AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Kissinger & the Arabs
The role of the former senior U.S. foreign policy adviser — who just turned 100 — has been overstated in the Arab world. But that is not to exonerate his crimes.
Henry Kissinger looms large in the thinking of people in the Arab world.
The former U.S. secretary of state’s name is often invoked in political discussions and many still think that he currently, or permanently, wields political influence, decades after he left office.
His name is associated with sinister diabolic plots. The media of Gulf regimes have produced classic anti-Semitic scenarios about his role in world affairs.
In a way, Kissinger has been unfairly treated by the Arab world. Too much influence has been ascribed to him; his role in U.S. wars and aggression has been highly exaggerated.
The U.S. is a vast government empire where Democrats and Republicans act in unison when it comes to foreign policy and foreign wars. The revolt by the D.C. establishment and media against Donald Trump is largely due to his tendency to try to deviate from the established norms of the empire in foreign policy. He dared to call for retrenchment and focus on domestic policies.
To say that Kissinger’s role has been largely overstated in the Arab world is not to exonerate him of war (and peace) crimes.
He is responsible during his tenure of a variety of crimes, ranging from the secret bombing of Cambodia; East Timor, Chile’s coup against democracy, and the murder of people on a mass scale in faraway countries; either to advance U.S. stance in negotiations or to combat the spread of communism.
Bipartisan US Foreign Policy
But Kissinger was not acting alone. Any understanding of the U.S. government (especially in foreign policy where the number of interest groups involved in making policy is very limited in comparison to domestic policy) should take into consideration the collective leadership by both parties in decisions of foreign policy.
U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were bipartisan wars. U.S. wars around the globe during the Cold War gained bipartisan support, and the liberal forces, like the labor movement, was not less anticommunist than former U.S. President Richard Nixon.
In the Middle East, Kissinger had a big impact by virtue of his presence during the critical years of the 1970s and the October War.
In the Middle East — especially in repugnant Gulf media — too much about the harm he inflicted on the region is attributed to his Jewishness when, in fact, he was extremely insensitive to anti-Seimitism, even in his presence.
This is a man who sat with Nixon when the latter expressed vile racist and anti-Jewish sentiments. He ingratiated himself with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, when the latter was one of the most notorious anti-Semites of the 20th century. Faisal never hid his belief that communism and Judaism are among the evils of the world.
But Kissinger did care deeply about Israel and he strove to serve its interests, but not more than former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. He viewed Israel from the standpoint of anti-communism and anti-Arab nationalism.
Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy achieved a great deal for Israel because it was the beginning of America’s attempt at fractionalization of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Prior to the 1970s, Gamal Abdul-Nasser of Egypt insisted that any diplomatic effort and negotiations over the Arab-Israeli conflict should be predicated on a comprehensive and just solution, which implied that the Palestinian problem is the crux of the conflict.
Negating Nasser’s Unity Principle
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/15/asad-abukhalil-kissinger-the-arabs/