DVD The Trials of Henry Kissinger

Kissinger's early career is only very briefly covered; the producers want very quickly to get us into his machinations during the 1968 Paris peace talks, and the case for Kissinger's manipulation of said talks to affect the outcome of the 1968 election in favor of Nixon. A fascinating interview with a candid Anna Chennault is included. I wish I could have seen the entire interview (Sterling Seagrave's THE SOONG DYNASTY and LORDS OF THE RIM will help give some background on the Chinese right-wingers that ended up in the US). Nixon's backchannel to S. Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu (and LBJ's knowledge of it via the FBI) is now fairly undisputed. Read Larry Berman's scathing and merciless NO PEACE, NO HONOR: NIXON, KISSINGER, AND BETRAYAL IN VIETNAM for an excellent, primary source-based study on this subject (most of the documents are from National Archive and the Ford Library, since Kissinger still has the lock on his files).

The makers here focus on three of Nixon-Ford-Kissingers' Cold War foreign policies: (1) the prolongation and expansion of the Vietnam/Indochina war, (2) the murder of Chile's Gen. Schneider and the subsequent military overthrow of Allende, and (3) the green light to Indonesia's Suharto for the disgusting invasion of East Timor.

Various Kissinger dissimulations on these three areas are rebutted with documentary evidence and interviews with various henchmen, many of whom look fairly haunted and uncomfortable by their roles. The dissembling Alexander Haig is Kissinger's most prominent and outspoken defender, but ends up looking like a deer in the headlights, as he simultaneously defends blatantly illegal policies (murder, congressional limitations on arms, secret bombing, that sort of thing), while attempting to deny they happened (through inept legalistic arguments).

The expansion of the bombing into Cambodia, and the methods for hiding it, is well-explained. Personally, I understand and somewhat agree with Kissinger's calculation in taking the war to Cambodia. The idea of it as a "neutral" country, while the Vietnamese used it to stage attacks on Americans, is ludicrous. And the idea that it expanded the war to a place where it was already being waged from is fatuous as well. HOWEVER! Wholescale bombing of the agrarian population, Industrial Revolution warfare at its worst, is genocidal in its method (and the documentary hints at Kissinger's direct involvement in target selection, which implicates him in intent as well). The makers skillfully illustrate the effect on Cambodia (the mass refugee flight to the cities, political destablization) giving us a view of the Khmer Rouge's rise that has long been obscured by the self-indulgent ravings of Noam Chomsky.

Kissinger's power, in effect, was in riding the top of the vast bureaucratically-minded war machine, from where he was able to unleash massive quantities of power, with no qualitative standards to measure or guage it, and to hold it to account of course (see the excellent recent DVD documentary on Robert S. McNamara, THE FOG OF WAR). Thus, he had the power of a gigantic machine, and no perspective of the nature of the power he wielded beyond the nineteenth century politics he was enamored with. To understand his public ethics, read his first book, A WORLD RESTORED: METTERNICH, CATSTERLEAGH AND THE PROBLEMS OF PEACE 1812-1822, I believe it explains a worldview he's held consistently for decades.

The great problem of Kissinger, though, was his inability to distinguish raison d'etat from his own ambition. That's partailly what leads to the trite formulation that Kissinger sought power for the sake of power. It's a bit more complex than that. Ultimately, at the height of his power, it was not realpolitik that drove his decision-making, but rather narcissism. I think focusing on the difference there is essential to any attempt to make a case for war crimes. While I often agree with the political realist that the capacity to be cruel is often a political necessity to fulfill one's role, there is always a crucial point in time where the despotic character takes over, and its cruelty itself finds itself needing to be sustained, rather than the "legitimate" political goals that cruelty is supposed to serve.

In this 80-minute documentary, director Eugene Jarecki follows the intent of the book by Christopher Hitchens, which was to put Kissinger on trial before a world court with himself as prosecutor. By the way, note the slight, but perhaps significant difference in the title: the book is The Trial [singular] of Henry Kissinger. In a strange way the plural title of this documentary almost suggests The Struggles of Henry Kissinger, which would be irony number one.

I also thought it strange that Jarecki doesn't include Hitchens in the credits. I would say, one wonders why, but I really don't care.

What I care about here is:

First, the incredible irony of Kissinger being a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But then one recalls that Yasser Arafat also won one of those. Maybe I should win the literary prize for writing this review.

Second, the bizarre irony of Kissinger being a German Jew with relatives who died in the concentration camps becoming a man who ends up regarding his fellow human beings with the same sort of cattle to the slaughter mentality that characterized the Nazis. I think Henry called it "realpolitik."

Third, the slippery irony of Kissinger working for Democrat Lyndon Johnson, liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller, and conservative Republican Richard Nixon, while having loyalty only to his own lust to power and his delight in exercising it.

Fourth, the comedic irony that now in the 21st century, decades after the fact, with Kissinger in his eighties, we get a call for a war crimes trial. Is this some kind of joke?

Fifth, the theoretical irony of realizing that it is Kissinger himself who believed that heads of state (and their top lieutenants) operate according to laws different than those imposed on private citizens because people in such elevated positions are often faced with only "a choice of evils," and so inevitably end up doing evil themselves.

Sixth, the media circus irony of Henry Kissinger being thought of as sexy and a Playgirl kind of centerfold because "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," an image that delighted Kissinger who was quoted in the New York Times (Jan 19, 1971) as saying "Power is the great aphrodisiac."

Seventh, the judicial irony of Kissinger being put on trial for war crimes when it was his boss, the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, who had the ultimate responsibility for what happened in, for example, Cambodia.

Finally, it may be a kind of historical irony that it is George W. Bush who is most adamant that the US not give authority to a World Court that might try American government officials.

This is an easy documentary to view, done according to the "Sixty Minutes" formula. We are shown official documents with blacked out lines, archival footage, and interviews with some of the people who are still alive. There's Nixon's one time Chief of Staff Alexander Haig who sticks up for Kissinger (his old boss), but there is also the son of Chilean General Schneider who was assassinated in order to bring the horrific Pinochet to power and to protect American interests. And of course, the documentary reports that the principal indictee himself, Henry Kissinger, refused to be interviewed.

However I think the emphasis in any documentary that covers the material that this one covered should have been on our Cold War foreign policy itself (hardly original or unique to Kissinger), a policy that led the United States to commit and support the most amazing atrocities in the name of anti-communism, atrocities for which we are still paying the cost in world opinion, especially in the Middle East.

I should note that there's something wrong with the DVD in that it gives great close ups of the talking heads, but truncates their names and titles.

I also didn't care much about that.