One should always say good about the dead. Henry Kissinger is dead. Good!! It’s too bad the motherfucking pig didn’t get his head blown off as an unsung “war hero” 80 years ago. Millions of other people might not have died had history followed that path.
"There are few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger."
I like this by Professor Uju Anya: “I speak ill of the dead. If you made life choices that harmed people and caused destruction, I’ll praise your death. I don’t care if your family or people you didn’t choose to wound loved you and are sad you’re gone. I will dance on your grave singing. Don’t speak ill of the dead is a weapon of the powerful to silence the disaffected. The tone police is more interested in maintaining or hiding an unjust status quo (that usually favors them) than actually solving problems.”
This has been quoted in several places: In the Sistine Chapel, [Gore] Vidal once came upon Henry Kissinger “gazing thoughtfully” at the Hell section of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. “Look,” said Vidal to a friend, “he’s apartment hunting.”
Ms. Benac's article about the passing of Henry Kissinger exemplifies misleading both-sides-ism. It leaves the reader wondering why Mr. Kissinger was dogged by critics for decades. Non-controversial facts supported by primary documentation prove that Kissinger promoted the idea that World War III could be won. He expressed callous indifference to the violent repression of Jews in Russia. He directed secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia leading to the deaths of up to 500,000 civilians. He tacitly approved and even joked about Pakistani genocide of 300,000 Bengalis. He was deeply involved in the Chilean coup of 1970 in which the elected president Salvador Allende died, and he never distanced himself from the murderous Augusto Pinochet, who implemented a vicious, corrupt dictatorship. There are many additional examples in the Nov 29 Rolling Stone article by Spencer Ackerman (East Timor, Khmer Rouge, illegal wiretaps, etc.). Never turn away from the truth, which is its own justification.
Editors: Sources of non-controversial facts about Kissinger are detailed in numerous highly-respected books, including Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Weiner, and The Price of Power, by Seymour Hersch, Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, and the legendary Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky, which explained in granular detail how Kissinger mislead the American public by engaging in “blatant deception” regarding the negotiations ending the Vietnam War, to protect Nixon’s reputation, which the traditional media in the U.S. accepted without scrutiny or challenge.---------------------------------------
I encourage responding to AP articles; one technique is to do a search for the article title, which locates media outlets that have incorporated it - LTEs can then be directed to that outlet without need of a subscription. Just search <<<submit letter to the editor [outlet name]>>>. I also recommend sending the LTE to the journalist, as an FYI, since they likely won't see it unless it is published.
No downside to writing letters to the editor. Good practice. Informative to the writer, not just the reader. Nobody sending it back with red marks and a failing grade. Influences the newspaper to allocate resources. Makes publication of at least some letter on the topic more likely. Saul Goodman ('t's all good, man!). I encourage plagiarism (in this limited circumstance).
Superb & focused work Gary. I noted with great interest your listing of East Timor. I have had some success at WAPO & NYT on Western Pacific matters.
Stephen Kinzer has done unparalled work on the joint UK & US overthrow of democratic leader in Iran the operation headquartered in Cyprus. We are still paying for that one. Kinzer has a thin compendium book that covers more than 8 covert operations Good job!
Bryan: If you do an internet search of <<<"Gary Stewart" "letter to the editor">>> you will find a number of the 130 LTEs I have had published since 2018. If you find those appealing/informative, send me an email at bertrandbartok@gmail.com, and I can add you to the broadcast email I send out on an irregular basis to activists and friends, which on any given day, may touch on a variety of topics, with a heavy dose of climate change information and letter-writing invitations. If I do add you, I can take you off just as quickly if you just let me know.
When I was a law student, I worked with a small group of Bay Area activists that assisted the constitutional development of the fledgling nations in the post WWII UN Trusteeship of Micronesia particularly the possible Nuclear Sub base in Palau in the far western specific.
The NYT published my LTE on 7/30/1982. NYT Editors wrote the Headline: "Micronesians in the Forefront of the Anti-Nuclear Movement." Section A, page 24. Out in CA, the Bay Area's San Jose Mercury would publish factual reports of interest to their Asian & Pacific Islander readers. Still do.
👏Gary, Also for referring LFAA commenters today to TC’s post.
Wish I had TC’s sociology professor. Perhaps I would have been “enlightened” decades earlier.
No wonder Florida’s latest facist move is to ban sociology from Gen Ed requirements. I have written but assume my words fall silent in the (not) sunshine state…
Being from Florida originally, Kathy, I hear you about what is happening there. Sadly, I feel estranged from one of my best high school friends because of how he thinks about things now. I will say also to you what I wrote to Bryan, just above: If you do an internet search of <<<"Gary Stewart" "letter to the editor">>> you will find a number of the 130 LTEs I have had published since 2018. If you find those appealing/informative, send me an email at bertrandbartok@gmail.com, and I can add you to the broadcast email I send out on an irregular basis to activists and friends, which on any given day, may touch on a variety of topics, with a heavy dose of climate change information and letter-writing invitations. If I do add you, I can take you off just as quickly if you just let me know. I am no TCinLA - he is so one-of-a-kind, the closest thing to Hunter Thompson's insane genius that I have come across in a long time, but you might find it worthwhile.
While at the time I deplored American support for these atrocities, I wasn’t aware in detail how Kissinger was behind it all. I didn’t like him at all, but more on general principles. Thanks for the cogent X-ray that shows what a cancer he was
They did a good job of portraying him as the genius working for an end to the war, when the behind-the-scenes effort was so skewed and covered over that I had no clue for decades. The “Nixon Era” was so much worse than the Watergate fiasco. Republicans learned nothing. I always felt that Dems learned from VietNam. It’s hard not to wonder if anyone has learned anything.
His life reads too much like the unaccounted for costs of unbridled pursuit of unchecked national interest. When I heard of his death and his role in forming our 20th century foreign policy, I could not but note to myself that his policies, for their lack of concern for humanity, were soo like the imperial and colonial polices of European nations justifying their wars of expansion, conquering, and suppressing nations throughout the world in the 19th century. Henry was truly a man of his time, 19th century Europe, not America. He was the right man for Nixon and the rest of that lot driving America's reputation down the tubes. Without him, I think there may not have been a Viet Nam War, merely a policing action to gauge the actual threat from Communism in the Pacific Rim, whether deriving from China or Russia.
that strikes me a pretty questionable point you're making. Kissinger wasn't in Washington until the beginning of 1969. as much as I'd like to blame him for every vile act of US foreign policy that's ever occurred, reality must intrude.
that war was already well on its way to being lost by the beginning of Nixon's first term. what struck people as initially odd about Kissinger's approach to the war was the fact that he'd been trashing everything about the war and the government's handling of the war, when he got there (first NSA, then State), he just doubled down on that strategy and even got tricky on his own (I'm thinking Cambodia).
I remember the other day on LT's Substack somebody said that the Colonels' coup in Greece (which occurred with all the blessings and resources of the CIA) "had Kissinger's hands all over it." well, it sure COULD have been Kissinger's baby if it had happened when Kissinger was in a position of real power but that was simply NOT the case in April, 1967. you gotta give LBJ's assholes (most of whom started out as JFK's assholes) a little credit for their own assholery.
David: If you haven't read it, and remain interested in the history of the Vietnam War, the one book I found by far the most enlightening was Frances Fitzgerald's remarkable 1972 "Fire In The Lake" (1973 general non-fiction Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Bancroft Prize for History), which was encyclopedic and super-tightly researched. Chomsky said about it, "a sympathetic understanding of the Vietnamese that is quite unusual in English-language scholarship." It was evident in her book that any military excursion in Southeast Asia by the U.S. (and the French before us) was ignorant in the extreme, misguided, and doomed to total failure before it even began. The U.S. diplomats and military brass had no understanding of the culture, the history, etc., etc., and without that, they made one misstep after another (and "Pentagon-papered" it over to create pretend-success). Fitzgerald brought her style of historical research and writing to the topic of the religious right and its rise to power in her latest book "The Evangelicals", which was phenomenal and super-chilling. The degree of sanctimonious hypocrisy exhibited by these moralistic frauds is consistently astounding, and she calls it out in no uncertain terms, using the primary documentation. Another book that looks even more broadly at religion in America is "White Protestant Nation", by the historian Allan J. Lichtman, the same guy whose system "the Keys to the White House" has predicted every presidential outcome for decades, including Trump. Then there's always Kurt Anderson's "Fantasyland", if you ever want a dose of "exactly how insane can people possibly be?" BTW, Fitzgerald's first reference to Kissinger doesn't appear until Page-504 of her book, where she observes that Kissinger reassured Nixon that the My Lai massacre wasn't something to be too worried about, citing a poll in St. Louis showing that out of all the people who read about My Lai, only 12% believed it to be true because they had already learned to discredit much of what they heard about Vietnam. How is that for "fake news" flooding the zone with s--- (courtesy of Steve Bannon's phrasing) allowing horrible crimes to take place with impunity?
True, he came into the administration as NSA in 1968, which invalidates my point about Viet Nam remaining a police operation. Cambodia and Laos he keeps to his credit.
Thank you for this roundup. HK was a thoroughly despicable man and should have been punished years ago. That he is exalted in many circles is also despicable. May he rot in whatever form he is in.
The Crimes ... let's see ... Cambodia, Laos, Chile, Indonesia & thousands more dead in Vietnam on both sides why HK dithered In Paris Talks for starters.
Yes, I apologize for forgetting Vietnam. Over half of US casualties came after 1969. And there is a reader here who flew an entire combat tour - 100 missions - over Cambodia, AFTER the Peace Treaty was signed in February 1973.
Years ago my husband, who had been in the Navy, made the comment that the war had been over, but it wasn’t really over. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Yep, us slugs just trying to get through the normal vagaries of life, are kept in the dark about so much, even without the deliberate machinations of propaganda masters.
What especially struck me about the Ackerman piece was the comparison with Timothy McVeigh. I had never thought about it that way, and I SHOULD think about it that way.
For years I have referred to Kissinger as my favorite war criminal because he has a sense of humor. This has prompted people to attack me for saying something nice about him. I think they are ignoring the part about him being a war criminal. He was.
I also raised my eyebrows at the Kenneth Keating reference. First, Keating was a republican in the days when you might find the occasional republican with a conscience, so good for him for saying that to Kissinger (note I said occasional, and that that day is past; I'm looking at you, Mitt Rmoney and Liz Cheney--you stood with them for too long to win our admiration now). Second, my favorite writer, Russell Baker, was sitting in the Senate press gallery one day, looked down, and said, "There's Ken Keating, wearing Charles Bickford's old hair."
Though most Americans have little recollection or awareness of it, Kissinger is remembered keenly in South Asia for the part he and Nixon played during the bloody period that led to the emergence of the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971.
At the time, the state of Pakistan, carved out by the departing British, existed as a two-winged artificial entity, split in between by a thousand miles of India. The army generals from West Pakistan, mostly ethnic Punjabis, disdained the ethnic Bengalis from the east of the country. After 1970 elections yielded a democratic victory for Bengali nationalists, a crisis ensued that culminated in a vicious crackdown by the Pakistani military on East Pakistanis — a campaign that turned into a mass slaughter of minority Hindus, students, dissidents and anyone else in the crosshairs of the army and collaborator-led death squads.
Sydney Schanberg, the New York Times’s South Asia correspondent at the time, described the month-long Pakistani crackdown in March 1971 as “a pogrom on a vast scale” in a land where “vultures grow fat.” Hundreds of thousands of women were raped. Whole villages were razed, and cities depopulated. An exodus of some 10 million refugees fled to India. When all was said and done, hundreds of thousands — and by some estimates, as many as 3 million — were killed, their bodies left to rot in the rice paddies or flushed into the ocean down the region’s many waterways.
The carnage horrified onlookers, and hastened an Indian intervention. The White House, though, stood on the side of Pakistan’s generals — clear Cold War allies who also helped facilitate Kissinger’s secret mission to China in April that year. Kissinger did not trust the Indians, who leaned toward the Soviet Union, and did not care about the national aspirations of the Bengalis of East Pakistan. Crucially, as outlined in Gary Bass’s excellent book, “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide,” he also ignored messages and dissent cables from U.S. diplomats in the field, warning him that a genocide was taking place with their complicity.
Neither Nixon nor Kissinger exercised any of their considerable leverage to restrain Pakistan’s generals.
In all of the hagiographies masquerading as obituaries, it fails to mention his 'investment' in Elizabeth Holmes' scam, Theranos. He was an equal opportunity womanizer. I met his niece.
When he was asked how it was that he - the guy who looked like a frog all his life - was dating Jill St. John, he replied that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." He was right. Look at all the rich "frogs" with the "hot babes." You see it everywhere here in the City of Lost Angles.
He wasn't the only 'old man,' to fall for the scam. Not just Jill St. John (who dumped Sean Connery for HIM?) but Maggie Trudeau, supposedly, as well. He was also the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick attended one of his Harvard lectures in the late 50s and could barely understand a word he said.
I always thought his keeping the accent so thick was a deliberate affectation. he got here when he was fifteen, so an accent would be something you'd expect. but not THAT accent.
the funny thing is that in his first two years at CCNY, one of the requirements for any liberal arts degree was FIVE (yes, FIVE) terms of speech. Kissinger would have had to have taken at least two or three of those courses in his two years there. no way could he have emerged with that insane accent without wanting to do so.
is it possible I'm just busting a dead guy's chops?
yeah, I SUPPOSE so. but what newly dead guy has better chops to bust?
This is all to much. Just reading Robert Reich last put me into a blue rage that I have not felt since the coup in Chile. It's time to put on some of Victor Jara!
I'm sure the man knew whereof many bodies were "buried" - which caused the silence of detractors. He reminds me of the former Nazis that somehow managed to a part of OUR "war machine.
I have to admit up until I read TCs article - had no clue the guy had died. Actually had wondered earlier today why his picture had been here & there. Needless to say - I wont grieve!
"A man has died whose historical brilliance never managed to conceal his profound moral misery."
--- Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile's ambassador to the U.S..
"There are few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger."
--ICC war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody
I like this by Professor Uju Anya: “I speak ill of the dead. If you made life choices that harmed people and caused destruction, I’ll praise your death. I don’t care if your family or people you didn’t choose to wound loved you and are sad you’re gone. I will dance on your grave singing. Don’t speak ill of the dead is a weapon of the powerful to silence the disaffected. The tone police is more interested in maintaining or hiding an unjust status quo (that usually favors them) than actually solving problems.”
Excellent.
Love this, and when chump croaks, I hope there is a chorus sung to the heavens about his evil. A challenge America…
This has been quoted in several places: In the Sistine Chapel, [Gore] Vidal once came upon Henry Kissinger “gazing thoughtfully” at the Hell section of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. “Look,” said Vidal to a friend, “he’s apartment hunting.”
I just submitted to the Orange County Register the following LTE, in response to an AP article from Nancy Benac <<<https://www.ocregister.com/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-former-secretary-of-state-dead-at-100>>>
Ms. Benac's article about the passing of Henry Kissinger exemplifies misleading both-sides-ism. It leaves the reader wondering why Mr. Kissinger was dogged by critics for decades. Non-controversial facts supported by primary documentation prove that Kissinger promoted the idea that World War III could be won. He expressed callous indifference to the violent repression of Jews in Russia. He directed secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia leading to the deaths of up to 500,000 civilians. He tacitly approved and even joked about Pakistani genocide of 300,000 Bengalis. He was deeply involved in the Chilean coup of 1970 in which the elected president Salvador Allende died, and he never distanced himself from the murderous Augusto Pinochet, who implemented a vicious, corrupt dictatorship. There are many additional examples in the Nov 29 Rolling Stone article by Spencer Ackerman (East Timor, Khmer Rouge, illegal wiretaps, etc.). Never turn away from the truth, which is its own justification.
Editors: Sources of non-controversial facts about Kissinger are detailed in numerous highly-respected books, including Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Weiner, and The Price of Power, by Seymour Hersch, Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, and the legendary Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky, which explained in granular detail how Kissinger mislead the American public by engaging in “blatant deception” regarding the negotiations ending the Vietnam War, to protect Nixon’s reputation, which the traditional media in the U.S. accepted without scrutiny or challenge.---------------------------------------
I encourage responding to AP articles; one technique is to do a search for the article title, which locates media outlets that have incorporated it - LTEs can then be directed to that outlet without need of a subscription. Just search <<<submit letter to the editor [outlet name]>>>. I also recommend sending the LTE to the journalist, as an FYI, since they likely won't see it unless it is published.
Really good work here and others should copy it.
No downside to writing letters to the editor. Good practice. Informative to the writer, not just the reader. Nobody sending it back with red marks and a failing grade. Influences the newspaper to allocate resources. Makes publication of at least some letter on the topic more likely. Saul Goodman ('t's all good, man!). I encourage plagiarism (in this limited circumstance).
It was "s'all good, man!" :-)
Write, not printed anymore. Just ignored.
Superb & focused work Gary. I noted with great interest your listing of East Timor. I have had some success at WAPO & NYT on Western Pacific matters.
Stephen Kinzer has done unparalled work on the joint UK & US overthrow of democratic leader in Iran the operation headquartered in Cyprus. We are still paying for that one. Kinzer has a thin compendium book that covers more than 8 covert operations Good job!
Bryan: If you do an internet search of <<<"Gary Stewart" "letter to the editor">>> you will find a number of the 130 LTEs I have had published since 2018. If you find those appealing/informative, send me an email at bertrandbartok@gmail.com, and I can add you to the broadcast email I send out on an irregular basis to activists and friends, which on any given day, may touch on a variety of topics, with a heavy dose of climate change information and letter-writing invitations. If I do add you, I can take you off just as quickly if you just let me know.
I will send you the email.
When I was a law student, I worked with a small group of Bay Area activists that assisted the constitutional development of the fledgling nations in the post WWII UN Trusteeship of Micronesia particularly the possible Nuclear Sub base in Palau in the far western specific.
The NYT published my LTE on 7/30/1982. NYT Editors wrote the Headline: "Micronesians in the Forefront of the Anti-Nuclear Movement." Section A, page 24. Out in CA, the Bay Area's San Jose Mercury would publish factual reports of interest to their Asian & Pacific Islander readers. Still do.
Regards.
👏Gary, Also for referring LFAA commenters today to TC’s post.
Wish I had TC’s sociology professor. Perhaps I would have been “enlightened” decades earlier.
No wonder Florida’s latest facist move is to ban sociology from Gen Ed requirements. I have written but assume my words fall silent in the (not) sunshine state…
Being from Florida originally, Kathy, I hear you about what is happening there. Sadly, I feel estranged from one of my best high school friends because of how he thinks about things now. I will say also to you what I wrote to Bryan, just above: If you do an internet search of <<<"Gary Stewart" "letter to the editor">>> you will find a number of the 130 LTEs I have had published since 2018. If you find those appealing/informative, send me an email at bertrandbartok@gmail.com, and I can add you to the broadcast email I send out on an irregular basis to activists and friends, which on any given day, may touch on a variety of topics, with a heavy dose of climate change information and letter-writing invitations. If I do add you, I can take you off just as quickly if you just let me know. I am no TCinLA - he is so one-of-a-kind, the closest thing to Hunter Thompson's insane genius that I have come across in a long time, but you might find it worthwhile.
While at the time I deplored American support for these atrocities, I wasn’t aware in detail how Kissinger was behind it all. I didn’t like him at all, but more on general principles. Thanks for the cogent X-ray that shows what a cancer he was
They did a good job of portraying him as the genius working for an end to the war, when the behind-the-scenes effort was so skewed and covered over that I had no clue for decades. The “Nixon Era” was so much worse than the Watergate fiasco. Republicans learned nothing. I always felt that Dems learned from VietNam. It’s hard not to wonder if anyone has learned anything.
I wish there was an option other than "Like."
His life reads too much like the unaccounted for costs of unbridled pursuit of unchecked national interest. When I heard of his death and his role in forming our 20th century foreign policy, I could not but note to myself that his policies, for their lack of concern for humanity, were soo like the imperial and colonial polices of European nations justifying their wars of expansion, conquering, and suppressing nations throughout the world in the 19th century. Henry was truly a man of his time, 19th century Europe, not America. He was the right man for Nixon and the rest of that lot driving America's reputation down the tubes. Without him, I think there may not have been a Viet Nam War, merely a policing action to gauge the actual threat from Communism in the Pacific Rim, whether deriving from China or Russia.
that strikes me a pretty questionable point you're making. Kissinger wasn't in Washington until the beginning of 1969. as much as I'd like to blame him for every vile act of US foreign policy that's ever occurred, reality must intrude.
that war was already well on its way to being lost by the beginning of Nixon's first term. what struck people as initially odd about Kissinger's approach to the war was the fact that he'd been trashing everything about the war and the government's handling of the war, when he got there (first NSA, then State), he just doubled down on that strategy and even got tricky on his own (I'm thinking Cambodia).
I remember the other day on LT's Substack somebody said that the Colonels' coup in Greece (which occurred with all the blessings and resources of the CIA) "had Kissinger's hands all over it." well, it sure COULD have been Kissinger's baby if it had happened when Kissinger was in a position of real power but that was simply NOT the case in April, 1967. you gotta give LBJ's assholes (most of whom started out as JFK's assholes) a little credit for their own assholery.
David: If you haven't read it, and remain interested in the history of the Vietnam War, the one book I found by far the most enlightening was Frances Fitzgerald's remarkable 1972 "Fire In The Lake" (1973 general non-fiction Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Bancroft Prize for History), which was encyclopedic and super-tightly researched. Chomsky said about it, "a sympathetic understanding of the Vietnamese that is quite unusual in English-language scholarship." It was evident in her book that any military excursion in Southeast Asia by the U.S. (and the French before us) was ignorant in the extreme, misguided, and doomed to total failure before it even began. The U.S. diplomats and military brass had no understanding of the culture, the history, etc., etc., and without that, they made one misstep after another (and "Pentagon-papered" it over to create pretend-success). Fitzgerald brought her style of historical research and writing to the topic of the religious right and its rise to power in her latest book "The Evangelicals", which was phenomenal and super-chilling. The degree of sanctimonious hypocrisy exhibited by these moralistic frauds is consistently astounding, and she calls it out in no uncertain terms, using the primary documentation. Another book that looks even more broadly at religion in America is "White Protestant Nation", by the historian Allan J. Lichtman, the same guy whose system "the Keys to the White House" has predicted every presidential outcome for decades, including Trump. Then there's always Kurt Anderson's "Fantasyland", if you ever want a dose of "exactly how insane can people possibly be?" BTW, Fitzgerald's first reference to Kissinger doesn't appear until Page-504 of her book, where she observes that Kissinger reassured Nixon that the My Lai massacre wasn't something to be too worried about, citing a poll in St. Louis showing that out of all the people who read about My Lai, only 12% believed it to be true because they had already learned to discredit much of what they heard about Vietnam. How is that for "fake news" flooding the zone with s--- (courtesy of Steve Bannon's phrasing) allowing horrible crimes to take place with impunity?
True, he came into the administration as NSA in 1968, which invalidates my point about Viet Nam remaining a police operation. Cambodia and Laos he keeps to his credit.
Thank you for this roundup. HK was a thoroughly despicable man and should have been punished years ago. That he is exalted in many circles is also despicable. May he rot in whatever form he is in.
He started a while back, Dorian Gray portrait and in the flesh.
The Crimes ... let's see ... Cambodia, Laos, Chile, Indonesia & thousands more dead in Vietnam on both sides why HK dithered In Paris Talks for starters.
Yes, I apologize for forgetting Vietnam. Over half of US casualties came after 1969. And there is a reader here who flew an entire combat tour - 100 missions - over Cambodia, AFTER the Peace Treaty was signed in February 1973.
Wow, and I thought I was paying attention. No wonder that Carter seemed like such an anomaly in DC politics…
Years ago my husband, who had been in the Navy, made the comment that the war had been over, but it wasn’t really over. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Yep, us slugs just trying to get through the normal vagaries of life, are kept in the dark about so much, even without the deliberate machinations of propaganda masters.
Thanks for the litany of truths TC. HK embodies true evil in his plotting, actions and total disdain for others and disregard for truth.
What especially struck me about the Ackerman piece was the comparison with Timothy McVeigh. I had never thought about it that way, and I SHOULD think about it that way.
For years I have referred to Kissinger as my favorite war criminal because he has a sense of humor. This has prompted people to attack me for saying something nice about him. I think they are ignoring the part about him being a war criminal. He was.
I also raised my eyebrows at the Kenneth Keating reference. First, Keating was a republican in the days when you might find the occasional republican with a conscience, so good for him for saying that to Kissinger (note I said occasional, and that that day is past; I'm looking at you, Mitt Rmoney and Liz Cheney--you stood with them for too long to win our admiration now). Second, my favorite writer, Russell Baker, was sitting in the Senate press gallery one day, looked down, and said, "There's Ken Keating, wearing Charles Bickford's old hair."
From "Today's Worldview" in the Washington Post:
Though most Americans have little recollection or awareness of it, Kissinger is remembered keenly in South Asia for the part he and Nixon played during the bloody period that led to the emergence of the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971.
At the time, the state of Pakistan, carved out by the departing British, existed as a two-winged artificial entity, split in between by a thousand miles of India. The army generals from West Pakistan, mostly ethnic Punjabis, disdained the ethnic Bengalis from the east of the country. After 1970 elections yielded a democratic victory for Bengali nationalists, a crisis ensued that culminated in a vicious crackdown by the Pakistani military on East Pakistanis — a campaign that turned into a mass slaughter of minority Hindus, students, dissidents and anyone else in the crosshairs of the army and collaborator-led death squads.
Sydney Schanberg, the New York Times’s South Asia correspondent at the time, described the month-long Pakistani crackdown in March 1971 as “a pogrom on a vast scale” in a land where “vultures grow fat.” Hundreds of thousands of women were raped. Whole villages were razed, and cities depopulated. An exodus of some 10 million refugees fled to India. When all was said and done, hundreds of thousands — and by some estimates, as many as 3 million — were killed, their bodies left to rot in the rice paddies or flushed into the ocean down the region’s many waterways.
The carnage horrified onlookers, and hastened an Indian intervention. The White House, though, stood on the side of Pakistan’s generals — clear Cold War allies who also helped facilitate Kissinger’s secret mission to China in April that year. Kissinger did not trust the Indians, who leaned toward the Soviet Union, and did not care about the national aspirations of the Bengalis of East Pakistan. Crucially, as outlined in Gary Bass’s excellent book, “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide,” he also ignored messages and dissent cables from U.S. diplomats in the field, warning him that a genocide was taking place with their complicity.
Neither Nixon nor Kissinger exercised any of their considerable leverage to restrain Pakistan’s generals.
In all of the hagiographies masquerading as obituaries, it fails to mention his 'investment' in Elizabeth Holmes' scam, Theranos. He was an equal opportunity womanizer. I met his niece.
When he was asked how it was that he - the guy who looked like a frog all his life - was dating Jill St. John, he replied that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." He was right. Look at all the rich "frogs" with the "hot babes." You see it everywhere here in the City of Lost Angles.
He wasn't the only 'old man,' to fall for the scam. Not just Jill St. John (who dumped Sean Connery for HIM?) but Maggie Trudeau, supposedly, as well. He was also the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick attended one of his Harvard lectures in the late 50s and could barely understand a word he said.
I always thought his keeping the accent so thick was a deliberate affectation. he got here when he was fifteen, so an accent would be something you'd expect. but not THAT accent.
the funny thing is that in his first two years at CCNY, one of the requirements for any liberal arts degree was FIVE (yes, FIVE) terms of speech. Kissinger would have had to have taken at least two or three of those courses in his two years there. no way could he have emerged with that insane accent without wanting to do so.
is it possible I'm just busting a dead guy's chops?
yeah, I SUPPOSE so. but what newly dead guy has better chops to bust?
Puke, Was he a good actor or was missing a soul just not relevant. Could ask the same about chump. His UGLy oozes from every pore.
Yup, and I remember. Aphrodesiac and rocks off is all it is about. Damn the dead.
And those frogs deserve ‘em too.
This is all to much. Just reading Robert Reich last put me into a blue rage that I have not felt since the coup in Chile. It's time to put on some of Victor Jara!
I'm sure the man knew whereof many bodies were "buried" - which caused the silence of detractors. He reminds me of the former Nazis that somehow managed to a part of OUR "war machine.
I have to admit up until I read TCs article - had no clue the guy had died. Actually had wondered earlier today why his picture had been here & there. Needless to say - I wont grieve!
I don't believe in Hell, but in case I'm wrong I hope nobody gave him coins for the ferryman