Addressing the resurfacing of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens asks, “Will we never be free of the malign effect of this little gargoyle?”

Bob Woodward’s disclosure of the influence of Henry Kissinger on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy both is and is not a surprise. After all, we have known for a long time that the bungling old war criminal has his admirers within the White House. Did not the president, almost but not quite incredibly, call on him as the first chairman of the 9/11 commission? Kissinger’s initial acceptance of that honor was swiftly withdrawn after it was pointed out—first of all in this space, if I may say so—that he would have to make a full disclosure of the interests of Kissinger Associates in the Middle East. This condition was too much for him. (I added that, since he was wanted for questioning by magistrates in France, Chile, and Argentina, in connection with offenses of state terrorism, his appointment to a position of such high eminence at such a time might expose the United States to ridicule, not to say contempt.)

But lest one take too much delight in Hitchens’ rhetoric, there is also the reminder that his distaste for Kissinger goes hand in hand with a view of all Iraqis as fanatical and undemocratic killers. Hitchens doesn’t recognize that democratic forces that could develop in Iraq are being squashed by a powerful occupying force or that the U.S. has had a prominent role to play in bringing things to such an unpretty pass in that country. His piece ends with the following words:

We are not fighting the Viet Cong in Iraq but the Khmer Rouge. A bungled withdrawal would lead to another Cambodia, not another Vietnam.

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