FAIR Blog » Henry Kissinger

NBC and the Hunt for War Criminals

Peter Hart — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:51:15 +0000

According to a report in the New York Times (2/11/09), NBC is launching a new series to track down and expose war criminals. The network's plan has attracted some criticism from U.S. officials and human rights experts, who are concerned that the network's journalists might be publicizing false accusations against the suspects they're "confronting" on the air. (The show sounds eerily similar to the network's To Catch a Predator series, which purported to bust sexual predators.)

The first suspect is apparently Leopold Munyakazi, a visiting professor at a Maryland college who has been accused by Rwandan authorities of participating in the 1994 genocide in that country; a Human Rights Watch official is quoted in the article saying that the case against Munyakazi is actually somewhat murky.

If NBC is actually interesting in exposing war crimes, though, there might be an easier way to do this. Couldn't they just invite Henry Kissinger to appear on Meet the Press, and then "surprise" him?

What We Learned About Larry Summers

Peter Hart — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:21:01 +0000

Time magazine tells us about Obama's chief economic adviser:

His controversial comments about women's aptitude for math and science were a reminder that he operates best when he is working behind the scenes.

Oh, so that was the lesson. I had been under the misapprehension that the lesson had something to do with Larry Summers' sexism.

Time also writes that of Obama's incoming economic team,

Summers is the one to watch. He is expected to do for the economy what strong-minded and ambitious National Security Advisers like Henry Kissinger have done for foreign policy: plan it, set it and control it.

To be clear, it would seem that Time magazine means this as a compliment--to Summers' apparent talents, and to Kissinger's legacy.

The Washington Post's World of Hawks

Jim Naureckas — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:22:25 +0000

The Washington Post (9/28/08) gathered reactions from "foreign policy analysts and others" to last Friday's debate on international policy, and what's striking is how hawkish the Post's circle of foreign policy experts is. The lineup included Henry A. Kissinger--inevitably--and a bunch of hawks from right-wing think tanks and/or the Bush administration: Danielle Pletka of AEI, Michael Rubin of AEI and Rumsfeld's Pentagon, Patrick Clawson of WINEP (who co-wrote a book with Rubin) and David Makovsky of WINEP. Michael O'Hanlon works at the centrist Brookings but is a famous Iraq hawk.

Those who aren't obvious hawks mostly have Republican connections: Michael J. Green of CSIS worked for G.W. Bush's NSC, Karen Donfried of the German Marshall Fund was an aide to Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Soderberg used to work for Bill Clinton and now advises Michael Bloomberg. Ronald D. Asmus was a former Clinton aide but is best known for his advocacy of NATO expansion. For a change of pace, they've got David M. Walker of the Peter G. Petersen Foundation, who's a deficit hawk.

The only bona fide dove on the list would seem to be Russia specialist Stephen P. Cohen of Princeton. You'd think the disasters of the Bush years would create interest in new ideas on international policy--but at the Washington Post, a debate between alumni of Bush's Pentagon and State Department really is considered balanced.

Update: I mixed up my Stephen Cohens--the Russia expert is Stephen F. Cohen. The Post's Stephen Cohen is an expert on Pakistan who used to work for the Reagan State Department. So virtually everyone in the Post's rolodex of foreign policy experts is either a hawk or has Republican ties.