A Senate hearing opened this morning with Code Pink protesters trying to arrest former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for “war crimes.” The protesters, bearing signs reading “Kissinger War Criminal” and “Cambodia,” rushed up behind the 91-year-old diplomat at the witness table of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which was holding a hearing on global challenges and the U.S. national security strategy. Also testifying were 94-year-old former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and 77-year-old former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The protestors were loud and unrelenting and John McCain didn’t mince words expressing his displeasure with them:

“I’ve been a member of this committee for many years, and I have never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous and despicable as the last demonstration that just took place,” McCain said, which led to shout-backs from the protesters. “You know, you’re going to have to shut up, or I’m going to have you arrested. If we can’t get the Capital Hill Police in here immediately… Get out of here, you low-life scum,” McCain added. “So Henry, I hope you will — Dr. Kissinger, I hope on behalf of all of the members of this committee on both sides of the aisle — in fact, from all of my colleagues, I’d like to apologize for allowing such disgraceful behavior towards a man who served his country with the greatest distinction. I apologize profusely.”

McCain could have simply acknowledged their constitutional right to express themselves and respectfully expressed his own disagreement with what they said. But instead, McCain went on an all out frontal assault against the protestors, apologizing “profusely” to a man known the world over as a war criminal and shamelessly insulting, with the utmost contempt, Americans who have the courage to stand up and protest his continued involvement in US foreign policy.

Christopher Hitchens, the British-American journalist and author, was highly critical of Kissinger, [in] The Trial of Henry Kissinger, [where] Hitchens called for the prosecution of Kissinger “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture”.[86][87][88]

With anger and tensions continuing to rise, as they are, between angry Americans and their out-of-touch ruling class, it won’t be long before the fragile decorum of political correctness that keeps us civil gives way to a tsunami of raging opposition that will not be quelled.