Earlier this week Henry Kissinger appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss Bush-Cheney’s Iraq policy. I finally got around to viewing a video of his appearance and it was bizarre – a scene of his mumbling, rambling and seemingly sucking up to everyone on the committee as he appeared to agree with almost any suggestion made by any Senator. The scene’s believability might actually have benefited from visits by his old pals Jill St. John, Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet.
I got very worried for Iraq’s neighboring countries when he announced the probability of a secret peace plan, remembering what his secret plan for Vietnam did for Cambodia. But then he mumbled something about not really knowing that there was a plan, only that:
“I am convinced, but I cannot base it on any necessary evidence right now that the president will want to move toward a bipartisan consensus”.
Jesus – what the hell does that mean?
He meandered along through testimony that ignored much of the reality of current policy in Iraq and moved toward a numbing kind of equivalent to: “on the one hand this, on the other hand that†analysis. There was something for everyone. Is there a secret peace plan in the Bush administration?  He did not know for sure, but it seemed like they must be moving in that direction. Is the President’s planned “surge†likely to be effective? He opined that if it worked it would serve the interests of reconciliation. Etc. ad nauseum.
What was striking was the inability of anyone in the room to make any sense. While perhaps easy to ignore the babblings of a man who has outlasted whatever usefulness he might have had (and that latter is up for debate) it is neither easy nor pleasant to watch a room full of Senators trying to get the old guy to give them what each of them wants and at the end of the day not knowing whether they got it.
We are told that Kissinger has been advising Bush on Iraq policy and that is totally believable given this performance and the state of the Iraq war.