QOTD

[redbird]

The Old War Criminal is back. I try not to hold grudges, but I must admit I have never lost one ounce of rancor toward Henry Kissinger, that cynical, slithery, self-absorbed pathological liar. He has all the loyalty and principle of Charles Talleyrand, whom Napoleon described as"a piece of dung in a silk stocking." —Molly Ivins

Comments

[penngwyn.livejournal.com]

I've been musing lately on whether, just possibly, the supposed "lack of will" to 'win' in Vietnam wasn't an expression of a *stronger* will to actually be the beacon of liberty illuminating the world.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Except even Talleyrand looks good beside him - not looking like a diseased frog helps, of course, but he had exquisite manners and an eye to the main chance that is truely breathtaking. He was a man who always knew precisely when to change sides, and precisely how much of the goods on people to reveal you had so that they would let you.

It is significant that, of the diplomats of that period, Kissinger's admiration is not for Talleyrand, but for Metternich, who turned Austria into a police state and played realpolitik so successfully that everything he created fell apart within twentyfive years. Kissinger wrote a thesis on him.