Debate Fact Check 3
Did Henry Kissinger advise direct talks with Iran at the highest levels?
Yes.
Kissinger gave an interview with Bloomberg Television News Service on March 14, 2008:
' "One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran," Kissinger . . . said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: "Yes, I think we should." . . . '
Not only did he advocate such talks, he personally engaged in them!
' "I've been in semi-private, totally private talks with Iranians," he said. "They've had put before them approaches that with a little flexibility on their part would, in my view, surely lead to negotiations." '
Kissinger added:
' "It's not really the willingness to talk, it's so far the inability to define what we are trying to accomplish," Kissinger said. "The negotiations depend on a balance of incentives and penalties. Have we got those right at every point? Not at every point." . . . The Nobel Peace Prize winner said any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of state meet.'
So Kissinger envisaged the heads of state meeting. N.B. that would be the US president and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Ahmadinejad as president is a lesser figure in the Iranian system.)
He explicitly said that the talks should begin "without conditions."
Kissinger did advise a progression from lower level to higher level, despite his call for no pre-conditions.
Kissinger didn't seem embarrassed at all by the kind of considerations McCain instanced in the debate, of legitimating the Iranian government and the way it talks dirty about Israel by a US president's meeting with its top leaders.
The difference is that Kissinger is a foreign policy realist and McCain is surrounding himself with Neoconservatives.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/27/2008 12:26:00 AM
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7 Comments:
WRONG!!
Maybe you should do better "fact checking" next time pal. Kissinger backs McCain's statements tonight.
"Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality," Kissinger said in statement issued by the McCain campaign.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/fact-check-kiss.html
Only idiots do not talk to their enemies. Idiots bomb. Educated high-functioning people arrange discussions about differences and solutions.
The real question is, talks about what? Negotiate what? There is absolutely zero evidence that Iran has done anything it does not have every legal and logical right and reason to do under international law. So, where's the beef?
This is just one more "crisis" manufactured as a cover for U.S. (and Israeli) aggression.
The only talks or negotiations the U.S. should be holding with Iran should be those intended to improve understanding and relations, not to put pressure on Iran to stop doing what it has every right and reason to do.
It sounds like he reneged on a position for political expedience. That is Kissinger had one statement that he made publicly and document-ably prior to the debate, then changed when it was used to harm his favored candidate.
From CBS News:
Couric: You met yesterday with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is for direct diplomacy with both Iran and Syria. Do you believe the U.S. should negotiate with leaders like President Assad and Ahmadinejad?
Palin: I think, with Ahmadinejad, personally, he is not one to negotiate with. You can't just sit down with him with no preconditions being met. Barack Obama is so off-base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met. That's beyond naïve. And it's beyond bad judgment.
Couric: Are you saying Henry Kissinger …
Palin: It's dangerous.
Couric: … is naïve for supporting that?
Palin: I've never heard Henry Kissinger say, "Yeah, I'll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met." Diplomacy is about doing a lot of background work first and shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps could be implemented if things weren't gonna go right. That's part of diplomacy.
In the immortal words of Bugs: "What a maroon!"
O yeah, first Anonymous poster: Kissingers last minute support of McCain -- in a statement specifically for the McCain campaign -- does nothing to show that what Jaun Cole as said is wrong.
Thank you Jim Hannon, here here. Even Christopher Hitchen can't stomach Kissinger, and he has found a way to swallow almost all the neo-con package. I've been wondering how a war criminal - who engineered failed secret wars in Indochina and helped turn so many South Americans into haters of the US through his aid to Pinochet - became a poster boy for wise diplomacy. Isn't Obama's campaign premised on the idea that he will move beyond this neocon crap? After all, proponents of "realpolitik" are people who people who sacrifice tomorrow's prospects of cooperation to enjoy short-lived moments of domination in the present. Don't these people ever play Prisoner's Dilemma?
Kissinger was, however, a relentless self-promoter who knew how to court the media and get it to applaud his megalomaniac one-liners (eg - "power is an aphrodisiac"), and he also bugged his political rivals ruthlessly. It is sad to see how well his efforts from 40 years ago continue to bear fruit.
There have always been striking similarities between post 9/11 and Iraq policies and Viet Nam. Until Clinton, Kissinger was always lurking around. They even found him and marched him out during the early part of the Iraq war as if he had been preserved in formaldehyde for the occasion, and it always seemed to me as if they applied some perverted lessons from Viet Nam to Iraq.
I've always been suspicious of the neocon/Kissinger connection. I consider Kissinger to be at least the intellectual godfather of the neocons; possibly more.
Unlike the neocons, there is no doubt that Kissinger has always been quite intelligent. Thought I can't guess how truly well informed he has been, he certainly had the access. During Viet Nam and the cold war he did have a genuine view of the world, even if it was a violent, warborn and paranoid vision- ala his bizarre mentor, Fritz Kraemer, with his "provocative weakness" cold war crap.
Kissinger is a figure straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Kraemer was almost certainly part of the inspiration for the Strangelove character himself, along with Werner von Braun.
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