# Henry Kissinger Has Died **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 30, 2023, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884 "2023-11-30T01:59:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/21 "2023-11-30T03:01:47Z")
I try to not speak ill of the dead, but my first thought was, “Took long enough.” ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/22 "2023-11-30T03:24:00Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > A woman I worked with long ago described him as slime. To which slime no doubt replied “Hey, leave me out of this!” ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/23 "2023-11-30T03:27:44Z")
Not a thread I like so far. Superpower statesmen sometimes find themselves having to choose between different evils. Barack Obama understands this: [Obama told aides . . .](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-drones-double-down_n_4208815) > [@](#): > > “Turns out I’m really good at killing people," Obama said quietly, “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” Barack Obama could easily be quoted criticizing various Kissinger decisions in future years. But I’m sure Obama won’t speak about Kissinger the way I’m seeing here — certainly not in the next week or two — knowing he also had to choose between bad options. Same with Biden and Blinken. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/24 "2023-11-30T03:33:18Z")
So, vampires _can_ die eventually, even when they’ve spilled a lot of blood. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/25 "2023-11-30T03:35:32Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > [Obama told aides . . .](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-drones-double-down_n_4208815) > > > [@](#): > > > > “Turns out I’m really good at killing people," Obama said quietly, “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” I’m curious. Did Obama ever arrange for the killing of a democratically elected leader and their replacement by a military dictatorship? Or help military dictatorships with the technical difficulties of making dissidents “disappear”? Because if not, I’m not following the “bothsideism” here. Cites, please. > **[Operation Condor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor)** > > Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor; Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terrorism, involving intelligence operations, CIA-backed coups, as well as assassinations of left-wing leaders in South America which formally existed from 1975 to 1983. Operation Condor was officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South Due to its clandestin... ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/26 "2023-11-30T03:41:19Z")
And at any rate, Kissinger’s massive influence never had to be appealed to the American voter. That in and of itself is bad. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/27 "2023-11-30T03:44:48Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Superpower statesmen sometimes find themselves having to choose between different evils. > > Barack Obama understands this: I’m not going to defend Obama’s expansion of the drone assassination campaign, but he’s an amateur compared to the level of shit-fuckery that Kissinger engaged in and counseled political leaders on for decades. > **[National Security Study Memorandum 200](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Study_Memorandum_200)** > > National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200), also known as the "Kissinger Report", was a national security directive completed on December 10, 1974 by the United States National Security Council under the direction of Henry Kissinger following initial orders from President of the United States Richard Nixon. > NSSM200 was reworked and adopted as official United States policy through NSDM 314 by President Ger... Stranger ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/28 "2023-11-30T03:54:52Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Cites, please. There was a thread on Kissinger recently. I posted a bit there. In a few hours, there will be plenty of appropriate comments on his death, coming from past and current U.S. presidents, and secretaries of state, in news reports. Those can be googled tomorrow. I don’t generally like a moralistic approach to understanding the actions of historical figures, even if they didn’t just die today. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/29 "2023-11-30T03:56:33Z")
So did Obama order the killing of democratically elected leaders and their replacement by military dictatorships, or not? And did he provide technical support to military dictatorships making political dissidents “disappear”, or not? You’re the one who equated Obama to Kissinger. Please provide cites to back that up. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/30 "2023-11-30T04:20:53Z")
I think there is a real danger in judging historical figures only through the prism of modern values. People who did worthy things while holding popular, contemporaneous values should be looked at holistically including both their achievements and flaws, which can both sometimes be used to educate and elucidate. Sometimes there are no good choices and tough decisions are required. However, I do not much include Kissinger in this schema. His actions did not occur in the distant mists of history. He certainly deserves full consideration of his accomplishments, which were considerable… as well as areas where his influence and decisions suggest a seeming lack of humanity, a strong degree of hubris, significant morbidity and consequence, and a reluctance to apologize or even acknowledge certain misdeeds. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/31 "2023-11-30T04:22:08Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > You’re the one who equated Obama to Kissinger. Only in the sense that they both had to choose between evils, and knew it. The situations and choices were quite different. We recently had a Kissinger debate thread. Before he died. I didn’t want to totally and completely ignore direct questions here, but because of the timing, I am mostly doing so. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/32 "2023-11-30T04:33:55Z")
**Obama on Kissinger:** _President Barack Obama, who was 8 years old when Mr. Kissinger first took office, was less enamored of him. Mr. Obama noted toward the end of his presidency that he had spent much of his tenure trying to repair the world that Mr. Kissinger left. He saw Mr. Kissinger’s failures as a cautionary tale._ _“We dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II,” Mr. Obama said [in an interview with The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/) in 2016, “and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell.”_ _Mr. Obama noted that while in office he was still trying to help countries “remove bombs that are still blowing off the legs of little kids.”_ _“In what way did that strategy promote our interests?” he said._ > **[Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped Nation’s Cold War History](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.html)** > > The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, he was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/33 "2023-11-30T04:37:50Z")
Odd to think such a major player of a certain time lived so far beyond most of the others. And from what I read he remained quite active for his age until very late, even if not highly visible to the public at large. > [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Not a thread I like so far. Not a legacy the readers here liked so far either. So maybe it evens out. And for sure, the others who have sat in the same table will be circumspect at this point – and you’d _expect_ them to be. Their time for mutual critique was another, as mentioned in **Dr\_Paprika** ’s post, not now. But the people in this thread are not them, and this is not a memorial thread so… The Terrible Decisions rulers and their counsel make, if they’re sensible persons, should still _pain_ them no matter the necessity… and the people out there want to see that it hurt. They will let you get away with standing by your decision as long as they perceive that you paid some kind of price. That even if you believe you made the right call, you wish you didn’t have to. In his case, there is a perception that many of the Terrible Decisions he influenced were so by choice, **not** necessity, and that if the Great Game meant death and suffering by the tens or hundreds of thousands, well, too damn bad. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/34 "2023-11-30T04:41:17Z")
I enjoyed Rolling Stone’s take: > **[Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/)** > > Henry Kissinger has died at age 100, his consulting firm said in a statement on Wednesday. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/35 "2023-11-30T04:59:21Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > I think there is a real danger in judging historical figures only through the prism of modern values. > … > However, I do not much include Kissinger in this schema. I agree with both these points, and think that they emphasise why Kissinger was so terrible. Kissinger’s family fled from Nazi Germany, a totalitarian regime, and sought refuge in the United States, which was to become the arsenal of democracy, defeating the Nazis. And when he rose to a position of power, he supported military totalitarian regimes, helping them to suppress democracy. Just like the Papens and other supporters of the Nazis, he thought that opposing communism was worth giving up on democracy, and in fact actively working to suppress democracy. Condemning him for those actions is not presentism, or reading back modern values. He lived through the battle of the great democracies against Nazism and fascism, and personally took shelter in one of those democracies. But he was quite comfortable in supporting fascists in their efforts to suppress democracy, in the name of anti-communism. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/36 "2023-11-30T05:01:33Z")
Well, I hate to find a moment of delight in all of this, but this is fucking great. [https://x.com/hillplaceblog/status/1730079024137806150?s=61&t=7zPHcBzjb1UW-wh6DrDc3g](https://x.com/hillplaceblog/status/1730079024137806150?s=61&t=7zPHcBzjb1UW-wh6DrDc3g) ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/37 "2023-11-30T05:18:56Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Not a thread I like so far. Too bad. > [@PhillyGuy](#): > > Superpower statesmen sometimes find themselves having to choose between different evils. > > Barack Obama understands this: Only one of them secretly dropped [2.7 million tons of bombs on more than 113,000 sites in Cambodia](https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/cambodia/war-closes-in). It’s also pretty fucked up he gladly accepted the Nobel Peace Prise that his North Vietnamese counterpart Lê Đức Thọ had the dignity to refuse. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/38 "2023-11-30T06:57:14Z")
If there were a hell, Kissinger can burn in it. The apologia for his record is sickening. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/39 "2023-11-30T07:18:50Z")
Tina Louise is the only still-living member of the “Gilligan’s Island” cast. Heaven didn’t want Kissinger, and hell was afraid he’d take over. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884/40 "2023-11-30T07:34:24Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > but because of the timing, I am mostly doing so. After your second million victims or so you loose any rights of not being spoken ill of when you croak. Good riddance. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/henry-kissinger-has-died/993884.md?page=3)