Erasing the past...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: The Trials of Henry Kissinger...a really interesting documentary about the Kissinger years...
Topic: international policy
I saw this article, tonight, on AOL...

'Trauma Pill' Could Make Memories Less Painful...

It's a brave new world...forget all that pain...forget your past...all that pain from the past...a world without pain...a world of perfect happiness...a world that doesn't exist...

Tonight, Melissa and I watched the The Trials of Henry Kissinger...a powerful movie about the Kissinger years...it features interviews with Henry's harshest critics and his biggest defenders...and it is powerful stuff...

Henry's legacy is a complicated legacy of a committed and often stubborn anti-Communist who stepped over important lines to fight the scourge of Communism...there is evidence and testimony from people directly involved that Henry prolonged the Vietnam War in concert with the Nixon Administration, undermining peace negotiations being engaged by the Johnson Administration...that he gave a tacit nod of approval from Washington of the Suharto government in Indonesia to invade East Timor and essentially engage in genocide on the East Timorese...and, most serious of the accusations, that Henry authorized American intelligence officers to coordinate the overthrow of the democratically-elected Socialist leadership Salvador Allende in Chile, a coup that was initiated with the murder of Chilean general Rene Schneider, a general committed to upholding Chile's democratic constitution who was gunned down by CIA-authorized agents in the effort to remove Salvador Allende from power...

The movie is a pretty damning critique of Henry's many serious policy and moral failings as Secretary of State...and raises questions of war crimes...

I spent most of the first half of the movie defending Henry, to Melissa, against what I believe are vindictive and dishonest charges of war crimes against Henry...even as I very much agree that his political and policy mistakes cost many, many lives, unecessarily, in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia...and as I very much agree that authorizing the kidnapping which led to the murder of Rene Schneider to topple the Allende government was clearly wrong, anti-democratic, and resulted in the murder of a decent and honorable man to further the undemocratic ends of the Nixon Administration and Secretary of State Kissinger...

The last charge is the most serious...and the one that must/should rest on Henry's conscience the most gravely...Henry made a decision in Chile that likely led to the murder of a decent and honorable Chilean general upholding his country's constitution to honor the results of a democratic election, no matter who favored which candidate and which ideology to win that election...

As Seymour Hersh ends the movie, "I do think that somewhere down deep that he knows what he was doing. He knows that it was against a lot of first principles. Which is why so much is masked and hidden, and there's so much distrust. It's a very, very sad way to go through your life. Whatever he did, whatever he accomplished, I'm not sure it's worth it. Because he had to live a lot more years. You know, he's been out of power for a long time, you know, 25 yearsm now. In his own way, the reason I don't worry about war crimes or anything else, he's got his own sentence. He's got to live with himself."

The mistakes Henry is accused of making, all three of the ones discussed in the movie I agree were policy mistakes and mistakes of morality and conscience, I don't think Henry should go to prison for...there isn't evidence that Henry intended for Schneider to die...though, as Christopher Hitchens points out (a rare time that Christopher Hitchens and I agree about Henry Kissinger) in a criminal case, murder in the course of kidnapping is an aggravating offense...not a defense...it is an offense that Henry is likely guilty of...though it is not an offense that I want him to be imprisoned for...

I don't believe that he is a threat of future murder or violence...and he is very likely sorry for what he did...I do think he owes a lot of apologies...to the family of Rene Schneider...to the families of the hundreds of thousands of Cambodian people that his and President Nixon's policies unnecesarily slaughtered...and to the families of the tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who lost their lives when the war was prolonged just as it was reaching a peace deal in 1968...

I don't know if we'll see those apologies before the end of Henry's life...and likely not as long as criminal proceedings hang over his head...

But one thing I am totally clear about is that the cycle of cynicism that animates this kind of ugliness and rationalizations for such terrible policy and political calculations will not end with the ascendancy of liberals cynical about past matters that pose no future threat...

I do think a process of truth and reconciliation, as has been initiated in South Africa and other nations, in Chile, to help that nation heal from the crimes of right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet, in Indonesia and East Timor (a process that is already being engaged in East Timor, to my knowledge) from the genocide that occurred there, in Cambodia and Vietnam, for whatever pain still remains there from the bloody wars fought on their soils, and within the international community around a whole slew of situations where forgiveness is a better option to more vindictiveness -- where people involved pose no current threat -- would be a better alternative to an international criminal trial, pressure for the latter which will likely make an apology and healing far less likely...

Henry's case does illustrate just how cynicism too often makes us more like the very people we fear and hate...and how long we can go on rationalizing our fears and hatred and cynicism...and the harm that occurs, as a consequence...

But I have very little confidence that vindictiveness with Henry Kissinger will serve any purpose at all...and would do much harm to America and everyone involved...

I've had many people hurt me over the course of my lifetime...most people I know have hurt me in some way...some with more cynicism and mean-spiritedness than others...

And I know...that though I am concerned not to let the hurt happen again, if possible...and if serious enough...

That forgiveness is the only way to handle such hurt...

No matter what we may go through...no matter how serious...wise judgment as much as a concern for the crimes committed must guide how we handle such situations...

And I think the wisest judgment with Henry Kissinger would expect both forgiveness...and apologies from Henry...for the people he has hurt...and often for whom -- in more and less good faith -- he has been responsible for their deaths...even in a noble cause of opposing Communism...

What a sad legacy for a public servant to leave...

And what a proud legacy of forgiveness that President Clinton wisely counseled the country to adopt in his moving eulogy for President Richard Nixon...

Desmond Tutu has written extensively about the need for forgiveness in such situations...to prevent fresh rounds of recrimination...in this case, political recrimination...in more serious cases, violent recrimination...

There is only one way out for liberals and conservatives around mistakes of the past...only one way that leads us in a direction of genuine and constructive responsibility for the future...

And that is forgiveness...

It is the only way through...

During the religious wars of the 17th Century...Thomas Hobbes watched as his own home country of Great Britain was engulfed in civil war in a country lost in its recriminations between Catholics and Protestants and the various political groups that represented them...

And it was his commitment to a world without religious warfare...which inspired modern secular policy thought...and the secular world, with all of its security and its freedoms, that you and I take for granted today...

And 21st century America and the world must find a way through the fog of power battles which cloud our judgment and leave us lost in recrimination...lost in a way that often obscures and prevents better policies from being adopted...all in the name of a satisfaction that can never come from revenge...

I read a good portion of Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts, this afternoon...it was an interesting read for anyone concerned with how the American military looks on the ground around the world...and an interesting if rationalizing history of American military ventures against Native Americans as Americans expanded West...

Kaplan's book is both badly reasoned, as he fumbles through a terrible defense of the idea that American empire exists, currently -- an idea that Kaplan shares, ironically, with more mindless anti-war activists, and which is sloppy intellectually, on its face, and is soundly rebutted by Joe Nye in his book, Soft Power -- and that it is America's only defense against the anarchy on the edges of civilization...

The distinctions between America in the 21st century and 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century British, French, Spanish, Portugese and other empires, as well as Roman, Persian, and other various empires of the past are pretty important and not-easily-overlooked distinctions...

The major distinction being a lack of commitment to conquest or colonization by the American military, despite being based around the world and despite the many excesses and abuses of the use of military force by American administrations and any engaged in by servicemembers...

I ended up buying Joe Nye's Soft Power so I can stop borrowing it from the library...and since I learn something new in every read...as well as a really excellent collection of essays on terrorism called The Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, collected and edited by Walter Reich, which is a fascinating exploration of the motivations and psychologies of terrorists and their political supporters...both of which I'll be reading for quite a while, I imagine...

The contrast between Joe's book and the essays in the Origins of Terrorism and Robert Kaplan's anti-intellectual nonsense, supplemented by some fascinating descriptions of U.S. military missions around the world, is stark...it's the contrast between careful analyses based on big ideas and an anti-intellectual, small-minded, ugly rationalization of America ignoring the consequences of its decisions on others...

A more interesting contrast I noticed while I was at Borders...was between Kaplan's book and Thomas Sowell's book, A Conflict of Visions...the major difference between conservative Thomas Sowell's book and conservative Robert Kaplan's book being that Sowell takes ideas seriously...whereas Kaplan arrogantly disregards ideas and those who develop them out of a conceit that only a hard-nosed journalist like himself, and his hard-nosed military companions, can truly understand policy on the ground...it's a foolish and ugly conceit...and it happens to be wrong...and arrogance in one of its basest forms...

So I ended up buying the two best books I encountered (other than Taylor Branch's newest release, At Caanans's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968)...Soft Power...one of the most brilliant books on the use of force and authority, especially by governments in an international context, of any I've ever read...and Origins of Terrorism...one of the strongest collections of analyses of terrorism that I've ever encountered...

I do recommend that anyone who might rush to judgment of Henry Kissinger that they read some of his books...Diplomacy and Does America Need a Foreign Policy? are the two that I've studied...and at least three others, A World Challenged: Fighting Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century, The Necessity of Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy, and Ending the Vietnam War: A History of American's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War, that I would love to take some time with, at some point...

But...at this point...Soft Power and the Origins of Terrorism will be enough for me to consider...

It is remarkable to me the conceit of those who would make policy without considering better and best ideas to avoid and work to resolve problems in the future...nevertheless work on developing them...

Just as it is remarkable for me to imagine the conceit of my 6th grade student...disregarding the assassination of Martin Luther King in the cause of civil rights and basic human rights...

Just as it is remarkable for me to listen to so many people I discuss politics with about there being no need for forgiveness as either a part of their own personal morality or in public life...

As if a genuine morality could ever be detached from forgiveness or compassion or concern for others...and the wisdom and understanding that is derived from that forgiveness and compassion and considering the perspectives of others...

The policy world and the world of politics and public life is full of rationalizations for a lower standard for human conduct...for a more meager and petty morality as a standard for public life...

But the best that the policy world, and the world at large, and that our humanity has to offer is bigger than that lower standard...that rationalization of our basest impules...that more meager and petty form of self-righteous morality...

It takes a lot for me to forgive the persistent excuses of those who rationalize their ugliness in the name of morality or wise policy or any number of poorer standards for our own conduct...

But I do it...as often as it needs to be done...until we are done with this terrible legacy...that so hinders us...keeps us looking backwards...keeps us stuck in the past...keeps us from making needed course corrections in policy-making in the moment when those course-corrections are needed...and maintains all the same cycles of recrimination and power battles that prevent the development of more sound policy, both in the world of everyday politics, and in the world of scholarly policy thought, as well...and in the world at large...

And it is a standard that I hope will be elaborated and expanded by as many as possible after I've ended my commitment to public and higher purposes while I'm still around...

But...in the meantime...I won't settle for a lower standard...no matter how many excuses I hear for one...

Aggression should be used as little as necessary and possible...and everything else is a rationalization of our failures when we use it...

Including...in Henry's case...when we use aggression in a way that costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of people...in some cases, leading to deaths that we are more culpable for than others...

It is the only standard for the use of force that is genuinely concerned for those we use force in the name of...and that takes seriously the freedom that efforts to promote security are meant to protect...

The only way forward toward that standard...is by putting the past behind us...authentically...which means forgiving mistakes of the past...including Henry's...

And moving forward with a much higher standard...of our humanity and morality...and the seriousness with which we engage ideas, and the public and other discussions and debates that generate better and best ideas...

It is the only way forward...there is no other way...

And every other option is a means of avoiding the challenges and difficulties associated with holding ourselves to a higher standard...

And I just don't listen to those excuses any more...

And those who want to make them don't deserve a serious hearing of them, I don't think...

And our making them will remain a constant hinderance to our developing better policies...and treating each other better, generally...and resolving the many public problems that stand before us...

Until we begin to leave those excuses behind...

In that spirit...

I've got a couple of books to spend some time with:):)...

Have a great Martin Luther King weekend, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

A great international policy discussion...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: A Separate Peace...the newest rendition of the classic and beautiful John Knowles novel...
Topic: international policy
Four really great essays around Bush's policy in Iraq in the Winter 2005 edition of the National Interest...

The National Interest...

It never ceases to amaze me how the most recognized authors are, generally, the ones who have the most valuable things to say...

Conservative Daniel Pipes and liberal Joe Nye write two of the four essays and they are both very nice reviews of both the the very thoughtful essay by David Hendrickson and Robert Tucker in the previous Fall 2005 edition of the National Interest...

Hendrickson and Tucker make a powerful case for both an idealism that seeks to spread democracy and freedom...and yet a serious concern about how force may be used to accomplish that...and a very powerful case that America's founders, of all ideological stripes, looked upon such efforts with suspicion...

Joe's skepticism of the idea that democracy can be forced on a population is compelling (a notion I agree with, though I think, as does Joe, that there is much good that can come -- and has come, in the case of Iraq -- with military intervention in tyrannies, as long as such interventions support and are supported by grassroots efforts and more democratic impulses within those countries...a situation that Iraq is a unique case for, rather than a general example of, and a case of where such democratic impulses must be more fully engaged to ensure that fewer innocent Iraqis and American and other soldiers die for that cause)...

Pipes calls for a modest, patient idealism in the cause of advancing democracy abroad...he is still more complacent about the problems that come with using force to promote more modern, democratic governments than I or Joe...

Daniel Pipes...Defending and Advancing Freedom...Commentary Magazine, November 2005...

...but his idealism that a commitment to democracy should be expected for Arab governments and societies is a patient and tempered one that I agree is the more useful outlook...

Pipes doesn't seem to recognize the likely, albeit complicated, causality of fundamentalist Islamist reactions and subsequence governance in Algeria and Iran from our support of modernizing dictators -- the two examples he cites of to justify American support of modernizing autocrats to avoid radical fundamentalist reactionaries taking power - and instead excuses it with the reasoning that the likely consequences from our actions justify the policy that likely created the consequences that we were trying to avoid...I, too, sympathize with the reasoning for supporting the more civilized, though dictatorial, governments amongst a terrible set of options...but I do think that America and international policy thinkers should take note of the consequences of supporting such dictators without addressing in our diplomacy the problems with those dictatorships for the people who they rule...meaning, if we want peoples in places like Algeria and Iran to turn away from fundamentalists, we better support both better governing coalitions, in those countries, with our words more than with our arms or our money, and openly criticize the autocratic tendencies of those dictatorships, as President Bush has done a very fine job of doing, I believe...

Joe points to both the very serious advances that have come with a better expectation of Middle Eastern governments and societies and the very serious problems that come with using force to advance the cause...Joe notes the advances of democracy with municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the withdrawal of Syrian troops and elections in Lebanon, modest allowances for opposition in Egypt, and democratic progress in countries like Bahrain, Morocco, and Togo...but he is skeptical of the idea that such progress and future progress is or can be promoted through threats of military upheaval...the difficulties arising from indigineous resistance to the American presence in Iraq being the clearest caution to such a notion...

Pipes and Nye both see the powerful idealism that animates this war...and the advances its promoted...and share Hendrickson and Tucker's concern about promoting such efforts through force...though Pipes is more ambivalent about the question of whether such efforts might work, expressing some support for them in the Commentary article, while expressing doubt about whether they will be effective, long term, in Iraq...

One of the important implications of Pipes' and Nye's concerns is a powerful correction to the notion in the Administration, right now, that it will be successfully in threatenening and use military force to transform governments in Syria, Iran, and the like...Daniel seems less sure that such efforts will work...whereas Joe shares my concern that they do not work, generally, not just in the case of Iraq...a notion that has produced caution amongst most of the Administration's observers except for its most serious cheerleaders...and their thoughts are certainly corrective to Robert Kaplan's foolhardy notion of American empire...

Nye's essay is predictably brilliant...and Pipes' essay is as good as always...but what is particularly important about Pipes' comments is that he is pointing the direction to a more authentic, idealistic and democratic conservativism, in contrast with the cynical and ugly rationalizations of Robert Kaplan's thesis of American empire...

The future of the world...of America...and of American conservativism, liberalism, and independent and non-partisan thinking is around classical and important values of freedom and democracy...values that we are foolish to abandon for fantasies of world power...fantasies that both scare others in a way that undermines our credibility and leadership and the values and example we seek others to emulate, learn from, and grow with, along with Americans and our government...

And Daniel Pipes and Joe Nye illustrate why the strongest thinkers are so committed to such values...even as they share, as do I, a commitment to ending tyranny in all its forms...

Check out this discussion when you get a chance:):)...

Love,
Ben