Nixon And Race

Conrad Black speaks up for Richard Nixon, accused of racism and anti-Semitism as a result of newly-opened White House tapes:

Richard Nixon was a Quaker who had African-Americans home to dinner as a child, who famously befriended them all his life, who was a civil-rights advocate long before the voting arithmetic of it achieved the grace of conversion for the Kennedys. Nixon fought hard as vice president, against Eisenhower and Speaker Sam Rayburn, for aid to the Hungarian refugees in 1956. He resented that the great majority of American Jews voted against him, but his ethnic slurs, on Jews and others, were not as severe as those of Harry Truman (who was instrumental in founding the State of Israel) or other presidents speaking about non-WASP groups. Richard Nixon saved Israel by virtually giving it a new air force in the midst of the Yom Kippur War, and went to a state of war alert with the Soviet Union to do it, during the greatest crisis of his political career.

Hiss Or History?

Thirty-six years after Richard Nixon's resignation and and 16 years after his death, his rivalry continues with his partner in peacemaking, Henry Kissinger. One of the most successful in the history of the presidency, their collaboration was rooted in factors other than temperamental affinity.

It's true that they may have liked one another more than they let on. Kathy O'Connor, Nixon's last chief of staff, tells a story about being with him at an event in New York City in the 1990s. She was standing in a hotel hallway outside the men's room door listening to Nixon and Kissinger inside as they teased each other and told corny gags in their growly baritones. In 1986, I sat with them for a hour while they worked out their disagreements over the wording of an op-ed about arms control they were submitting to the New York Times. The almost affectionate quality of their banter showed that they had a brothers-from-other-dimensions thing going on. When the debate finally came down to a choice between two words, after an uncomfortable silence Kissinger looked at me and said, "Vat do you tink?"

While in office, they were wary of each other at best. One of the reasons Nixon installed his taping system was so he could show who had been the principal architect of his administration's foreign and war policies, he or his brilliant, self-promoting professor. It was an historically bad move, because the the tapes' loose talk and vulgarity are so far making a balanced view of Nixon and his presidency almost impossible.

But on the narrow issue of what he feared Kissinger would say about the policy process "to his fashionable, liberal friends" outside the White House, Nixon seems to have had a point. The latest episode in Kissinger/Nixon began last week, when the Nixon library opened a recording made in the spring of 1973 which contained this exchange:

"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

Jeffrey Goldberg calls Kissinger's comments "among the most vile ever spoken by a Jew about his own people." Kissinger's severest critic, Christopher Hitchens, also piles on.

I wrote last week about the irony of Kissinger's fears that the tapes would show him reacting fawningly to Nixon's outrageousness. As distasteful as the exchange is, it's possible to see in Nixon's response (avoiding all-out nuclear war is surely an appropriate imperative for a U.S. president to mention, even in this revolting a hypothetical context) the vaguest glimmer of a demur to Kissinger's Frankensteinian realpolitik.

It's also important to note that the Anti-Defamation League, while not defending Kissinger's comments, says they don't mean much compared with his lifetime of support for Israel. (Hat tip to Goldberg for the ADL release.)

Besides, in the end, how much exegesis can one blast of hot air really withstand? Was there a Soviet holocaust? No. Would Nixon and Kissinger have stood by and let one happen? Their harshest critics may think so. But no, they wouldn't have let it happen. How do I know? Because I talked to Nixon for about 12,000 hours over the course of 14 years, and you get to know a person.

While it would seem obvious that this big-guy BS had no operational relevance whatsoever, Marty Peretz, one of the few to rise to Kissinger's defense, thinks otherwise:

I know something about Kissinger's maneuvering for the Jewish state and for the Jewish people. I and a few Harvard colleagues were in touch with him, actually met with him during the dread days of the Yom Kippur War when Israel's very survival was at peril. (Henry Rosovsky, Samuel Huntington, Michael Walzer, Thomas Schelling and I comprised the group.) Dr. K. confided to us how difficult it was to persuade his bigoted boss that a great deal of American arms (and sufficient Lockheed C-130s "Hercules" aircraft to deliver them) were needed and needed instantly. There is no doubt in my mind that Kissinger rescued the third commonwealth with these munitions....

So, if Kissinger needed to flatter Nixon in order to convince him, that flattery was also a blessing.

Yep, there goes Henry again, Mr. President, trying to impress his friends at your expense -- and, this time, succeeding spectacularly. Peretz's argument seems to be that Kissinger made his awful comment in order to burnish his credentials (would that be as a self-loathing Jew?) so that, when the time came, he would have enough leverage to maneuver the beast into an Israel-saving move. The problem (besides that it's a dopey idea) is that there's no evidence that Nixon had to be persuaded by Kissinger or anyone else to send massive aid to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. Some actually think it was Kissinger who wanted to hold back on the arms shipments, to improve Egypt's position in ceasefire negotiations (the U.S. was in the process of wooing Egypt away from its reliance on the Soviet Union, a major win for the realpolitikians).

More evidence that the Nixon tapes are both boon and bane, sometimes history, sometimes just hiss.

Kissinger/Nixon

Writing about Henry Kissinger's suggestion in a secretly taped conversation with Richard Nixon that U.S. interests wouldn't be at stake in the super-hypothetical event of a Soviet holocaust against Jews, the Jerusalem Post makes a connection between hot air and hot war:

Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger’s advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace; Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel’s urgent need.

"Whatever Nixon Has"

As reported by the New York Times, newly released transcripts reveal the panicked discussions among Israeli leaders at the beginning of 1973's Yom Kippur war as well as the Nixon administration's role in turning the tide:

The transcripts of the meetings show [Moshe] Dayan, the unflappable eye-patch-wearing defense minister, at the edge of desperation. As Syrian tanks rolled toward the Galilee unimpeded, he understood that he had misread the signals.

“I underestimated the enemy’s strength, I overestimated our own forces,” he is quoted as saying in an early meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir and others. “The Arabs are much better soldiers than they used to be.” Then: “Many people will be killed.”

Seeking a means of salvation, he urged recruiting older men and Jews from abroad.

Ms. Meir considered a clandestine trip to Washington to persuade President Nixon to help.

A colleague asked what she hoped to get.

“Let him give whatever he has,” she replied. “Does he have tanks in Europe? Let him give them. You want Phantoms? Let him give. Let him see this as his front and not let our guts spill until he gives us one missile.”

In the end, Ms. Meir did not go. But after appealing to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, she did get Mr. Nixon to send an airlift of matériel that made all the difference in Israel’s favor in the 20-day war. Although Israel won, it was the surprise attack and near victory that Egypt and Syria have focused on, and that led Egypt to make peace with Israel five years later in exchange for a return of the Sinai.

Golda's President

Jason Maoz on a Watergate-weakened President's iron determination after Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973:

What is clear, from the preponderance of information provided by those directly involved in the unfolding events, is that President Richard Nixon — overriding inter-administration objections and bureaucratic inertia — implemented a breathtaking transfer of arms, code-named Operation Nickel Grass, that over a four-week period involved hundreds of jumbo U.S. military aircraft delivering more than 22,000 tons of armaments.

Mr. Nixon earned the ire of the Arab oil sheiks and the undying affection of Israel's prime minister:

As for [Golda] Meir herself, to the end of her life she referred to Nixon as "my president" and told a group of Jewish leaders in Washington shortly after the war: “For generations to come, all will be told of the miracle of the immense planes from the United States bringing in the materiel that meant life to our people.”

Hat tip to Mike Cheever