Well, kudos to Henry, Brent, and Colin for their reluctance to kiss Mitt’s neo-con ass, but let’s not forget that the heritage of the Republican “realists” is a bit checkered. Kissinger didn’t have many qualms about overthrowing the government of Chile, mostly on the grounds that in the Western Hemisphere the U.S. could do whatever it damned pleased, because we were the only major power around. And it was George H.W. Bush, under whom Scowcroft achieved his greatest prominence and who is rather the missing man in the Times article, who first popularized the notion that U.S. armed intervention abroad could be a vote-getter at home.
Bush was enraged by U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and even more enraged when the dominos refused to fall, suggesting that perhaps Vietnam was not the keystone to American presence in Asia. As vice president, he urged Ronald Reagan to invade Panama, to punish former CIA stooge turned nationalist “leader” Manuel Noriega. Reagan, who didn’t think bloodshed was a vote getter, refused.
Once in office, of course, it was clean nails George rather than dirty nails Ronnie who was actually willing to kill innocent civilians in order to prove he had balls. And, of course, it was George who engineered the first Gulf war, initiated when semi-U.S. client Saddam Hussein insisted on taking all of Kuwait instead of contenting himself with half, as the Bush Administration had instructed him to do.
It was also Bush who turned what was originally designed as an exercise in Realpolitik, intended to push Hussein out of Kuwait but not to overthrow him, into a moral crusade. Worried that the U.S. might incur substantial casualties, Bush encouraged oppressed groups within Iraq to revolt against the man with whom the U.S. had been happily doing business only weeks before and insisted that our former buddy was somehow “the worst since Hitler.” We won a glorious victory, of course, somewhat marred by the deal we cut that allowed Hussein to remain in power and to slaughter at his leisure tens of thousands of hapless Iraqis whom Bush had encouraged to revolt in order to cover his own cowardly ass.
To punish Hussein for its own bloody incompetence, the Bush Administration embarked on an oppressive and vindictive policy of sanctions, continued by both the Clinton and the second Bush Administrations, causing immense suffering to the Iraqi people but not driving Hussein from power. And, of course, the son completed the ruin that the father began.
I admire Scowcroft for coming out publicly against the second Gulf War. Kissinger, in Kissinger-like fashion, wrote an article pretending to support the war but in fact attaching a long list of “necessary” pre-conditions that, if the Bush II folks actually tried to follow, would have postponed the war until sometime after the year 2525. When the New York Times actually had the temerity to call Henry on his little game, he bent to the squalling demands of the neo-cons to claim that the Times had misrepresented him. As for Colin, well, he lied, and now lies about his lies.
