Beware of Republicans Bearing Gifts

Good for Karen Tumulty to smack down the latest instance of a Republican mole trying to suck up to Barack Obama. Tumulty deconstructs the moment during the campaign where Obama correctly reiterated that Henry Kissinger had called for high-level talks between the new Administration and Iran. Faced with this from an ally, the McCain campaign put Kissinger up to claiming that Obama was mistaken when that was completely not the case. Now that the election is over, Kissinger has the gall to praise Obama for his foreign policy stances.

Of course, we all know that Kissinger, and in fact everyone in Nixon's orbit, was a worm. After all, there was nobody more responsible for blocking peace with Vietnam for at least 7 years in order to win an election, causing the needless deaths of tens of thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, than Kissinger.

In the last months of his administration, President Lyndon B. Johnson suggested that associates of Richard M. Nixon were trying to persuade the South Vietnamese government not to join the peace talks until after the 1968 election, recordings of telephone conversations released Thursday show.

Accusations of Nixon’s influence in the peace conference have been reported before, but the tapes provide a look at how Johnson handled the issue, said Bruce Buchanan, a government professor and an expert on the presidency at the University of Texas, Austin.

During a conversation with Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Johnson, referring to people close to Nixon, and said, “This is treason.” Dirksen was the Republican leader in the Senate.

In a conversation in November 1968, Nixon assured Johnson that he supported the president’s efforts to arrange a peace conference in Paris. Johnson had cited news articles and private information he had been given that he said made him think Nixon’s associates were working against his efforts.

This is chronicled in Nixonland. Nixon's national security team had back-channel communications with the South Vietnamese that persuaded the then-President that they could get a better deal under the new leadership.

Privately, however, Nixon was acting more assertively on the Vietnam issue. Over the course of the campaign, Nixon grew increasingly concerned about President Johnson's negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Word was "out" that LBJ would be proposing a bombing halt of North Vietnam provided the South Vietnamese were permitted to participate in the ongoing peace talks in Paris. To blunt the possibility of a late campaign "Peace Offensive" by the Democrats, Nixon developed a "back channel" to persuade President Thieu of South Vietnam not to cooperate with President Johnson. The line of communication went from Nixon to John Mitchell (who would be named Attorney General) to Anna Chenault, a strong Nixon support who was close to a number of South Vietnamese officials, including President Thieu. Nixon's message was subtly delivered but unambiguous. Thieu should refuse to join the peace talks in 1968 because the South Vietnamese would be treated better by a Nixon rather than a Humphrey Administration. Thieu ultimately followed Nixon's suggestion and did not participate in the peace talks during the fall of 1968 (see, Steven Ambrose, Nixon: Triumph of a Politician, pp. 206-218).

This is a classic Kissingerian move and was repeated dozens of times in his tenure. He never believes in transparent negotiation, only secret meetings with political designs in mind, not conceptions of peace. He's an execrable man. I would stay FAR away from him if I were the President-elect.

History's Greatest Monster Oughta Pack 'Em In

It never ceases to amaze me how Republicans can keep recycling the same old warhorses, no matter what kind of criminal indictments or universal disapprobation they receive from the outside world. John McCain traveled today with Henry Kissinger. Now, Kissinger is a Beltway elder of the highest order, and so this would raise nary an eyebrow in DC. But over in the rational universe, Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. Whether it's the overturning of the Allende government in Chile and the installation of Augusto Pinochet, the illegal bombing of Cambodia that led directly to the rise of Pol Pot, or countless other crimes undertaken by the national security apparatus of this government while Kissinger was holding sway over it, the documented cases of kidnapping, murder and violent overthrowing of sovereign governments ought to be enough to earn him the shame of a nation. But he keeps bopping along, giving wooden speeches in support of candidates - and nobody finds this odd in the least.

The media is dying to write the "Comeback McCain" story, and in New Hampshire he appears to be doing well. But this appearance will never be reported as a misstep. It's because Kissinger is a Village elder, and the DC establishment would never cast one of their own to the wolves.