richard holbrooke and the militarization of US "diplomacy"

[niyad]

a very interesting interview yesterday on DN about richard holbrooke, not exactly the "peacemaker" as he has been lionized this week.

Richard Holbrooke Dies at 69: Remembering Veteran Diplomat’s Overlooked Record in East Timor, Iraq and the Balkans
Holbrooke

Since his death this week at the age of 69, veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke has been remembered for a storied career that includes brokering the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia. But little attention has been paid to his role in implementing and backing U.S. policies that killed thousands of civilians. Independent journalists Jeremy Scahill and John Pilger join us to discuss Holbrooke’s record in carrying out U.S. policy in Vietnam, East Timor, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Scahill says Holbrooke "represented the utter militarization of what is called 'U.S. diplomacy.'"


. . . . .

AMY GOODMAN: While tributes have been pouring in for Richard Holbrooke, little attention has been paid to his role in implementing and backing U.S. policies that killed thousands of civilians. As Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter administration, Holbrooke oversaw weapons shipments to the Indonesian military as it killed a third of East Timor’s population. In 1980, he played a key role in the Carter administration’s support for a South Korean military crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju that killed hundreds of people. Details of Holbrooke’s role in East Timor and Korea have been entirely ignored by the corporate media since his death—hardly covered before, as well. Richard Holbrooke was also a prominent Democratic backer of the Bush administration’s decision to attack Iraq in 2003.
. . . . .

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, first of all, I mean, Richard Holbrooke, probably more than any U.S. diplomat since Henry Kissinger—and he cut his teeth, of course, during the Vietnam War working under Henry Kissinger—Richard Holbrooke has represented the utter militarization of what is called U.S. diplomacy. He was also at the center of the nexus of U.S. militarists, of aggressive, hawkish, quote-unquote, "diplomats," and the elite, white-shoe media culture. And that’s why you see people like Joe Klein and others falling over themselves to engage in revisionist history about Richard Holbrooke. They only tell one part of the story. And often, in the case of Iraq or Yugoslavia, they’re telling a very one-sided version of history that makes Richard Holbrooke look like something that he wasn’t, and that was a peacemaker. He was a war maker and was someone who extended the tentacles of U.S. foreign policy.

Under the Clinton administration, Holbrooke was sort of the hammer when it came to diplomacy, as he’s been, in a way, under President Obama, though we’ll get to that later with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Let’s remember, when we’re talking about Iraq, Richard Holbrooke wasn’t just speaking as some pundit when he was supporting the Bush administration’s lie-laden case for war in Iraq. He also promoted the idea that Saddam posed a threat with weapons of mass destruction, Richard Holbrooke. But during the Clinton administration, there were the most ruthless economic sanctions in history imposed by the Democrats on the government—or rather, the people—of Iraq, that just targeted the civilian population, denied food and medicine, turned the hospitals of Iraq—and John Pilger knows about this better than anyone, because he did the definitive film on it—turned the hospitals of Iraq into death rows for infants. So, you know, Richard Holbrooke was part of an administration that also bombed Baghdad on multiple occasions in the north and the south of the country, as well, under the guise of the no-fly zones.


. . . .

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/richard_holbrooke_dies_at_69_remembering

[EFerrari]

1. It was very creepy to see serial liar PJ Crowley call him a peacemaker.

I remember what his career was.

[niyad]

2. I heard that, and it made me quite ill.

[Puregonzo1188]

3. Great interview! Heard it yesterday, Jeremy Scahill is amazingly brilliant.

And John Pilger is pretty great too, though Scahill really stole the show as far as the interview went.

[niyad]

4. it is something everybody needs to see.

[EFerrari]

5. It looks as though people believe because Holbrooke was not keen

on Obama's Afghanistan strategy, that he was anti-war or something. Which is not the case.

Scahill was very good.