We don't really do a lot of obituary posts on here, but it seems wrong to let the death of 100-year old Henry Kissinger pass without at least acknowledging the sins of his youth.
I'm shedding no tears for the man who backed Pinochet's bloody coup (and bloodier reign in Chile) and carpet bombed Cambodia, but he was certainly one of the undeniably prominent figures of the 20th century.
Traditional outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post are paying tribute in traditional ways by whitewashing all the blood on his hands. But Spencer Ackerman's Rolling Stone obituary is the one to read.
With the heading "Good Riddance" and the title "Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies", Ackerman spares nothing in his factual account of Kissinger's life.
After noting that Timothy McVeigh was America's mass murderer with the most kills, Ackerman writes, "McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century."
The Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow, estimates that Kissinger’s actions from 1969 through 1976, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon’s and then Gerald Ford’s foreign policy as national security adviser and secretary of state, meant the end of between three and four million people. That includes “crimes of commission,” he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission, like greenlighting Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor; Pakistan’s bloodshed in Bangladesh; and the inauguration of an American tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds.
I do not understand how a Jew who escaped Hitler could come to wreak such havoc on countries in the name of stopping communism, but Kissinger did it.
This sums it up well, too:
It is fair to leave your thoughts about Kissinger's foreign policy and public acts in the comments, but please be cognizant of our commenting policy and personal attacks. Our moderating staff thanks you in advance.
