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By kowalski Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

As an adjuvant to Mark Kilmer's weekly review of the American Sunday morning shows, I thought I'd post a few comments about Henry Kissinger's appearance on the BBC Sunday AM show. I'll be brief, since the webcast and transcript of the interview is already available on the BBC website.

Here's the transcript. If you click the video link in the upper-right hand corner of that page, you can watch the entire program. You'll find Kissinger's segment if you fast-forward about 1/3rd of the way through (just past the British weather forecast, which is the most upbeat part of the whole show, if you can believe that.) Blumenthal follows, if you can stand to watch and listen to him. His burning revulsion for the Bush administration is on full display here this Sunday in Britain.

I'll also preface my remarks by saying how dreary I find the BBC Sunday AM show in general. It actually makes our Sunday shows seem cheerful and exciting, surely a cautionary tale about the state of Britishness today, should we decide to emulate them. Actually, depressing is a better word, because if anyone wants some evidence that the international media is even more steadfastly against the President and his policies than our media, BBC is the prime example. In fact, I would say that most of the hostility as well as the talking points in the American MSM are lifted verbatim from the BBC and just watered down. The host of the show, Andrew Marr, was practically jumping out of his seat to call Iraq "a failure" -- only letting Kissinger qualify what the scope of the "failure" was. He also opened the segment by reminding the folks at home that Kissinger had been Nixon's "[f]right-hand man" and that "some people" consider him to be a war criminal. Just to set the tone.

I realize that some people on RedState have no fondness for Kissinger's policy suggestions vis-a-vis Iraq, but the truly astonishing thing to observe in this interview, and the later follow-up segment featuring Sidney Blumenthal, is how eager the host was to take Kissinger's words, strip out the parts he didn't like, and use them to paint an even bleaker, more defeatist picture of what Kissinger said than he actually did. Andrew Sullivan: are you taking notes?

Some key points, and what I think was the money quote of the interview:

ANDREW MARR: Do you think there is any hope left of a clear military victory in Iraq?

HENRY KISSINGER: If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.

[emphasis mine]

Kissinger was adamant about the highlighted section, and despite the host's attempts to call Iraq a failure ipso facto, Kissinger repeated himself later in the interview to emphasize the point. In other words, for all of you who aren't listening out there, Kissinger no longer believes that "the political processes of the democracies" are compatible with a "victory" in Iraq in the terms that GWB originally intended. This is absolutely crucial, because it's becoming clearer with each day that this war is now being lost primarily due to a lack of political will, both here in the United States and Great Britain. Our inability to maintain that resolve is the major contributing factor to the "failure" that Kissinger sees as one of the likely outcomes. It didn't matter. Andrew Marr conspicuously and deliberately ignored that crucial qualification as the show moved on. In one ear and out the other.

Kissinger also cautions in some of the strongest terms I've yet heard him use against the insane folly of a hasty withdrawal absent an international stabilization effort in Iraq. He predicts a massive destabilization of other countries in the region as well as a sectarian bloodbath in the country that will dwarf the violence in the former Yugoslavia which brought us to use military force there. There are a lot of other very nasty things that are going to happen also, if people like Jack Murtha get their way. But at least John Kerry won't get stuck in Iraq. That might cheer the Democrats up.

I'll have more on this interview and the follow-up with Blumenthal which directly follows as the day wears on, here in the body text. Have a look at the interview and transcript and we'll talk in the comments below. I'd especially like to discuss more about the role of the Baker Commission.