Comments

  4. KG says

    he fucked up nations on every continent but Antarctica

    He probably lived so long because he was keen to repair the omission.

  5. wzrd1 says

    PZ, your closing sentence is entirely untrue. He didn’t fuck up North America at all. He was smart enough to leave Mexico and Canada alone.
    Given the results of both US invasions of Canada, I think that was a good call.

  9. mordred says

    This fucker reached 100 and Shane McGowan died earlier today at just 65.

    I will miss Shane. I think I’ll go buy some whiskey and put Rum, Sodomy and the Lash in the CD player.

  10. wzrd1 says

    microraptor @ 8, note that I avoided mentioning the US?

    Louis @ 7, yeah, one does need to express faith in the competence or lack thereof of others. ;)

    Still, one should be truthful. Henry Kissinger, more than most, brought to us that which is the modern world. If there is a hell, he’d most certainly be sitting right next to Hitler.

  11. chrislawson says

    That’s a good article by Peter Vale on Kissinger’s role in southern Africa, especially Zimbabwe’s independence. But I don’t think it goes far enough in criticising Kissinger.

    The probem wasn’t that ‘follow up processes were fumbled’ after Kissinger made Smith agree to majority rule . The problem was that none of the black nationalist groups accepted the proposed constitution from the start, largely because it was drawn up by the US and the UK without any negotiation with them, would take years before universal suffrage, and required the existing Rhodesian white elites to implement it. Also, while that meeting with Kissinger may have forced Smith’s hand, the real force behind it was South Africa’s decision 3 months earlier to stop supporting white rule in Rhodesia financially and militarily (not on moral grounds, obviously, since they were still in full-on apartheid mode themselves).

    This piece from the Guardian covers much the same territory (and refers to Vale’s article) while noting that Kissinger’s interest in southern African diplomacy was almost entirely driven by his craving for international attention and the need to rebuild his reputation after the debacle of Vietnam. And as for the failure of his diplomatic efforts, the main reason was his clear contempt for black leaders.

    Vale was interviewed for the Guardian piece, and he’s far more scathing of Kissinger in the interview than he was in his original article.

  13. robro says

    wzrd1 @ #5 — I suspect there was a wink to your comment, but I would add Kissinger and Nixon continued the US tradition of fucking with Central America…not the first, of course…by maintaining long standing US foreign policy in the region. This is a direct cause for why we have so many Central Americans at the border today seeking refugee from the death squads and drug cartels.

    In the Nixon years US foreign policy was focused on containing “Communism” in the Americas, as well as Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This meant isolate Cuba and prevent any further revolutions… “revolutions” being anything that would benefit working people in the region as opposed to American agri-businesses and the warlords the US secretly (and not-so-secretly) helped put in power there. To protect the official US-funded military from being accused of anti-democratic atrocities, the warlords with US aid set up paramilitary forces to attack union organizers and others via death squads. To fund these operations the paramilitary forces got into the business of moving large quantity of drugs into the US.

    I suspect the only reason he went for the treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to Panama was because the military finally hammered into his thick skull that the Canal was strategically useless by that point. And the conviction that the US could keep a friendly government in power there indefinitely.

  14. wzrd1 says

    The US has meddled in South and Central America incessantly, to the point of actually making undeclared war for the United Fruit Company, since 1899 in earnest. To the point where twice awarded Congressional Medal holder Major General Smedley Butler wrote “War is a Racket”.
    https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket
    And Monroe wrote his infamous doctrine.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
    Which fit nicely into the Grand Strategy.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_strategy#In_the_United_States
    To which Kissinger was wholeheartedly faithful to.

    Butler’s pointing the US waging war to support corporate interests fell on deaf ears.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#United_Fruit_Company_lobbying
    The old rule, “Just yell commies and you can kill whoever you want to”.

    As for keeping a friendly government in place in a foreign nation, doing so is trivial – if one does it the right way. First, one starts off by financially and politically supporting someone who will look out for their nation’s and populace interests and overall isn’t a sack of shit. Any other pathway sees well, see what happened in Iran IRT the installation of the Shah and how that turned out. All Iran actually wants and they’ve outright said it repeatedly, is an official apology from the US. Obama glancingly mentioned that and the hue and cry from the right threatened to bring both sides of Congress down around their ears.
    After all, it’s black heresy to not worship the Great God Mammon.

  15. outis says

    Well, I did not follow his “career” very closely but if you are in the mood for an unusual critique of the fellow do read “Good as gold” by Joseph Heller.
    Stonkin’ good read, and eviscerating HK’s doings is a recurring theme.
    (Btw, J.Heller is justly remembered for his “Catch-22” with its strong anti-war message, but this one and “Something happened” are also excellent. Do dig in).

  16. says

    Perhaps the worst thing about Kissinger is the sheer number of acolytes and disciples that he left behind who subscribed to his “foreign policy objectives can be achieved only via bullying” methodology. If you actually look at the choices made in his foreign policy execution (and, later, in his foreign policy pontification), they uniformly arise from playground-recess tactics. Persuasion, acknowledgement and acceptance of difference — particularly ironic given that he was one of those immigrants “polluting the blood of the country,” and medium-to-long-term cultural influence as a change agent were not in his vocabulary. Not in his dictionary. Not in his bloody library.

    You don’t really think this had any consequences in Southwest Asia, do you? Oh, you really have been in another solar system for the last half-century?

  18. robro says

    wzrd1 — It goes back further than 1899, of course, as I’m sure you know. Let’s go “filibustering” with William Walker.

  19. nomdeplume says

    And yet most mainstream media still did the “on the one hand, on the other hand” and “some people say, but others…” routine, about one of the most evil men who ever lived.

  21. belvederespudge says

    The full Bourdain quote is worth a read. He wasnt a foreign policy wonk, but he was a human being who had quite a way with words:

    “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia—the fruits of his genius for statesmanship—and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

  23. StevoR says

    @1. “Was Kissinger a Climate denier too?”

    So googling this to see lead to this :

    Four months before President Richard Nixon’s resignation and 14 years before James Hansen’s blockbuster Senate testimony about climate change, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned world leaders in April 1974 about a looming disaster.

    “The poorest nations, already beset by manmade disasters, have been threatened by a natural one: the possibility of climactic changes in the monsoon belt and perhaps throughout the world,” Kissinger told the U.N. General Assembly. “The United States proposes that the International Council of Scientific Unions and the World Meteorological Organization urgently investigate this problem and offer guidelines for immediate international action,” he said, according to excerpts published by The New York Times.

    Source : https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2023/11/30/kissingers-1974-climate-warning-00129330

    Semi-subscribed walled – can just see start only.

    So seems not. FWIW.

    Not that it lessens the other evil and incalculable pain, greif, suffering and harm Kisisnger caused in his evil life.

  25. StevoR says

    ^ John Morales : Okay, thanks.

    No doubt Kissinger still did far more harm than good to the world with the needless horrors of what he did during the Veitnam war and the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, etc.. as well as the evil done in Central & South America. Good riddance to him and just a pity he never faced justice for what he did.

  27. KG says

    KG @ 4, kind of hard to fuck up any country in Antarctica, as there are no countries there. – wzrd1@6

    Er, yes, I had noticed that. I was suggesting that Kissinger hoped to live long enough to see countries existing in Antarctica, so he could fuck one up.