McNamara wasn’t such a hawk by the end of his tenure, though. And he wasn’t Secretary of Defense for the entire war. He left the post when LBJ left office, because he’d failed to convince Kennedy that the war looked unwinnable, and to convince Johnson that it was unwinnable, so what luck was he going to have with Nixon.
I hope you are joking. What makes him even more despicable than Kissinger is that he knew the war was unwinnable the entire time he was managing it, drastically escalating it and sending tens of thousands of young Americans to their deaths, knowing the whole time that there was no possibility of winning it. That he was fully aware of it was publicly a known, indisputable fact once the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971, removing any doubt that he knew this. He didn’t try to convince Kennedy or LBJ that the war was unwinnable despite being fully aware of it, he orchestrated its escalation. He went off to be President of the World Bank when Nixon was elected. It had nothing to do with him thinking he wouldn’t be able to convince Nixon the war was unwinnable or becoming less of a hawk. He had known the war was unwinnable from the beginning. He just didn’t care.
That atrocity of a memoir he wrote and the book tours he took was him realizing that he was going to have to answer to his maker someday not too far away for his actions, and not liking the smell of sulfur he was noticing.
“I’m not a bad slime!”
That is indeed fucking great. Well played, Ms Louise.
Back on topic: I’m glad to see that time has not diminished people’s memories of the enormity of Kissinger’s many sins. I wish no ill or further pain to his family and loved ones, but let’s have no hagiographies of a monster.
Neither does Kissinger.
Anybody care to speculate what the Nixon administration would have been like if Kissinger hadn’t existed?
Just as malevolent and iniquitous but not quite as competent at it.
Stranger
As a footnote here, I note that Joan Jara, wife of Chilean poet and singer Victor Jara who was murdered during the 1973 coup, died earlier this month. Shortly before her death, she received news that one of the army officers accused of shooting her husband was going to be extradited from the US to Chile to stand trial. As often the case, those ultimately responsible, like Kissinger, are not held to account.
Another Doonesbury: “This is your life, Henry Kissinger!”
And still another: “Hell, it only took Albert Speer 520 pages.”
Nailed it. 
War criminal, indirectly responsible for millions of deaths.
Just chiming in to acknowledge what a well-crafted sentence this is.
The effects of Kissinger’s and his cronies’ crimes are still experienced daily around the world.
Friends of my parents were killed by the regime he helped install.
Good riddance.
You are off by a couple of orders of magnitude. He was right up there with Hitler and Stalin.
I respect Kissinger’s War Service. ***Earned a Bronze Star in the 84th Infantry Division. He would see combat in the division, and volunteered for dangerous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge. He was reassigned again, and became a Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Special Agent holding the enlisted rank of sergeant, and was put in charge of a team tasked with tracking down Gestapo officers around the German city of Hanover. It was there that Kissinger also helped liberate the Ahlem concentration camp.
He understood the horrors of war. I think it influenced the decisions he made as secretary of state. He did have to follow the President’s orders.
I didn’t always agree with his politics. But he served his adopted country quite well.
*** from his authorized biography
No he didn’t. His job wasn’t to obey orders; his job was to be a primary participant in the making of U.S. foreign policy, and the Nixon Administration’s policies were at least as much his as they were Nixon’s. And if there was an unresolvable conflict between his desired policy and the President’s, he was always free to resign.
he served his adopted country quite well.
Keeping the Vietnam war going for another four years, and enabling Pinochet’s coup in Chile, did not serve America well. They were horrible betrayals of our ideals.
He should have stopped when he was ahead.
It is the case that other politicos, including Obama, are also guilty, but few people represent so clearly and obviously and shamelessly the odious connections between capital, state, empire, and personal ambition.
As I wrote in the Celebrity Death Pool thread:
They say in Spanish that the Devil knows more because of how old he is than because he is the Devil. Guess the Devil thought it was time to learn a couple of new tricks. Welcome, Mr. Kissinger, here is your accordion.
So sorry to read that. I am going out with some friends to have a drink or two. I’ll raise a glass to your parent’s friends too, with your permission. And the numerous other victims.
Have printed a couple of the many excellent Doonesbury strips linked, I think my friends will enjoy them too.
Was Kissinger a observant Jew? Is the family following Shiva?
And another one from the same series: The Chilean Generals
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he said. “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
— Henry Kissinger