Stuff The P-G's Ruth Ann Dailey Left Out

In a recent column, the P-G's Ruth Ann Dailey gets some stuff right (let's be honest) and yet leaves some very important stuff out.

Enough stuff that you have to think she knows she's only telling you a partial story (let's hope that's the case).

Let's start with what she gets (mostly) right.  It's about a wife and mother who changed her mind:

“One of my good friends said, ‘I’m really uncomfortable letting my children play with your children because of your decision not to vaccinate,’ ” Ms. Elliott recalled while toddlers tumbled around her.

What changed her mind was her little girl’s bout last year with whooping cough, which a vaccine might have prevented.

“I let my pride keep me from vaccinating my children,” she confessed.

She said these words slowly and simply, sitting in a cozy living room of jam-packed bookshelves, piano, wicker and rose-printed chintz.

It used to be that failure to get one’s children all the recommended vaccines was mostly connected to poverty and lack of access to regular health care. These days, the parents skipping vaccines are more likely to be well-educated, plugged into social networks and alternative medicines.

Pop quiz: when Dailey describes these parents as "well-educated, plugged into social networks and alternative medicines" what sort of person flashes in your head?  Better yet, what sort of person do you think Dailey thinks she was describing?

Whereas I do not doubt a significant portion of the so called "anti-vaxx" crowd being college-educated, facebook-friendly, new-agey types, I am also not surprised that a faith-defender like Dailey would omit the religious exemption from compulsory school-age vaccination.

That's right.  If you have a sincere religious objection to vaccinating your child, you ignore all the science regarding their safety, and in doing so possibly be part of a serious public health issue.  Yay, religious freedom!

Did you know that there's an exemption in Pennsylvania?  Take a look:

Children need not be immunized if the parent, guardian or emancipated child objects in writing to the immunization on religious grounds or on the basis of a strong moral or ethical conviction similar to a religious belief.

It would have been nice to have seen that rather small point injected into an otherwise OK portion of Dailey's column.  I don't mean to be a prick about it, needling Ruth Ann Daily like this, so let's plunge on.

This is really about, once again, John McCain and his defense of Henry Kissinger.  Dailey wrote:

After more than a minute of their chanting “Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes” as initially bemused onlookers grew visibly irritated, the U.S. Capitol Police arrived to intervene.

This is nearly incorrect - but we should expect more (at least "close to correct") from such an established columnist as Ruth Ann Dailey.  As we know from this blog post, the protest was barely longer (by a second or two) than a minute and there was no need for the Capitol Police to arrive as they were already there (the proof of the policing is in video).

But her real sin occurs in these paragraphs:

I respect my pacifist friends. I think they are wrong, yet principled, their stance unrealistic in this dangerous world. They tend to a quiet opposition.

But if you’re going to loudly denounce those who (usually reluctantly) accept the merits of war, then at least be intellectually consistent.

If war is wrong, then engaging in it through any means is a “crime,” whether it’s Kissinger’s realpolitik, the nation-building of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, or the puzzling disarray of the Obama administration (which Mr. Kissinger is now advising).

Why target only the man whose era was haunted by the slaughter of totalitarian regimes and the long “socialist republic” nightmare? Hmmm.

Perhaps they're haunted by the slaughter instigated by the man they were protesting.

For Dailey to belittle his actions by hiding them under one word ("realpolitik") and then equating that word with whatever she means by Clinton's "nation-building" is simply astonishing.  We can, perhaps, equate Kissinger's 180,000 dead Timorese with Dubya's 100,000+ dead Iraqis in terms of war crimes, but I don't think that's where Dailey was headed.

Let's look a little deeper into Kissinger's slaughter "realpolitik" in East Timor  From Hitchens:

Kissinger, who does not find room to mention East Timor even in the index of his three-volume memoir, has more than once stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise, and that he barely knew of the existence of the Timorese question. He was obviously lying. But the breathtaking extent of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent, with the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document, which has been made public by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the conversation among Suharto, Ford and Kissinger. "We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto opened bluntly. "We will understand and will not press you on the issue," Ford responded. "We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have." Kissinger was even more emphatic, but had an awareness of the possible "spin" problems back home. "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," he instructed the despot. "We would be able to influence the reaction if whatever happens, happens after we return.... If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the President returns home." Micromanaging things for Suharto, he added: "The President will be back on Monday at 2 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned." As ever, deniability supersedes accountability.

There came then the awkward question of weaponry. Indonesia's armed forces, which had never yet lost a battle against civilians, were equipped with US-supplied matériel. But the Foreign Assistance Act forbade the use of such armaments except in self-defense. "It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation," Kissinger mused. (At a later meeting back at the State Department on December 18, the minutes of which have also been declassified, he was blunt about knowingly violating the statute. For a transcript of the minutes, see Mark Hertsgaard, "The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger," October 29, 1990.)

You can read the Ford-Kissinger-Suharto conversation here and you can read Hertsgaard's piece here.

Back to Hitchens:

Adam Malik, Indonesia's foreign minister at the time, later conceded in public that between 50,000 and 80,000 Timorese civilians were killed in the first eighteen months of the occupation. These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived to supply over Congressional protests, and their murders were covered up by American diplomacy, and the rapid rate of their murder was something that had been urged in so many words by an American Secretary of State.

That's what Ruth Ann Dailey hides with her simple use of the term "realpolitik."

Or is that precisely what "realpolitik" means?  At a time when totalitarian regimes were slaughtering thousands, it's OK to allow our allies to slaughter thousands in response?  Then lie about it to the American people and to Congress?

And for the person who did all that to be defended by that same Congress a few decades later when some citizens decide to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest his presence?

Is that what realpolitik means, Ruth Ann?

Kissinger, McCain, And Code Pink

From The Hill:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called protesters "low-life scum," after they interrupted a hearing by calling for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to be arrested for war crimes.

Protesters from the group Code Pink chanted, "Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!" and raised signs in the air as Kissinger entered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing room.

McCain, the chairman of the committee, at first asked, "Could someone find out where the Capitol Police is?"

Alas, the good Senator was not taking Code Pink's advice and calling for the Capitol Police to arrest Kissinger for war crimes.

In a statement released later, McCain wrote:

The incident at today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which individuals associated with the liberal group Code Pink physically threatened former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger was completely unacceptable, and those responsible must be held fully accountable for their actions. In my 32 years in the House and Senate, I have never witnessed this kind of physical intimidation of a witness at a Congressional hearing.

And:

Code Pink’s typical protest tactics include interrupting Congressional hearings with chanting and sign-holding, which while disruptive and improper, do not represent a threat to witnesses. What happened today was far different. As Dr. Kissinger entered the hearing room to take his seat, a group of Code Pink protesters rushed up to the witness table to confront him, waving handcuffs within inches of his head. Some senators were concerned enough for Dr. Kissinger’s safety that they came down off the dais to support the witnesses. With no U.S. Capitol Police intervening, the episode went on for several minutes.

Which is, of course, not entirely accurate.  Take a look at the video:


The rundown:

0:18 - Protesters can be heard chanting "Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!"
0:24 - A rather burly man with a yellow tie (Kissinger's assistant? a Senate staffer?) stands between Kissinger and the protesters
0:28 - A uniformed Capitol Police officer is seen intervening
0:31 - Kissinger calmly sits down next to former Secretary of State George Schultz, who's sitting next to Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright
0:35 - A hand can be seen holding up a pair of hand cuffs between Kissinger and Schultz
0:44 - The Capital police officer can be seen talking on his radio
1:17 - The Capital police officer can be seen directing the protestors to the back of the hall
1:29 - The protestors are seen moving away from Kissinger
1:51 - They're all back in their seats
2:19 - McCain says to one man who seems to be yelling at the committee, "You know, you're going to have to shut up or I'll have you arrested.
2:19 - The Capital police officer is seen leading the man away
2:20 - McCain: "If we can't get the Capitol Hill Police in here immediately"
2:23 - The man goes back for his jacket
2:24 - McCain: "Get out of here you low life scum."
2:27 - McCain apologizes to Kissinger on behalf of the committee
3:04 - Says Kissinger "served his country with the greatest distiction."

A few notes -

• The chanting-bloody-hands-holding-handcuffs protest was done in just over one minute
• McCain seems not to know that a member of the Capitol Police was present at all times
• At no time was the rather burly man with the yellow tie not standing between Kissinger and the protesters.

Now go back and look at how McCain described it for those who may not have seen the video.

Not entirely accurate is a bit of an understatement.

But let's take a look at why Code Pink might think Kissinger should be arrested for war crimes (BTW, I do, too!).

On East Timor, Christopher Hitchens wrote in 2002:

The State Department recently declassified the verbatim conversation between Kissinger and General Soeharto on the day of the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The record shows Kissinger giving warm approval to the proposed annexation, and also promising to keep a flow of weapons coming to Indonesia.

This flagrant agreement to break both international law and the law of the US (which supplied weapons on the specific condition that they be used only in self-defence) contradicts every statement so far made by Kissinger on the subject.

And with that the blood of 180,000 East Timorese are on Kissinger's hands.

Then there's Vietnam.  Take a look at this from Hitchens, again.:

In the fall of 1968, Richard Nixon and some of his emissaries and underlings set out to sabotage the Paris peace negotiations on Vietnam. The means they chose were simple: they privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers that an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than would a Democratic one. In this way, they undercut both the talks themselves and the electoral strategy of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The tactic "worked," in that the South Vietnamese junta withdrew from the talks on the eve of the election, thereby destroying the peace initiative on which the Democrats had based their campaign. In another way, it did not "work," because four years later the Nixon Administration tried to conclude the war on the same terms that had been on offer in Paris. The reason for the dead silence that still surrounds the question is that in those intervening years some 20,000 Americans and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives. Lost them, that is to say, even more pointlessly than had those slain up to that point. The impact of those four years on Indochinese society, and on American democracy, is beyond computation. The chief beneficiary of the covert action, and of the subsequent slaughter, was Henry Kissinger.

Note that the peace talk sabotage took place before the 1968 election.  Nixon was still a private citizen (albeit one running for President) who had no legal authority to influence foreign policy.  In fact, it's a crime to do so.

It's pretty clear that the war was extended 4 years in order to aid in the election of Richard Nixon.  All the death and suffering in those extended years is on their hands.

Do I need to point out that Captain John McCain was captured in October 1967 and was released in March of 1973?

How much earlier would McCain have been released had Kissinger not sabotaged the '68 peace talks?  How much torture would he not have endured had the man he so deferentially reveres not, in effect, extended the Vietnam war for a Nixon's political gain?

Who's the low life scum here, anyway?

Henry Kissinger (A War Criminal) Was In Town Again

Hey, did you know that Henry Kissinger was in town on Wednesday?

He spoke at the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute and according to the press coverage, there were protests.

Mike Wereschagin of the Trib:

Fifteen protesters, most of them carrying signs accusing Kissinger of war crimes for, among other things, his role in advising Nixon during the Vietnam War, lined the sidewalk outside the museum. Kissinger called Vietnam "a painful subject" and said "nobody could have had a greater incentive to end the war" than Nixon's incoming administration. Nixon decided the United States could not abandon a government that a previous administration had committed to.

"Serious people on both sides were arguing a question that really depended on an assessment of the role of America in the world," Kissinger said. "That was the underlying issue, and it is often the underlying issue now."

One protester interrupted Kissinger, yelling down from the balcony that he was a murderer and saying he "doesn't deserve a voice."

Once security escorted the protester out, Kissinger said, "I certainly don't leave them indifferent."

Taryn Luna of the P-G:

Local activists protested Henry Kissinger's keynote lecture of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute's Fourth Annual Conference at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland on Wednesday night.

The protesters, about 20 members of Pittsburghers for World Peace and the Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee, say the 88-year-old former secretary of state and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize recipient is responsible for "heinous war crimes," including but not limited to the extension of the Vietnam War, the 1969 bombings of Laos and Cambodia and arming Indonesian dictator Suharto when he invaded East Timor in 1975.

About those protestors,

Simin Curtis, founder and president of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute, said the fact that Mr. Kissinger drew a packed crowd to the 2,000 capacity Carnegie Music Hall proves that the protesters and their beliefs are not strongly represented in Pittsburgh.

"I think that Americans know very little about their history, and I think it's important for them to hear of great men from history whether they agree with them or not," said Ms. Curtis, 51, of Shadyside. "We learn about history from different points of view. So get out of your comfort zone."

Ms. Curtis -- whose institute was formed four years ago with the aim to foster educational, business and cultural ties between the Middle East and the United States -- said Mr. Kissinger was selected to speak on Wednesday night because he is "a brilliant man and an icon of foreign policy of the last century."

Ms Curtis, this is not about a simple disagreement, it's about war crimes.  However brilliant Kissinger is, he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings.  It's not a matter of a "comfort zone" or whether the protesters agree with him or disagree.  There's blood on his hands.  Lots of it.

And you (or at least the institute for which you speak) invited him to Pittsburgh.

What are the crimes Dr Kissinger's been accused of?

Glad you asked.  I wrote about it here.  It was almost exactly 2 years ago and Mike Wereschagin covered the visit for the Trib, then too!  Small world.  In that blog post, I linked to this 2002 piece by Christopher Hitchens.  In it he writes:

Here are some snapshots from the recent career of Henry Kissinger. In May last year, during a stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he is visited by the criminal brigade of the French police, and served with a summons. This requests that he attend the Palais de Justice the following day to answer questions from Judge Roger Le Loire.

The judge is investigating the death and disappearance of five French citizens during the rule of General Pinochet in Chile. Kissinger declines the invitation and leaves Paris at once.

In the same week, Judge Rodolfo Corrall of Argentina invites Kissinger's testimony in the matter of "Operation Condor" - codename for a state-run death squad, operated by the secret police of six countries - Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador - during the 1970s and '80s.

Its central co-ordination was run through a US base in Panama when Kissinger was the national security adviser and secretary of state (and chairman of the committee overseeing all US covert operations). Again, Kissinger declines to answer written requests for information.

Later in the year, Judge Guzman in Santiago, Chile, sends a written summons to the State Department requesting Kissinger's testimony about the death and disappearance of an American citizen, Charles Horman, in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship..

And that's just this brilliant and foreign policy icon's involvement with the Pinochet regime.  Then there's the massacre of East Timor.  In 1975, East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in December of 1975. Hitchens, writing in The Nation in 2002:

Kissinger, who does not find room to mention East Timor even in the index of his three-volume memoir, has more than once stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise, and that he barely knew of the existence of the Timorese question. He was obviously lying. But the breathtaking extent of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent, with the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document, which has been made public by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the conversation among Suharto, Ford and Kissinger. "We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto opened bluntly. "We will understand and will not press you on the issue," Ford responded. "We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have." Kissinger was even more emphatic, but had an awareness of the possible "spin" problems back home. "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," he instructed the despot. "We would be able to influence the reaction if whatever happens, happens after we return.... If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the President returns home." Micromanaging things for Suharto, he added: "The President will be back on Monday at 2 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned." As ever, deniability supersedes accountability.

Long Hitchens short, Kissinger gave Indonesia the OK to invade East Timor.

And then what happened?:

An even more sinister note was struck later in the conversation, when Kissinger asked Suharto if he expected "a long guerrilla war." The dictator replied that there "will probably be a small guerrilla war," while making no promise about its duration. Bear in mind that Kissinger has already urged speed and dispatch upon Suharto. Adam Malik, Indonesia's foreign minister at the time, later conceded in public that between 50,000 and 80,000 Timorese civilians were killed in the first eighteen months of the occupation. These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived to supply over Congressional protests, and their murders were covered up by American diplomacy, and the rapid rate of their murder was something that had been urged in so many words by an American Secretary of State.

Do you understand now, Ms Curtis?

My Dinner With Hitchens

Ok, so it wasn't exactly dinner. It was only lunch.

To bring y'inz up-to-date, we'll have to start with Tony Norman's column. It's all about Hitchens, the well-known atheist, the well-known writer, and now the well-known esophageal cancer sufferer.

In the course of the column, Tony writes:

On a personal level, there are few intellectuals I enjoy more than Christopher Hitchens. When he taught at the University of Pittsburgh in 1997, he was kind enough to invite me to a private reception for Salman Rushdie when that writer was under threat from the soulless theocrats of the Iranian regime.

Since then, we've broken bread at the now-defunct Crawford Grill, had a drink at the Warhol and exchanged pleasantries at various book signings.

I was there at the Crawford Grill. I broke bread (well, kinda - you'll understand in a minute) with Christopher Hitchens.

It was April of 2001 and he was in town promoting his Henry Kissinger book. That night, he was to read from the book at the Frick Fine Arts building and Tony, being the all around cool guy that he is, was kind enough to invite me along for lunch.

As I worked in the Frick Building at the time, I knew it would be a half hour walk to the now-closed Crawford Grill and while I can't recall exactly I think Tony gave me a ride to lunch. I do remember walking in with Tony.

I also remember that there was a bar was on the right as we walked in. It was 11:45 (am) Hitchens was already there.

When we walked in, he was sitting facing the bar and we could see his profile. Odd thing though - when we walked in he turned to to his left (we were on his right) to meet us and by...how...slowly...he...turned, I pretty much knew he was already completely plastered by that point.

There were five of us for lunch. Me, Tony, two other people I couldn't possibly remember even if you held a gun to my head, and Christopher Hitchens. We got a table and amid the copius cigarette smoke, the conversation was buzzing along very nicely without me. Film, politics (local and international) and Henry Kissinger were all topics of discussion. The lunch order was taken while we had our drinks. I remember I had a soda of some kind. Hitchens had already switched, I think, from a cocktail to wine.

When the food arrived, guess who's lunch order was lost?

Yea, mine. They ate but I didn't.

So that's why I can't exactly say I "broke bread" with Christopher Hitchens.

Later that night, after his reading from The Trial of Henry Kissinger, I stood in line waiting for him to sign my freshly bought copy. When I got to the head of the line, he looked up, smirked a bit and we chatted about lunch.

When he signed the book, it read "To David. Next time, lunch is on Crawford's."

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal

Hey, did you know that Henry Kissinger was in town yesterday? He said something Jack Kelly wouldn't like (I think - I still can't make heads or tails out of this column). Anyway here's the Trib on Henry's visit:

President Obama should heed the advice of top military advisers and send more troops to Afghanistan, but the United States needs to focus less on setting up a strong central government there, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said during an appearance at Heinz Hall Monday night.

And this is how he's described:

Kissinger served as secretary of State to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent U.S. history. From the Vietnam War to warming relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War to opening relations with China, the Nobel Peace Prize winner played an integral role in world history during the last half of the 20th century.

And here's how Patricia Sheridan describes him in the P-G:

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is best known for instituting the concept of "detente" with the former Soviet Union, which began the thaw of the Cold War between the United States and the U.S.S.R. He is credited with helping to open relations with communist China during the Nixon administration, and his many accomplishments include being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his role in the Vietnam issue. He will be at Heinz Hall tonight for "A Conversation with Paul O'Neill and Henry Kissinger" to benefit Gilda's Club of Western Pennsylvania.

Left out of both portraits, of course, are his alleged war crimes. As Christopher Hitchens wrote in 2002:

Here are some snapshots from the recent career of Henry Kissinger. In May last year, during a stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he is visited by the criminal brigade of the French police, and served with a summons. This requests that he attend the Palais de Justice the following day to answer questions from Judge Roger Le Loire.

The judge is investigating the death and disappearance of five French citizens during the rule of General Pinochet in Chile. Kissinger declines the invitation and leaves Paris at once.

In the same week, Judge Rodolfo Corrall of Argentina invites Kissinger's testimony in the matter of "Operation Condor" - codename for a state-run death squad, operated by the secret police of six countries - Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador - during the 1970s and '80s.

Its central co-ordination was run through a US base in Panama when Kissinger was the national security adviser and secretary of state (and chairman of the committee overseeing all US covert operations). Again, Kissinger declines to answer written requests for information.

Later in the year, Judge Guzman in Santiago, Chile, sends a written summons to the State Department requesting Kissinger's testimony about the death and disappearance of an American citizen, Charles Horman, in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. (The Homan story was dramatised by Constantine Costa-Gavras in the award-winning movie Missing.) Once again, no reply is received to this request for testimony.

Then there's this (still, from 2002):

Earlier this month, a petition for Kissinger's arrest is filed in the High Court in London, citing the destruction of civilian populations and the environment in Indochina during the years 1969-75. The High Court rules in such a manner as to leave room for a further application.

This is not a complete or exhaustive list of the difficulties now facing the United States' best-known former secretary of state. Recently, I was informed via the former Spanish ambassador to the US that Kissinger had approached the embassy asking whether he would be safe if he visited Spain. These days he does not travel without legal advice.

Then there's the "secret" bombing of Cambodia, the massacre in East Timor. The list goes on.

I wonder if Gilda's Club of Western PA had any inkling of the amount of blood on Dr Kissinger's hands.