stab their victims who most clearly represent evil, but the enablers, the ones who make the wheels go round and justify it all under the rubric of Realpolitik.
To get back to Kissinger, now surrounded and celebrated by the likes even of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I believe if there were justice in his case, he would be in jail as a serious war criminal. It is to America's undying shame that that man is treated like a hero. One can argue that I'm being Kantian here when I should be utilitarian. But that's where I stand.
I will not say anything good about Henry Kissinger.
And, on that subject, let me suggest you have a listen to Mehdi Hassan's take on the man:
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