Friday, January 30, 2015
Henry Kissinger: "For War Crimes, For Crimes Against Humanity"
The late Christopher Hitchens:
"Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded. No more dinners in his honor; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers. One could have demanded this at almost any time during the years since his role as the only unindicted conspirator in the Nixon/Watergate gang, and since the exposure of his war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor, and several other places. But the latest revelations from the Nixon Library might perhaps turn the scale at last." (Click here to listen to the conversation; the offending section begins at 13:56.)
Read more here:
The Case Against Henry Kissinger, Part I, The Making of a War Criminal
"In the words of Hitchens, Kissinger deserves prosecution "for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture." He further calls him "a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory."
The book takes the form of a prosecutorial document, as Hitchens limits his critique to such charges as he believes might stand up in an international court of law following precedents set at Nuremberg and elsewhere. These link Kissinger to war casualties in Vietnam, massacres in Bangladesh and Timor and assassinations in Chile, Cyprus, and Washington, D.C.
Hitchens, a writer for Vanity Fair and The Nation, had a history of skewering Democrats (he is the author of a provocative book on the Clintons, No One Left to Lie To) as well as Republicans. The book is written from an authorial position of moral outrage, and calls for Americans not to ignore Kissinger's record. In the author's words, "They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else."
Wanted:
If Henry Kissinger isn't guilty of war crimes, no one is. A Vietnam War whistleblower on Christopher Hitchens' case against the former secretary of state.
Kissinger: Drones have killed more civilians than the bombing of Cambodia in the Vietnam War
FALSE
John McCain, a/k/a Grandpa Grumpy Pants yelled at Code Pink who demanded Henry Kissinger be arrested for war crimes. He called the protesters "Low-Life Scum," while defending a war criminal. John McCain is not known for good judgement, and he proved it again by standing up for a man who was responsible for the torture and deaths of thousands and thousands of people around the world while honoring the man responsible.
We expect nothing less from the Senator who foisted an ill-vetted, ill-prepared Sarah Palin on this country, a woman who has proved to be exactly the opposite of what he tried to sell to the world. Why would his judgement be any better in this case?
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20 comments:
No one can match John McCain's ability to get his head up his own ass.
"I keep coming back to the irony of who you were defending against whom. Again, the man you called “a man who served his country with the greatest distinction” was serving his country as the chief war monger for Richard M. Nixon. You know, the guy who lied to the country about getting us out of Vietnam only to ramp-up hostilities? You do remember that it was Kissinger who was helping to send boys just like you to the same jungle you were being held captive in, right?
Talk about Stockholm syndrome, Mr. McCain. It’s Kissinger that’s the low-life. It’s Kissinger that you should be threatening with arrest. It’s in fact Kissinger who is scum. And you know that. Deep down in your heart you know it’s true. If you don’t, then maybe I do pity you after all."
As in most all things there are opposing views and the adherents on both sides will find the justifications to support their view.
Correct or not becomes secondary and irrelevant in the adherents eyes.
Surprised that Knuckles McCain still has a soft spot for the ol' Foggy Bottom Bombardier.
Kissinger strikes me as a symbol of the unchecked, unprincipled exercise of power. A truly vile man who accomplished, what?
There's more evidence to support war criminal Henry the Kissinger than there is to support the right's claim that Obama is a Marxist Commie Socialist Kenyan. Way more.
Why hasn't Kissinger been brought before The Hague?
IMO, Kissinger's career paralleled that of Edward Teller;
both S. European immigrants, brilliant and productive in their fields in their earlier years.
Ultimately both succumbed to
what Kissinger famously noted,
"Power is the great aphrodisiac"
--in hindsight, a pleasant spin on 'Power corrupts'.
Now that the economy is slowing and the republicans have control of both chambers they can be blamed for the slowdown, win / win for obama. He does need to cage obiden from saying they are the reason for the robust economy because it might bite him.
On to important issues. Who is going to win the Super Bowl. Will it be the lying coach from the East coast or the Lying coach from the West coast.
It must suck being skidrunners. He's negative on everything including breathing air. Why are conservatives such angry unhappy derps?
Maybe because of the kinds of derps who represent them?
Nugent
Huckajesus
Cruz
Gohmert
Palin
Ernst
Bachmann
Santorum
Carson
Cain
Now I'm depressed just writing those names. Gak!
Anonymous, you and most of America know that.
R.O.F., crazy, isn't it? McCain defending someone who helped create the circumstances that led to his POW experience.
RN, I don't know anyone who sees Kissinger as a hero.
Ducky, Kissinger, "...a truly vile man who accomplished what?" Death and destruction. For starters.
F.J. yes, but there are also many who refuse to see what is in front of their noses.
gandalf, good question. I understand he doesn't dare leave this country to travel to Europe.
BB-Idaho, that explains why people like McCain grovel in Kissinger's presence.
skudrunner, see F.J.'s response. Derp. Derp.
Conservative commenters here keep on pushing the "both sides are roughly equally bad" meme no matter how often they get pwned on it. It's a knowing and intentional falsehood every time they use it.
Hitchens never shied away from telling the truth about evil people who had managed to bamboozle the world with a false image, such as Mother Teresa (how I wish he were still here to cut through all the nonsense about Pope Francis!), and Kissenger was the kind of monster he most relished taking on.
What's more surprising is to see McCain defending him -- one of the few Republicans to speak out honestly against torture even when committed by the US. Apparently his sensitivity doesn't extend to other types of war crimes.
Frank J: There's more evidence to support war criminal Henry the Kissinger than there is to support the right's claim that Obama is a Marxist Commie Socialist Kenyan.
It's usually the case that there is more evidence to support the truth than to support a lie.
Gandalf: Why hasn't Kissinger been brought before The Hague?
For the same reason that Stalin never sat in the dock at Nuremberg. Men of great power are almost never held accountable for crimes against humanity unless their countries are conquered in war or their regimes are overthrown, making them subject to arrest. The US could have shown true "American exceptionalism" by putting Kissenger (and Bush and Cheney) on trial for their war crimes, but it will not.
Looks like skud's trying to hijack again.
Henry the K is not what normal people would consider a statesman. War criminal more like it.
Then so was McNamara and Johnson?
I have nothing but praise for the author of this blog. She has the guts to stand up for what she believes and doesn’t take any crap from her opponents.
Neither she nor I can stop the reactionary right from acting like gobshites, but we can tell people about how dangerous they are.
Frank,
Sorry but none of those represent me.
I never did understand the fascination with Kissinger. Other than mumble his way through a speech, he had little to offer. Americans are very impressed with a PHD especially if it came from a school in the colonies. They think the are smart instead of knowledgeable in one area.
From the new Wikileaks release "The Kissinger cables":
"The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer."
This seems like a good day to remind everyone of this little discussed tid-bit from Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III:
A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush's Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.
"Of the outside people that I talk to in this job," Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, "I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him."
The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.
Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.
In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.
It's the anti-war protesters who are the "low life scum"?
I'm sorry that when they buried Nixon they allow Henry Kissinger to remove his big fat lips from the corpse's ass rather than bury the two together, the way they went through life together!
Tacky Mrs. Grundy, tacky indeed.
RN, apparently Mrs. Grundy is an escapee from the Daddy blog. "She" is not what she appears to be in her profile:
"Do you think that YOU know what's better for our country than ME? If so, we need to have a little talk..."
Any truly prim and PROPER person would know that is a grammatically incorrect statement.
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