Confirmation : le plus génial géopoliticien de la Guerre froide a ajouté, dans les catastrophes à son actif, l’Irak au Viet-nâm

Recueillant les premiers échos du livre de Bob Woodward, State of Denial, nous avions déjà noté la révélation que constituait le rôle de conseiller écouté joué par Henry Kissinger auprès de GW Bush. Nous en avions déduit, en constatant les résultats de ces conseils en Irak, une appréciation très critique des conseils donnés au nom de cette réputation mondiale de géopoliticien génial qui accompagne partout Kissinger.

Des précisions sont arrivées depuis, qui montrent, selon Woodward, que les conseils de Kissinger étaient effectivement, non pas de modération ou de mesure, mais du plus stupide entêtement à rester en Irak au nom de la mythique “crédibilité” de la puissance US (voyez ce qu’il en reste, docteur) et pour ne pas entamer le soutien du public américaniste à la guerre (voyez ce qu’il en reste, docteur). On se demande comment cet expert a pu, dans sa jeunesse studieuse, s’affirmer comme un admirateur de Metternich.

Aujourd’hui, sur Antiwar.com, Ivan Eland choisit ce sujet pour un commentaire, reliant les erreurs américanistes au Viet-nâm à celles qui sont commises en Irak, avec ce lien génial : Henry Kissinger.

«…The real surprise in Woodward's book has received less attention: The Bush administration's main adviser during the war has been Henry Kissinger.

»Kissinger, according to Woodward's book, apparently has convinced the Bush White House that any troop withdrawals from Iraq will start a wave of public pressure to pull out all U.S. forces from Iraq. He is probably right in this analysis. But Kissinger missed the main lesson of Vietnam and is now missing it in Iraq. As the U.S. generals in Iraq know, killing more Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militiamen than the United States loses of its own troops will not win a war that is fundamentally political. As Lt. Gen. William Odom (ret.), former Director of the National Security Agency and opponent of the war, has noted, the Iraq situation will continue to deteriorate and the United States will eventually be forced to withdraw from Iraq. So withdrawing sooner, rather than later, according to Odom, will save U.S. lives and money and salvage what international prestige the United States has left. If Nixon and Kissinger had followed similar advice in Vietnam, the United States, its military, and its international standing would not have been tarnished by four additional years of war. And even worse than Vietnam, continued U.S. occupation of Iraq is fueling and worsening the Islamic terrorist threat to the United States, according to an estimate from Bush's own intelligence agencies.

»Most amazingly, Woodward's book indicates that Gen. John Abizaid, the current chief of the U.S. military command that supervises the Iraq war, told Rep. John Murtha, a decorated former Marine who advocates rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, that he was very close to agreement with the congressman's position. When the commander in charge of the Iraq war believes that U.S. forces should be rapidly withdrawn from that country, that fact should be big news. But sadly, it isn't.

»Consulting Kissinger on how to successfully ‘win’ a counterinsurgency is like getting advice from Mel Gibson on public relations. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger came into office in 1969 vowing to get the United States out of Vietnam, while achieving “peace with honor.” Four years and 22,000 American casualties later, Nixon and Kissinger settled for a face-saving peace settlement that they could have obtained shortly after they took office. The final agreement merely provided a “decent interval” between U.S. troop withdrawal and the fall of the South Vietnamese regime to the communists.»

Mis en ligne le 3 octobre 2006 à 08H59