2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Nation: Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace
Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clintons Tutor in War and PeaceLast night, Clinton once again praised a man with a lot of blood on his hands.
By Greg Grandin * Feb 5, 2016 * The Nation
Clinton just cant quit him. Even as she is trying to outflank Bernie on his left, Hillary Clinton cant help but stutter the name of Henry Kissinger. Last night in the New Hampshire debate, Clinton thought to close her argument that she is the true progressive with this: I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.
Lets consider some of Kissingers achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixons top foreign policymaker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistans ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the USs arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissingers Shadow!
A full tally hasnt been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissingers actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. Pull but one string from the current tangle of todays multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? Thats Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran? An act of folly was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissingers relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf? Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.
And yet Clinton continues to call his name, hoping his light bathes her in wisdom.
http://www.thenation.com/article/henry-kissinger-hillary-clintons-tutor-in-war-and-peace/
elias49
(4,259 posts)Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)???
amborin
(16,631 posts)FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)I saw Kissingee destroy one of the the few, best and long lasting democracies in South America, Chile, at a time when most other SA countries were banana republic, dictatorships. I was born in Chile although my American parentage gave me natural born citizenship in the USA. I lived there sometimes before the coup engineered by Nixon and Kissinger that put murderer and dictator Augusto Pinochet into power.
The fact that she credits Kissinger for teaching her foreign policy and that as President she will be influenced by such foreign policy gives me the shivers. It's Monroe doctrine foreign policy and it's rooted in the belief that we need to coddle dictators favorable to our interests with bribery or otherwise known as foreign aid so our corporations can go into said countries and loot what's there for our benefit.
It's what makes us the ugly American and gives rise to rebellions like ISIS, which leads to wars we have to butt into. But it's all good as long as our manufactures of military hardware do well
MisterP
(23,730 posts)where a random colonial was dragged of the street, tortured to death, and anyone with a name matching what they gibbered out was dragged in and the process stared over: eventually you'd find a rebel
Primero mataremos a todos los subversivos, luego mataremos a sus colaboradores, después a sus simpatizantes, enseguida a aquellos que permanecen indiferentes, y, finalmente, mataremos a los tímidos
Yo soy muy triste.
John Poet
(2,510 posts)a Democratic nominee for president.... don'tcha think?