One of the sad things about the political debate in this country is the convenient way the elites and the press want us to forget history. The Iraq War and its devastation to people around the world? Vietnam? Chile? Pfft...that was so yesterday (except it gave rise to ISIS but that's another story...). So, too, is the willingness to forget the crimes of Henry Kissinger--crimes spread over decades of his role in government. And, if you liked what Kissinger offered, hey, get ready for an apparent replay a few years from now: in a second Clinton Administration.
In her review of Kissinger's newest whitewash of his past, Clinton says:
Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels. Though we have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past, what comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.[emphasis]
Henry Kissinger has never had an interest in a just or liberal order. His entire career has been simply about amassing his own power--no matter the expense to millions of people.
So, let's focus on just two examples of Kissinger's work for a "just and liberal order" and a commitment to democracy.
Vietnam
Estimates vary but roughly three millions Vietnamese in the north were killed in the American war against Vietnam. And that doesn't count the generations of Vietnamese would would die from the effects of tens of millions of gallons of defoliants dropped on Vietnam.
I recently visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and also took a trip to My Lai. The mass killings Kissinger oversaw were on full display.
First, there is a special room at the museum dedicated to the effects of Agent Orange.
Second,a picture of the devastation caused by the relentless bombing campaign by the U.S.
Finally, a list of all the civilians killed in the massacre at My Lai.
This is Kissinger's handiwork, certainly done at the behest and approval of Richard Nixon.
Chile
While this country marks September 11th each year for what happened in 2001, it was the CIA-backed military coup against the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile that must be recalled. As Christoper Hitchens remarked: "In a famous expression of his contempt for democracy, Kissinger once observed that he saw no reason why a certain country should be allowed to "go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." The country concerned was Chile, which at the time of this remark had a justified reputation as the most highly evolved pluralistic democracy in the Southern Hemisphere of the Americas."
In 2013, the National Security Archive released, on the 40th anniversary of the coup, newly declassified documents which outlined the blood on Kissinger's hands:
Among the key revelations in the documents:
- On September 12, eight days after Allende's election, Kissinger initiated discussion on the telephone with CIA director Richard Helm's about a preemptive coup in Chile. "We will not let Chile go down the drain," Kissinger declared. "I am with you," Helms responded. Their conversation took place three days before President Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream," and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from being inaugurated. Since the Kissinger/Helms "telcon" was not known to the Church Committee, the Senate report on U.S. intervention in Chile and subsequent histories date the initiation of U.S. efforts to sponsor regime change in Chile to the September 15 meeting.
- Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky, who strongly advised against covert action to undermine Allende. On September 14, Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to "widespread violence and even insurrection." He also argued that such a policy was immoral: "What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this."
- After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende's inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied President Nixon to reject the State Department's recommendation that the U.S. seek a modus vivendi with Allende. In an eight-page secret briefing paper that provided Kissinger's clearest rationale for regime change in Chile, he emphasized to Nixon that "the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere" and "your decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will make this year." Not only were a billion dollars of U.S. investments at stake, Kissinger reported, but what he called "the insidious model effect" of his democratic election. There was no way for the U.S. to deny Allende's legitimacy, Kissinger noted, and if he succeeded in peacefully reallocating resources in Chile in a socialist direction, other countries might follow suit. "The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it."
The next day Nixon made it clear to the entire National Security Council that the policy would be to bring Allende down. "Our main concern," he stated, "is the prospect that he can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success."
- In the days following the coup, Kissinger ignored the concerns of his top State Department aides about the massive repression by the new military regime. He sent secret instructions to his ambassador to convey to Pinochet "our strongest desires to cooperate closely and establish firm basis for cordial and most constructive relationship." When his assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs asked him what to tell Congress about the reports of hundreds of people being killed in the days following the coup, he issued these instructions: "I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was." The United States assisted the Pinochet regime in consolidating, through economic and military aide, diplomatic support and CIA assistance in creating Chile's infamous secret police agency, DINA.
- At the height of Pinochet's repression in 1975, Secretary Kissinger met with the Chilean foreign minister, Admiral Patricio Carvajal. Instead of taking the opportunity to press the military regime to improve its human rights record, Kissinger opened the meeting by disparaging his own staff for putting the issue of human rights on the agenda. "I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights," he told Carvajal. "The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State."
- As Secretary Kissinger prepared to meet General Augusto Pinochet in Santiago in June 1976, his top deputy for Latin America, William D. Rogers, advised him make human rights central to U.S.-Chilean relations and to press the dictator to "improve human rights practices." Instead, a declassified transcript of their conversation reveals, Kissinger told Pinochet that his regime was a victim of leftist propaganda on human rights. "In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here," Kissinger told Pinochet. "We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende."
The price of the coup: roughly 40,000 people were tortured, detained, and imprisoned and thousands were executed.
Personally, I believe Kissinger should have stood trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. He dodged that and, instead, made a career for himself, and a lot of money, as a "statesman."
The man spent a large part of his career overseeing the overthrow of democratically-elected governments and/or the destruction of countries, and the death of millions of people.
Submitted for your consideration.
I know it's fashionable for a lot of people to basically want to dismiss the former Secretary of State's vote for the Iraq War as just "one vote." It certainly wasn't. And it's pretty instructive that, looking to the future, she would embrace as a fellow traveler and intellectual compatriot someone who is responsible for decades of conflict, destruction and death around the world.
And the world trembles.
3:48 PM PT: Or as a friend writes in response about Kissinger: "He was a traitor who, if you believe in capital punishment, should have been executed for sabotaging the peace process in order to get Nixon elected. If you do not believe in capital punishment (I do not) then he should have been exiled to the south pole where he could have spent the rest of his very long life contemplating what an evil son of a bitch he was, is, and forever shall be."
This is who the potential president views in admiration.
4:57 PM PT: The predictable comments about "well, what you want a Republicans?" and "who is the alternative?" is (a) a very sad comment about the state of political choices in the country and (b) a very sad comment that people can't separate REALITY AND TRUTH from the very narrow choices they see as possible.