Moynihan's legacy: great writer, lousy senator.

• Author: O'Donnell, Michael
• Position: Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary - Book review

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary

by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Steven R. Weisman

PublicAffairs, 720 pp

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Daniel Patrick Moynihan's main interests were matters of domestic policy like face and poverty, yet his single best and single worst moments occurred at the United Nations, where he served as U.S. ambassador from 1975 to 1976. In October 1975, just before a UN committee passed the terrible resolution declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination," Israel's delegate and future President Chaim Herzog rose and gave an impassioned speech denouncing "this pernicious resolution," closing with the shout that the Jewish people "shall never forget!" The measure then passed and was sent on to the full General Assembly, where it would be taken up several weeks later. The hall erupted in sustained applause. Moynihan pushed his way through to Herzog, shook his hand, and, in full view of the other delegates, embraced him and said, "Fuck 'em." In November 1975, immediately after the General Assembly passed the resolution by a vote of 72 to 35 with 32 abstentions--a vote regarded by many as the institution's lowest moment--Moynihan took the podium and gave the speech of his life, defiantly announcing that the United States "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act."

Moynihan's worst moment followed just a month later. In December 1975, Suharto's Indonesia invaded East Timor, then a Portuguese colony, slaughtering and starving some 200,000 people--almost a third of East Timor's population. The United States was Suharto's ally and his main supplier of arms; President Ford and Henry Kissinger paid a visit to Jakarta the day before the atrocities began, and, as shown by documents declassified in 2001, assured Suharto that the United States had no objection if he felt obliged to take "rapid or drastic action." Their policy was tacit approval of a massacre--and Moynihan, their man at the UN, saw it done. As he later wrote, "The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."

The reader will notice that Moynihan's embrace of Herzog--which was genuinely moving and powerful, the exact right thing to do--was ultimately a symbolic gesture. By contrast, his suppression of any meaningful defense of the Timorese people was enormously consequential, and led, indirectly, to the death of countless innocents. Without exaggerating Moynihan's role--the policy was Kissinger's, and Moynihan subsequently had the decency to acknowledge its, and his, shamelessness--it seems fair to say that in the case of East Timor, he did exactly the wrong thing. And so went Moynihan's career in public...