STONE HARBOR, New Jersey -- I am lolling with some good reading
along the Jersey shore. The sun is high in the clear blue sky and
there is a cool breeze. Of a sudden a hurricane just hit. From my
office comes word that Peter Rodman died over the weekend,
unexpectedly from the blitzkrieg of a rare leukemia.
Of all the writers I have dealt with in forty years of editing
The American Spectator, Peter is at the top of the chop in
terms of intellect, character, and literary skill. He served as
foreign policy adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford,
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In the present Bush
administration he served as assistant secretary of defense and was
on the Department of Defense's Defense Policy Board. Through all
these presidencies he was a major figure in the defense of American
freedom, first against Communism, now against Islamic terrorism.
His mentor and life-long colleague has been Henry Kissinger. If
friends such as I are grieving Peter's death, Henry must be
devastated. An aspect of Henry Kissinger worthy of mention is that
he has a deep capacity for friendship. Months after Henry's friend
Bill Buckley passed away Henry still feels the loss. With the loss
of Peter, Henry's younger colleague for so many years, his grieving
will last a long time. Peter worked with Henry in the Nixon White
House and beyond. He helped with policy formation, and he helped
Henry with his elegant memoirs.
It was during his literary service to Henry that I first
encountered Peter. The story is worth telling, for not only does it
illuminate Peter's splendid character but it also illuminates the
weird mythopoesis engendering some of the Kissinger legend.
Sometime in 1980, a young aide to Henry -- that would be Peter --
sent the editor in chief of The American Spectator -- that
would be me -- a memo outlining errors in what was then one of the
most popular anti-Vietnam War books, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon
and the Destruction of Cambodia, by William Shawcross. I
recognized the memo as the makings of a trenchant book essay.
Without knowing Peter, I asked him to recast his memo. Boy was I in
for travail! Peter was brilliant (a summa cum laude graduate of
Harvard College with subsequent degrees from Oxford and from
Harvard Law School) and stupendously well informed, but he suffered
an affliction almost unknown among Washington policy elites,
particularly rising Washington policy elites. He was
personally modest and loyal. He had done his research as an aide to
his superior and he did not think he deserved credit.
It took me weeks of cajoling, of scheming, of notifying him of
his "duty" in the war of ideas. That last line might have worked.
We finally ran the essay in our March 1981 issue (followed in July
by Shawcross's response and Peter's reply to that). Precisely why
he capitulated and rewrote the piece for us, I do not recall, but
it was the beginning of not only a long friendship with me but also
eventually a friendship with Shawcross. The second e-mail I got
today about Peter's passing was from William in London: "It is so
sad and shocking about Peter. I am terribly sorry."
One of the repellent aspects of policy disputes in Washington is
that more often than involving facts and ideas they involve the
bruised egos of egomaniacs. In dealing with Peter one dealt with a
gentleman, not a policy prima donna. Shawcross and Rodman tussled
over the consequences of American policy in Cambodia honorably in
the public arena. There was nothing cheap or devious about their
exchange, which Shawcross later published in full in his paperback.
Over the years Peter continued to argue that a strong American
foreign policy would benefit the entire Western world. By the time
of the Iraq War Shawcross had come to Rodman's position. They
became friends and allies. On June 7, 2007, they coauthored a
piece in the New York Times defending
the Iraq War and the role the allies played in maintaining peace in
the world. At the time of Peter's death they had another piece in
mind.
Henry Kissinger, of course, had nothing to do with the
Rodman/Shawcross debate, and this brings me to the mythmaking
element in Henry's life. A year or so after I published Peter's
essay I was approached by a foreign policy titan at a Council on
Foreign Relations gathering. With befitting hauteur he murmured to
me that he had admired my independence of mind until I allowed
Kissinger to manipulate me into publishing Rodman on Shawcross.
Nothing could have been more preposterous. If anyone had
manipulated anyone it was I who was the manipulator. Yet if by
chance Henry's diabolical powers are so great that they could
inspire me to publish Rodman, I thank him.
Peter has been one of the finest people I have known in public
life. His loss is a terrible reminder of life's transience. Yet the
survival of his two accomplished children and his marvelous wife,
Veronique, reminds us that a good man's life's work is not
extinguished at his death. I pray for Peter and I pray for his
family.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Islam, Books, Law, Iraq, Communism
