I knew he was alive, but I imagine it comes as a shock to most people. One of the last World War II veterans still in public life at age 99. Kissinger has a talent for taking fairly common place ideas, inserting academic jargon from the forties and fifties, and holding forth with them in German accented English which he has somehow maintained in spite of living in this country for more than seven decades. It takes so very little for a Diplomat Obvious to be proclaimed a latter day Metternich. He did date Jill St. John back in his forties, which was more impressive than his dubious diplomatic accomplishments. Go here to read the article.
Henry K is Still Alive?
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Dr. Kissinger iced his 1st wife and was so spooked by the Lyndon LaRouche cult that he insisted for a number of years on round-the-clock security for himself and his 2d (something that required he do a great deal of buck-raking that he insisted included no influence peddling). He could also be unpleasant in work situations in a variety of ways (though I gather the manipulative games he played with Richard Nixon he didn’t try with Gerald Ford). I don’t know that there’s any reason to cut up his performance in office or his occasional interventions in public life since. William Shawcross and Christopher Hitchens tried to stick him with the blame for all sorts of unpleasantness, but we’re not obligated to take their bad arguments seriously. The scandals and policy failures of the Nixon-Ford Administration had several authors (Nixon himself, John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman, HR Haldeman, John Dean, and, top of the list, Arthur Burns and his cabal at the Federal Reserve). Kissinger wasn’t one of them.
Tallyrand and Metternich were also regarded as diplomatic statesmen in their time because of their participation at the Congress of Vienna. Like Kissinger and Vietnam, they came up with a solution for Europe’s internecine problems which proved only a temporary solution. The League of Nations and the UN were also considered solutions. Only NATO, with a dove in one hand and a sword in the other, has even come close to establishing real order.
First, Death has to pin him down…
Like the Fed’s and CIA’s track records, when did the State Department ever get one ‘thing’ right?
And, like the Fed/CIA, every time they massively screw up, State is granted more money/power to do more fail the next time.