My morning wouldn't be complete without the Post publishing another war criminal in its op-ed pages. —cassidyt in a comment to Henry Kissinger's op-ed in the Washington Post, "The Three Revolutions"

Kissinger's op-ed appeared last month, and I would have missed it entirely if a rabid Zionist publication had not dropped a link to it into my Inbox this morning. After reading Kissinger's effulgence I concluded that the Zionists' enthusiasm derived from Kissinger's Europe/NATO bashing—

Conventional wisdom holds that disenchantment with President Bush's alleged unilateralism is at the heart of European-American disagreements. But it will become apparent soon after the change of administrations that the principal difference between the two sides of the Atlantic is that America is still a traditional nation-state whose people respond to calls for sacrifices on behalf of a much wider definition of the national interest than Europe's definition.

Shorter version: Europeans are less enthusiastic for war than their American counterparts.

Zionist Jews can barely contain themselves over the efforts by Western European countries to maintain a more balanced stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when compared with every U.S. administration since Ronald Reagan. The European refusal to accept at face value every Israeli claim of injustice and every Israeli excuse for vengeance is a matter of some grief to Zionists.

Then there's the Islamist threat—

Today it is radical Islam that threatens the already brittle state structure via a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran as the basis of a universal political organization. Jihadist Islam rejects national sovereignty based on secular state models; it seeks to extend its reach to wherever significant populations profess the Muslim faith. Since neither the international system nor the internal structure of existing states has legitimacy in Islamist eyes, its ideology leaves little room for Western notions of negotiation or equilibrium in a region of vital interest to the security and well-being of the industrial states. That struggle is endemic; we do not have the option of withdrawal. We can retreat from any one place, such as Iraq, but only to be obliged to resist from new positions, probably more disadvantageously. Even advocates of unilateral withdrawal from Iraq speak of retaining residual forces to prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda or radicalism.

Shorter version: The notion of the nation-state is being threatened by "Islamists." (That would include Israel of course.) These people are beyond negotiation, so stay in Iraq or fight them elsewhere.

Never mind that Iraq was a secular state before the invasion, and never mind that there is at least one advocate of unilateral withdrawal—retired Gen. William Odom—who does not speak of retaining "residual forces." And never mind that this was Kissinger's talking-point during the Vietnam War—that we must stay in Vietnam or fight the Communists elsewhere.

To paraphrase a line from a famous general—Old U.S. war criminals are never indicted, they just go into consulting.

Related posts
A different view of the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq (5/9/07)
Reality Check of the Day (6/20/07)
Training the Iraqis: A contrary view (7/19/07)

Tags: news and politics Henry Kissinger foreign relations realpolitik Israeli-Palestinian conflict Iraq withdrawal