"We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see...the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent"
- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiment
Moralism is a vice one should avoid indulging in. Our discourse already has too much of it, much to its continued infantilisation and debasement. And yet, occasionally, a bit of moral fury is called for. Even Marx, the notorious anti-moraliser himself, wasn’t shy of calling things by their right name when he had to. The ability to unashamedly deploy terms like ‘evil’ or ‘wickedness’ without inducing cringe has evidently declined. But that doesn’t mean those terms have become redundant.
Henry Kissinger, who has passed not long after passing milestone of a century on this earth, has done more than enough to earn those damnatory titles. A old, but sad reality of life is that very often justice doesn’t prevail. Those who ought to be punished for their crimes often aren’t. Indeed, they getaway with it. This is true of ‘ordinary’ criminals in civil society, but it is especially true of elite criminals like Henry Kissinger. He demonstrates that one can be a war criminal and a conspirator to mass murder, and not only live a long and cushy life, but be honoured in the haut monde, write multiple books -including ghost written memoirs - grovelingly reviewed in the New York Times, have syndicated columns across mainstream outlets, set up your own consultancy firm for your own enrichment, and be treated as an ancient sage who the political classes rush to for ‘advice’ on all matters related to statecraft. While the societies you wreaked havoc on are still reeling from the pain and trauma your ‘statesmanship’ inflicted upon them. Again, it’s a sad reality of the world we live in.
If you are expecting a cold, dispassionate and comprehensive analysis and dissection of Kissinger’s political career, his (pseudo-)intellectual contributions to International Relations theory and his broader place within the development of American statecraft, then you are mistaken. That’s an essay for another day. This will be a brief primer and castigation of Kissinger’s record of knavery and criminality.
Let’s list them off, seriatim. Subverting peace negotiations through skullduggery that extended the Vietnam war for some more years, killing more untold number of Vietnamese; organising the secret bombing of Cambodia that plunged that country and its people into utter mayhem; supporting the Pakistani junta in their genocidal rampage in Bangladesh that killed 3 million Bengalis, displaced many more and included the mass rape of thousands of Bengalis women; conspiring to overthrow democracy in Chile; greenlight the bloody Turkish intervention and subsequent partition of Cyprus; endorsing the covert policy of supporting the 1974-75 Kurdish revolt in Northern Iraq, indirectly through Iran and Israel, before backstabbing them, as Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran composed their differences, since they were only ‘supposed’ to cause a nuisance, not actually succeed, leaving Iraqi Kurds vulnerable to characteristic Baathist reprisals; abetting genocide in East Timor by Indonesia; likewise abetting the Moroccan invasion and occupation of Western Sahara, leading to the exile, dispossession and humiliation of the Sahrawi people.
Shall I say some more? How about giving the thumbs up to the apartheid regime in South Africa’s intervention in Angola. Or his rather pathetic attempt to subvert democracy in Portugal, freshly emancipated from fascism, by berating Mario Saores to his face, comparing him to “Kerensky”.
Even as a ‘sage’ out of office, his sociopathic realpoliticking continued. Remarking that American policy towards the Iran-Iraq war ought to be that ‘both sides lose’. In other words, sending arms and intelligence to both sides to keep the fire burning, at the cost of innocent Iraqis and Iranian lives. Running cover for the Maoists in Beijing during the Tiananmen massacre, because in his words “no government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators”. Calling Bosnia a ‘fake’ nation with no ‘authentic’ language or culture, and since ‘the Serbs’ have resisted Muslim domination, thus it should be partitioned along ethnic lines - since apparently partitions have a record of stabilising ethnic conflicts.
Even with this knowledge out there in the open for decades, officialdom has ubiquitous has been with its toadying tributes to ‘Doctor’ Kissinger. Tony Blair, to just give one example among many, eulogised Kissinger as an “artist” of diplomacy. The Anti-Defamation League, further demonstrating its moral bankruptcy, praised Kissinger as a “towering intellect” who was “unapologetic” about the “about his heritage and his embrace of the importance of American global power and democratic values.”
This is just laughable on it’s face. One doesn’t expect much from the ADL, but I would remind them that Kissinger is the same person who is on record for saying that the plight of Soviet Jewry wasn’t worth caring about. Moreover, he ran cover for the fiendish anti-semitic junta in Argentina, who tortured & "disappeared" Jews, for being Jews, among their other victims.
In a less known episode in his life, Walter Isaacson in his biography of Kissinger, notes that in 1948 he “strongly opposed the creation of Israel”, not because, of course, of the plight of the Palestinian Arabs, but in the realist logic that it would jeopardise American interests and make things awkward when dealing with its oil rich Arab allies. From being opposed to Zionism in 1948, when it was ostensibly associated with leftism and the Soviet Union, and seemed like the losing team to consistently backing the most chauvinistic Israeli governments when it evolved into a nuclear armed regional power to be feared, reveals how power idolatry across geopolitical fault lines was fundamental to Kissinger’s practice. Looking at his record overall, he
achieved something very special in his life: managing to be both soft on fascism and Stalinism, at times simultaneously.
All in all, this sack of shit was a war criminal, a thug, a pseudo-intellectual, a mediocre diplomat a sociopathic, power fetishising, fantasist who masqueraded as a ‘realist’ (much inferior compared to George Kenan or Hans Morgenthau). A truly wicked person. From Chile to Cambodia; from Cyprus to Western Sahara; from East Timor to Bangladesh, the imprint of Henry Kissinger's chicanery, thuggery & scumbaggery is wide and deep. No honest person can say that his record as a statesman has in any way improved the lives of a great number of people, or contributed to long term stability and order - quite the opposite. He did his greatest service to humanity by finally kicking the bucket. It’s truly a shame that there isn’t a hell for him to be condemned to. If only Christopher Hitchens was alive to skewer him one last time.