June 6, 2008
Kissinger and the critics
Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, wrote an interesting review for The Times Literary Supplement of Jeremi Suri's recent book, “Henry Kissinger and the American Century.”
Early on in the piece, Ferguson makes the argument that Kissinger's Judaism may have something to do with why this particular statesman has received so much criticism over the years:
The more books I have read about Henry Kissinger in recent years, the more I have been reminded of the books I used to read about the Rothschild family. When other nineteenth-century banks made loans to conservative regimes or to countries at war, no one seemed to notice. But when the Rothschilds did it, the pamphleteers could scarcely control their indignation. Indeed, it would take a great many shelves to contain all the shrill anti-Rothschild polemics produced by Victorian antecedents of [Christopher] Hitchens and his ilk. Which prompts the question: has the ferocity of the criticism which Kissinger has attracted perhaps got something to do with the fact that he, like the Rothschilds, is Jewish? (Nota bene: this is not to imply that his critics are anti-Semites. Some of the Rothschilds’ most fierce critics were also Jews. So are some of Kissinger’s.)
Well, if it doesn't make them anti-Semites, what does it make them if they're unfairly criticizing someone who happens to be Jewish? If you have a double-standard when it comes to Jews versus non-Jews, doesn't that cross the line into anti-Semite-ville?
In any event, I don't buy Ferguson's argument. If Kissinger did things that deserve criticism, then he ought to be criticized. If his predecessors did things that deserved to be criticized (as Ferguson notes in his review), then they deserve to be criticized also. It doesn't mean Kissinger should be criticized less. It might seem unfair if Kissinger attracts more criticism. But, what if the criticism is deserved? This is a man who, again, as Ferguson notes in his review, told the Argentine junta’s Foreign Minister, Cesar Guzzetti: “We wish [your] government well,” promised his South African counterpart to “curb any missionary zeal of my officers in the State Department to harass you,” and told the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here.”
Might any of those statements merit criticism? I can understand the desire to look at Kissinger's Judaism as it affected his development and thinking, which apparently is what Suri did in the book. But to drag his Jewishness into a discussion of why his policies have been criticized doesn't make sense unless there is an implication that his critics are, in fact, anti-Semites.
Sorry, but you can't have it both ways.
“Henry Kissinger and the American Century” is published by Harvard University Press (368 pages).
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My understanding is that Kissinger was thrown out of the (Jewish) religious community way back in 1976. Rabbi Dr Marvin Antelman was instrumental in bringing this about. Also in passing, Lord Jacob Rothschild’s mother was not Jewish, and that may add further questions. It really depends on what you means by Jewish.
It is not their Jewishness that people object to, but something else, as many real Jewish people will tell you. You should ask genuine Jewish people what it is. They will tell, as I have found in most cases.