Realpolitik

To understand the crucible of the elitist, tyrannical and barbaric worldview of the Bush Administration, BuzzFlash has recently published two editorials that go back to explore the Kissinger doctrine of supporting the torture and murder of tens of thousands of people in South America, Central America, Vietnam, East Timor and elsewhere in the world.
These BuzzFlash pieces -- "Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror" and "More on "Operation Condor, What Horrors May Await America, Kissinger, and the Disappeared" – are reminders of the basic egomaniacal self-perspective and indifference to loss of life and liberties among the executive branch in power.

The commentaries are important because Cheney and Rumsfeld -- the key architect and the key implementer of what will be known as the "Bush Doctrine" -- came of age with Kissinger. All three believe that they are smarter than the average American citizens who vote – and that democracy is a hindrance to exercising power based on their [Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Kissinger’s] self-assumed "superior knowledge" of the "realpolitik" of the world.

At its most basic, this means an utter contempt for democracy.

It also means that people often need to be "eliminated" in order to guarantee American supremacy. If "innocents" are accidentally tortured and killed, that is the price to pay for being the policeman of the world. To Kissinger – who advises both Cheney and Bush – and Rumsfeld, persons murdered to guarantee oligarchies, military governments, and sham democracies (in appearance only) are just so much collateral damage to the preservation of America’s role as a superpower that pulls the strings of the nations of the world.

That is why we thought it important, as we approach the 2006 elections to recall what Kissinger had to say about the right of the Chilean people to elect a government of their choosing back in the early ‘70s. Kissinger said "the issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

True to his word, Kissinger backed the Pinochet coup of the duly-elected government of Salvador Allende, a coup that unleashed a bloodbath of death squad murders of Chilean citizens – and even a car bombing that killed two people on a Washington, D.C. street. It was part of the larger Operation Condor that resulted in the Kissinger-sanctioned killings of some 50,000 "enemies of the state" in five South American nations – as well as 30,000 persons who remain unaccounted for, but presumed dead. And that was just one "theater" of Kissinger’s nefarious contempt for life and freedom when it conflicted with his assertion of empire.

Read Kissinger’s words again: "the issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

Just change one word and you have the Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld doctrine: "the issues are much too important for the American voters to be left to decide for themselves."

Many political analysts have called this outlook a legacy of a University of Chicago Professor, Leo Strauss. Shadia Drury, a critic of Strauss, observes that he believed that the "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them."

Kissinger, Rumsfeld and Cheney are firm believers in this perspective. To them, government and world leadership cannot be left to the whims of democracy. Voters cannot be trusted with making ruthless decisions about international policy – or even with the election of a national government in the U.S.

Instead, it must be left to "masters of the universe" like them to seize, run and define the powers of the state, through their puppet George W. Bush...