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Tuesday, December 03, 2002

# Posted 7:26 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

KISS(inger) OF DEATH: Now that Kissinger-critic Bill Safire has proclaimed his support for the old man's appointment as head of the 9/11 commission, I don't think there will be much more debate on the point. As Safire points out, he has impeccable credentials as an anti-Kissingerian. But Safire's arguments for applauding Kissinger's appointment are misguided. Safire's basic point is that Kissinger has matured and is "working for his historic reputation now, not his clients." The same point was also made (earlier) by Innocents Abroad, which posted that Kissinger "is a man to whom reputation and prestige is everything, so he has everything to lose by not doing [his job] right."

The fundamental problem with this argument is that it equates a desire to improve one's reputation with a repentant drive to do right instead of wrong. But that is not how Kissinger has gone about working for his reputation. As Robert Kagan's careful reading of Years of Renewal -- the third volume of Kissinger's memoirs -- shows that Kissinger has resorted to active distortions of his own record as a diplomat in order to mitigate his reputation as an amoral realist while also creating the illusion that he was somehow responsible for the end of the Cold War. (Kagan's review was published in TNR in June 1999, but is not available on their website.) But if you're interested in a review of Kagan's review, click here.)

So if we know that Kissinger is willing to lie in public in order to polish his reputation, why should we trust him to head an investigative commission charged with finding out the truth the intelligence failures that faciliated 9/11?
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