But Henry did it all for the Greater Good. /s
the greater good
Exactly. Kissenger was extraordinarily evil because his choices were not only wrong by current standards, they were morally bankrupt by the standards of his time. In fact, he participated in making our own standards worse.
Burn in hell, Henry.
Why did I know before reading the quote or following the link that this was going to be an apologia?
From a theological standpoint, I don’t think you have that power.
I wonder who’s Kissinger now?
[Checks current location of the thread] Oooo!! Oooo!! I know! I know! Because of who posted it.
You don’t have to look very long or very hard to come up with reasons to damn Kissinger. You do, however, have to ignore quite a few orders of magnitude to look upon the sins of Obama and the sins of Kissinger and declare them equal.
Well, we know what Kissinger’s choice was regarding the Khmer Rouge:
You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.
btw I heard someone analyse Dr. Strangelove as von Neumann + Teller + Kahn + Kissinger. So that’s the lot, now.
!!!
Just realized I was posting in the Pit, something I never wanted to do!
This certainly makes some of what I was criticizing much more acceptable.
Well at least we get to see the humor in Kissinger’s diplomatic conversations. It’s practically an episode of Seinfeld.
The Secretary: Did Ieng Sary impress you?
Foreign Minister: He is a nice, quiet man.
The Secretary: How many did he kill? Tens of thousands?
Foreign Minister: Nice and quietly!!
Since Johnny von Neumann, Edward Teller, and Herman Kahn all proceeded Kissinger in shuffling off this mortal coil, I don’t think they can be listed as successors. For note, much of the quotable dialogue from Dr. Strangelove as voiced by several characters was drawn directly from the lectures and essays of nuclear strategist Herman Kahn.
As I noted above, Kissinger essentially codified his doctrine of “Realpolitik” foreign policy in “National Security Study Memorandum 200”, colloquially referred to as the “Kissinger Report” which essentially promoted the notion that the United States should engage in whatever foreign policy necessary to ensure access to mineral and energy resources regardless of ethical considerations or eventual blowback (although it did encourage avoiding the appearance of “economic or racial imperialism”). It was specifically focused on preventing economic independence of developing nations by retarding population grown and industrial development, and ensuring protection of American business interests abroad.
Kissinger was hardly the first government official to advance this mindset as policy (see the utter shit-fuckery of the Dulles Brothers, or the illegal annexation of the Hawaiian Archipelago, or indeed the 20th century history of US interventions in Haiti for a few of many examples), but he made it the fundamental basis of US foreign and military policy going forward, so essentially all successors are in some way culpable for maintaining and not disavowing that policy. We are all Kissinger; he infected and infested US foreign affairs of state in ways that will long outlive him.
Stranger
I’m not American, nor of a certain age, and in no way am I Kissinger. It takes a certain level of human contempt to carpet bomb a neutral nation, publicly claim you support its leader Sihanouk, back the murderous Khmer Rouge and justify this to “send a message” to the North Vietnamese. There are enough land mines in Cambodia that, according to Obama’s friend Bourdain (admittedly not the best source, but the episode where they met in Vietnam is classic), something like one in two hundred Cambodians is disabled today because of something Kissinger dismissed as having happened sixty years ago. Did he ever acknowledge this? Do anything to try to make it right? Even the dude who wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman regretted these types of actions in the name of bigger business.
This quote actually shows the difference between Obama and Kissinger. This gallows humor on Obama’s part demonstrates that he recognizes the moral ambiguity of his actions and that it is not something that he is altogether comfortable with.
Kissinger on the other hand appears to be entirely untroubled about the consequence of his recommendations, despite a resulting death toll 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than Obama’s.
Dude, he shared a funny joke about killing tens of thousands with the Thai Foreign Minister about Ieng Sary, what more do you want?
If you don’t know who Ieng Sary was (raises hand, I had to google him myself):
See? The real punchline was that in coming years after Henry shared the joke about him killing tens of thousands is that it was just the opening act for him killing millions.
Not just “entirely untroubled”; actually gleeful and continually advising Presidents and Secretaries of State in successive administrations to continue with similar policies as they saw fit to ensure American dominance and access to foreign resources.
Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) was mentioned above for his culpability in widening the war in Vietnam and his only much later contrition regarding his involvement, but he was one of the few (certainly the only one at a Cabinet level from that time) who came out—if much belatedly—in acknowledging that US involvement in Southeast Asia was misguided, resulted in massive unnecessary deaths of non-combatants, and would be regarded a war crime if he and others were held to account, and also drew conclusions in In Retrospect that engaging in warfare is always a moral compromise (“How much evil must we do to do good?”) that should be weighed heavily before going to war or launching attacks. McNamara was also one of the very few officials to publicly declare and expound upon the severe risks of depending upon nuclear deterrence as a defense strategy (again, after being a promulgator of the Minuteman ICBM system for that purpose). Whatever you think of his motivations, he at least did that much.
Kissinger, on the other hand, has never apologized or expressed any equivocation for the moral compromise of his many actions that undermined fledgling democracies, have kept many nations in the “Global South” in an underdeveloped and politically unstable conditions, and directly or proximately resulted in deaths to millions and still active harms today. He enjoyed political favoritism and public approbation for decades, and had an active hand in both undermining the sovereignty of Taiwan to favor mainland China (the consequences of which are obvious today) and the ‘rehabilitation’ of Richard Nixon in the ‘Nineties. He’s basically a cartoonishly evil Rumpelstiltskin-type of kingmaker whose only deprivation for his heinous policies and acts has that he hasn’t been able to travel to certain nations for fear of being arrested and tried. And he got to live a long, comfortable life in relative wealth and renown, suffering only a few vocal detractors and the occasionally satirical political cartoon.
Death’s too good for him.
Stranger
They always call it Realpolitik, as opposed to the starry-eyed, pablum-puking doo-gooders. Comparing themselves to Bismarck while ignoring his careful balancing of power in Europe; eschewing it in overseas colonies, or, in the case of Italian reunification, creating power outside his own nation. Kissinger’s idea of Realpolitik was unilateral power. (And they also always point to Woodrow Wilson as the ultimate idiot doo-gooder failure, another historical inaccuracy)
“I’ll tell you this: If the sword is all that you’re prepared to show us Britons, then be prepared to carry it forever in your hand, and sleep with it forever at your side at night — for you will need it!”
Although Caractacus’ actual speech to Claudius wasn’t at all like that, it’s still a good illustration of what you’re getting when you go all in on unilateral power.
NYT opinion piece (gift link):
As secretary of state and national security adviser under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Mr. Kissinger created U.S. war policy in Southeast Asia. His expansion and escalation of the Vietnam War into Cambodia killed, wounded or displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians. That legacy still reverberates, and not just in bombed and brutalized Cambodian villages. His disregard for civilian casualties in war established a blueprint for the projection of U.S. military power that would have deadly consequences for civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, among other places.
Earlier this year, just ahead of Mr. Kissinger’s 100th birthday, I published an investigation in The Intercept of atrocities that had never been revealed and were results of his policies.
Snopes on Kissinger: