Posted by
Michael on Thursday, October 12, 2006 1:25:17 AM
I'm blogging about this a bit late, since the piece came out over the weekend. Christopher Hitchens, who wrote The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which I am yet to read,
reacted pretty swiftly to Bob Woodward's revelation that Kissinger has played an advisory role in the strategy for the Iraq war. Hitchens has been a constant defender of the war, but didn't backtrack on his contempt for Kissinger.
Here's the portion of the piece I found most entertaining:
.....he feared both Kurdish destabilization of Turkey, via the Kurdish
population of that country, and the unwelcome effect that a successful
rebellion by "the Shiite minority in the south" might have on the Saudi
oil fields. "The Shiite minority"? Yes, that's right. Most fascinating
of all, Kissinger made a point of saying that we had to "enlist the
Sunni majority, which now dominates Iraq."
So, there you have it:
Not only does a former secretary of state and national security adviser
with a record of failure and betrayal in Iraq in the 1970s argue that
the government of Iraq can be overthrown as long as none of its
conservative neighbors really notice, but he also believes that the
country has a Sunni majority. Even by Kissinger's usual standard of
depraved politics and world-class disaster-mongering, this must rank
pretty high.
*
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