John McCain brands US Senate protester ‘low-life scum’

A protester who accused former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger of war crimes during a Senate hearing was branded “low-life scum” by Republican senator John McCain.

In a rare appearance on Capitol Hill, Mr Kissinger, who was the top foreign policy strategist under Republican President Richard Nixon, cautioned against deeper US military engagement in the Middle East and Ukraine without a better understanding of the potential consequences.

While the most immediate challenge is to defeat Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, Mr Kissinger said, “We must not let that degenerate into another war that we don’t know how to end.”

Protester interrupts

During the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global security challenges facing the US, Mr Kissinger, who showed up with his right arm in a sling, was briefly shouted down by a protester accusing him of war crimes from the Vietnam War. The protesters said Mr Kissinger should be arrested.

“Get out of here, you low-life scum,” Mr McCain, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, told a protester before the hearing started.

After a second interruption, Mr Kissinger won a standing ovation from the committee and most of the audience.

Mr Kissinger also stopped short of endorsing a call Mr McCain, the committee chairman, to provide defence weapons to Ukraine’s military as it battles pro-Russian separatists.

“I’m uneasy about beginning a process of military engagement without knowing where it will lead us and what we’ll do to sustain it,” Mr Kissinger (91) said.

Much of the hearing seemed like a flashback to the 1970’s and 1980’s, as Mr Kissinger was joined by two other elder statesmen - former secretaries of state George Shultz, who served under president Ronald Reagan, and Madeleine Albright, the top diplomat in the Clinton administration - to offer their views of national security strategy.

Reagan era

Mr Shultz (94) used the hearing partly to reminisce about the lessons of governing he said he learned from Mr Reagan, with testimony that included recollections of an air traffic controllers strike in the 1980’s.

His talk got off to a slow start when he neglected to push the button required to activate his microphone. “You can see I’m out of practice,” Mr Shultz said. “I haven’t been here for 25 years. I used to appear a lot.”

Like many Republicans in Congress, Mr Kissinger and Mr Shultz expressed concern that a potential nuclear deal with Iran could let the Islamic Republic continue to enrich uranium at low levels instead of halting all enrichment to eliminate the country’s ability to develop nuclear weapons.

“The Iranians are not known as rug merchants for nothing,” said Mr Shultz. “They’re good bargainers. They’ve already outmanoeuvred us.”

Bloomberg