America Keeps Honoring One of Its Worst Mass Murderers: Henry Kissinger
Including ten quotes that illustrate his
megalomania and indifference to the deaths of untold numbers of civilians.
April 16, 2013 | AlterNet
(VIDEO) http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=164393#164393
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/america-keeps-honoring-one-worst-mass-murderers-all-time-henry-kissinger?paging=off
Paxman interviews Kissinger about Margaret Thatcher on Newsnight (07Apr13)
http://youtu.be/6hM1K7gSTEY
Henry Kissinger's quote recently released by
Wikileaks,"the illegal we do immediately; the
unconstitutional takes a little longer", likely
brought a smile to his legions of elite media,
government, corporate and high society admirers.
Oh that Henry! That rapier wit! That trademark
insouciance! That naughtiness! It is unlikely,
however, that the descendants of his more than 6
million victims in Indochina, and Americans of
conscience appalled by his murder of
non-Americans, will share in the amusement. For
his illegal and unconstitutional actions had
real-world consequences: the ruined lives of
millions of Indochinese innocents in a new form
of secret, automated, amoral U.S. Executive
warfare which haunts the world until today.
And his conduct raises even more fundamental
questions: to what extent can leaders who act
secretly ,illegally and unconstitutionally, lying
to their citizenry and legislature as a matter of
course, legitimately claim to represent their
people? How much allegiance do citizens owe such
leaders? And what does it say about America’s
elites that they have honored a man with so much
innocent blood on his hands for the past 40 years?
Mr. Kissinger's most significant historical act
was executing Richard Nixon's orders to conduct
the most massive bombing campaign, largely of
civilian targets, in world history. He dropped
3.7 million tons of bombs** between January 1969
and January 1973 - nearly twice the two million
dropped on all of Europe and the Pacific in World
War II. He secretly and illegally devastated
villages throughout areas of Cambodia inhabited
by a U.S. Embassy-estimated two million people;
quadrupled the bombing of Laos and laid waste to
the 700-year old civilization on the Plain of
Jars; and struck civilian targets throughout
North Vietnam - Haiphong harbor, dikes, cities,
Bach Mai Hospital - which even Lyndon Johnson had
avoided. His aerial slaughter helped kill, wound
or make homeless an officially-estimated six
million human beings**, mostly civilians who
posed no threat whatsoever to U.S. national
security and had committed no offense against it.
There is a word for the aerial mass murder that
Henry Kissinger committed in Indochina, and that
word is “evil”. The figure most identified with
this word today is Adolph Hitler, and his evil
was so unspeakable that the term is by now
identified with him. But that is precisely why it
is important to understand the new face of evil
and moral depravity that Henry Kissinger
represents. For evil not only comes in the form
of madmen dreaming of 1000 year Reichs. In fact,
in our day, it is more likely to be committed by
sane, genial and ordinary careerists waging
invisible automated war in far-off lands against
people whose screams we never hear, whose faces
we never see, and whose deaths go unrecorded and
unnoticed. It is critical to understand this new
face of evil, for it threatens not only countless
foreigners but Americans in coming years. And no
one has embodied it more than Henry Kissinger.
The planes he dispatched came by day. They came
by night. Remorseless. Pitiless. Relentless. Day
after day, week after week, month after month,
year after year. Most of the people below had no
idea where the bombers came from, why their lives
had been turned into a living hell. The movie
"War of the Worlds", in which Americans are
incomprehensibly slaughtered by machines is the
closest depiction of what the innocent rice-farmers of Indochina experienced.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings in
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were forced to live in
holes and caves, like animals. Many tens of
thousands were burned alive by the bombs, slowly
dying in agony. Others were buried alive, as they
gradually suffocated to death when a 500 pound
bomb exploded nearby. Most were victims of
antipersonnel bombs designed primarily to maim
not kill, many of the survivors carrying the
metal, jagged or plastic pellets in their bodies for the rest of their lives.
Fathers like 38-year old Thao Vong were suddenly
blinded or crippled for life as they lost an arm
or leg, made helpless, unable to support their
families, becoming dependent on others just to
stay alive. Children were struck, lying out in
the open, screaming, villagers unable to come to
their aid for fear of being killed themselves. No
one was spared - neither sweet, loving
grandmothers nor lovely young women, neither
laughing, innocent children nor nursing or
pregnant mothers, not water buffalo needed to
farm not the shrines where people had for
centuries honored their ancestors and hoped one day to be honored themselves.
A farmer on the Plain of Jars in northern Laos
wrote of being bombed by the U.S. in 1969 that
"every day and every night the planes came to
drop bombs on us. We lived in holes to protect
our lives. I saw my cousin die in the field of
death. My heart was most disturbed and my voice
called out loudly as I ran to the houses. Thus, I
saw life and death for the people on account of
the war of many airplanes in the region of the
Plain of Jars. Until there were no houses at all.
And the cows and buffalo were dead. Until
everything was leveled and you could see only the red, red ground."
A 30-year old mother wrote that "at that time,
our lives became like those of animals
desperately trying to escape their hunters. Our
lives were confided to the Lord Buddha. No matter
when, all we did was to pray to the Lord to save our lives."
A 39 year old rice-farmer wrote of the aftermath
of a bombing raid: “The other villagers and I got
together to consider this thing. We hadn't done
anything, nor harmed anyone. We had raised our
crops, celebrated the festivals and maintained
our homes for many years. Why did the planes drop
bombs on us, impoverishing us this way?”
Mr. Kissinger exulted to President Nixon over
this bombing, telling him that "it's wave after
wave of planes. You see, they can't see the B-52
and they dropped a million pounds of bombs ... I
bet you we will have had more planes over there
in one day than Johnson had in a month ... each
plane can carry about 10 times the load of World War II plane could carry."
Although Mr. Kissinger claimed he was only
bombing enemy troops, guerrilla soldiers were
largely undetectable from the air. Investigating
the bombing of northern Laos, the U.S. Senate
Refugee Subcommittee concluded that "the United
States has undertaken a large-scale air war over
Laos to destroy the physical and social
infrastructure in Pathet Lao (i.e., guerrilla)
areas. Throughout all this there has been a
policy of secrecy. The bombing has taken and is
taking a heavy toll among civilians." These words
apply to Mr. Kissinger's bombing throughout
Indochina. The villagers of Indochina were not
"collateral damage". They were the target.
Those who praise Mr. Kissinger for the opening to
China but ignore his mass murder in Indochina
shame human decency itself. By honoring Mr.
Kissinger they dishonor themselves. And they are
also blind to the careerist "Executive Branch
mentality" he embodied, which poses a clear and
present a danger to foreigners and Americans
alike today. Adolph Hitler dreamed of conquering
and Stalin of communizing the world. Mr.
Kissinger destroyed millions of lives primarily
to further his career by preventing a communist
takeover while he held office. And it is this
kind of institutional, bureaucratic mentality,
combined with new machines of secret war, which
threatens the humanity today far more than the crazed ideologies of the past.
In the end Mr. Kissinger failed, as the
communists took over Indochina in the spring of
1975. The Thieu, Lon Nol and Royal Lao government
regimes, which Mr. Kissinger propped up with so
many tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars,
evaporated. The genocidal Khmer Rouge took over
in Cambodia, which would not have occurred had
Mr. Kissinger supported the neutralist Sihanouk
and not illegally invaded Cambodia. But though
Mr. Kissinger failed miserably in Indochina, he
did in the end succeed in his principal goal. He
emerged from the wreckage of Indochina with his reputation intact.
Even critics of Mr. Kissinger tend to use
euphemisms about his actions for fear of losing
their "credibility." But facts are facts. The
truth is the truth, and euphemisms obscure it. It
is a matter of fact not rhetoric that Mr.
Kissinger bears a major responsibility for
murdering masses of people in Indochina. He is a mass murderer.
What is most important about his mass murder,
however, was not only that his order to Alexander
Haig to undertake "a massive bombing campaign in
Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that
moves" was clear evidence of criminal intent to
avoid the laws of war protecting civilians, and
that he would have been executed had the
Nuremberg Judgment been applied to his blanket bombing of civilian targets.
It was that he conducted a new form of automated,
secret and amoral warfare previously only
imagined by George Orwell in 1984 when he
described war as fought by machines waged by
"very small numbers of people, mostly
highly-trained specialists (waging war) on the
vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man
can only guess at." When Richard Nixon decided,
and Henry Kissinger executed, a plan to withdraw
U.S. ground troops but seek to win by escalating
war from the air, they brought into being a new
age of automated war that inevitably, and
cold-bloodedly, wound up killing large numbers of civilians.
Previous war-makers fomented hatred against the
"Jewish scum", "gooks", or "Huns" they massacred.
But neither Mr. Kissinger nor his subordinates
had anything against the countless Lao, Cambodian
and Vietnamese civilians they slaughtered. They
simply did not regard them as human beings. They
had no more significance for them than
cockroaches or ants. It was not immorality but
amorality, the murder of countless "non-people"
whose existence as human beings was simply
ignored. Though the people of the Plain of Jars
wanted nothing from America except to be left
alone, even this simple wish was denied them, as
they were extinguished like flies out of indifference not malice.
An August, 1945 editorial in the London Observer
eerily foreshadowed what Mr. Kissinger
represented, and what such successors as David
Petraeus and John Brennan embody today: "Albert
Speer symbolizes a type which is becoming
increasingly important in all belligerent
countries: the pure technician, the classless,
bright young man, without background, with no
other original aim than to make his way in the
world, and no other means than his technical and
managerial ability. It is the lack of
psychological and spiritual ballast and the ease
with which he handles the terrifying technical
and organizational machinery of our age which
makes this slight type go extremely far nowadays.
This is their age. The Hitlers and Himmlers we
may get rid of, but the Speers, whatever happens
to this particular special man, will long be with us."
Although Mr. Kissinger failed so miserably in
Indochina, he did indeed display great ability in
handling the "organizational machinery" of the
U.S. Executive Branch -- so much ability in fact
that his actions have become the template for
most U.S. war-making today. This war-making is:
-- Undemocratic: Mr. Kissinger not only failed
to obtain permission from Congress to bomb Laos
and Cambodia, he did not even inform it he was
doing so. The incredible fact is that a handful
of U.S. leaders unilaterally dropped 3.7 million
tons of bombs on Indochina entirely on their own
initiative - as have U.S. officials today
assassinated thousands of unarmed suspects throughout the Muslim world.
-- Unconstitutional: The very foundation of the
Constitution is the principle that leaders may
only legitimately rule with the "informed
consent" of the people. But Mr. Kissinger not
only failed to inform the American people or
Congress about his bombing of Indochina. He has
lied about it from the day he took office until
today. Between January 1969 and March 1970, as he
leveled the Plain of Jars, Mr. Kissinger's State
Department denied it was even bombing Laos. And
when reports from refugees made it impossible to
deny the bombing, Mr. Kissinger's and his
representatives continued to lie, denying that
they bombed civilian targets. William Sullivan,
close Kissinger ally and the former U.S.
Ambassador to Laos, testified to Senator Edward
Kennedy on April 22, 1971 "the policy of the U.S.
is deliberately to avoid hitting inhabited villages."
-- Illegal: By failing to even notify Congress
of his massive bombing, Mr. Kissinger broke
domestic law. By systematically bombing civilian
targets and refusing to observe laws seeking to
protect civilians during wartime, he violated
international law. Both conditions are true for
U.S. drone and ground assassinations today.
-- Secret: The bombing of Laos and Cambodia,
like that in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia
today, was conducted in secret. Even as U.S.
officials first denied they were doing any
bombing at all, and then that they were only
bombing legitimate military targets, they refused
to allow journalists to go out on bombing runs.
The information about the bombing of civilian
targets was classified and kept out of the hands
of Congress, the media, and the American people.
-- Amoral: Like Mr. Kissinger, President Obama
lied when he recently described his drone
assassination program as “a targeted, focused
effort at people who are on a list of active
terrorists who are trying to go in and harm
Americans, hit American facilities, American
bases, and so on ". In fact, U.S. officials have
admitted that most of their victims are unarmed
suspects killed in "signature strikes" against
people who names are not known. And the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism has documented that
hundreds of those killed by U.S. drone strikes
are civilians. The victims of drone strikes are
simply labeled "militants", denied their humanity as well as their lives.
What is most troubling to anyone with a
conscience about Mr. Kissinger's new form of
warfare is that, from a bureaucratic perspective,
it worked. By keeping the human consequences of
their war-making secret from Congress and the
American people, the Kissingers, Petraeuses and
Brennans have had a free hand to kill, torture,
imprison and maim anyone they wish. They not
only need not fear punishment for their illegal
acts. Like Mr. Kissinger, who has grown wealthy
on the blood of the innocents of Indochina, they
can even look forward to being rewarded for them.
We are taught as children that crime does not
pay. Mr. Kissinger, who has earned tens of
millions since the war ended on the blood of
innocent Indochinese, is living proof that this is untrue.
The big question for Americans today is the
degree to which this "Executive Mentality" will
be directed against American citizens in the
future. The prospects are not promising.
The U.S. Executive today has not only obtained
permission from Congress to kill or imprison any
American citizens they wish without due process.
They have done so - murdering not only Anwar
al-Awlaki but his 16 year son, also a U.S.
citizen, while sitting in a café. The Executive
under President Obama has undertaken
unprecedented prosecution of U.S.
whistle-blowers and journalists alike for
revealing information officials have arbitrarily
classified. Never before has the U.S. had an
Executive Branch "Department of Homeland
Security", which routinely spies on millions of
Americans, and is working to paramilitarize
police departments around the nation.
On a human level it is possible, even
appropriate, to sympathize with Henry Kissinger.
German Jew Heinz Alfred Kissinger was only 9
when Hitler took office, and only escaped at age
16 shortly before Kristallnacht, One can only
guess at the multiple traumas and psychological
damage he suffered. It is entirely understandable
that he would develop a cynical view of the
world and devote himself solely to gaining and
holding power devoid of moral or ethical concerns.
But Mr. Kissinger is more than an individual. He
is also a political and historical figure.
Future historians, public intellectuals and
journalists who have nothing to gain by
flattering Mr. Kissinger and ignoring his crimes
against humanity will likely have a very
different view of his legacy than today's opinion-makers.
They will likely see the U.S. opening to China as
inevitable and pay relatively little attention to
Mr. Kissinger's role in it. As the historian
Gareth Porter has documented in detail, they will
also see clearly that the terms of the Paris
Peace Agreement he signed in 1973 were no
different than what he could have obtained in
1969 - thus saving tens of thousands of American,
and countless Indochinese, lives. And his
winning the Nobel Peace Prize will be seen less
as an honor he deserved than an indelible stain on those who awarded it to him.
No, what Mr. Kissinger will be most remembered
for is cold-bloodedly ushering in a new age of
undemocratic, unconstitutional, secret, criminal
and amoral automated warfare, by a U.S. Executive
Branch constrained neither by law nor elemental human decency.
After the war ended, former Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara made a good-faith effort to
understand what he did in Vietnam, issuing a mea
culpa of sorts in his book In Retrospect. By
contrast PBS Journalist Steve Talbot reported the
following when he interviewed Mr. Kissinger: “I
told him I had just interviewed Robert McNamara
in Washington. That got his attention. He stopped
badgering me, and then he did an extraordinary
thing. He began to cry. But no, not real tears.
Before my eyes, Henry Kissinger was acting.
‘Boohoo, boohoo,’ Kissinger said, pretending to
cry and rub his eyes. ‘He’s still beating his
breast, right? Still feeling guilty.’ He spoke in
a mocking, singsong voice and patted his heart
for emphasis.” As the Khmer Rouge were conducting
genocide in Cambodia, Mr. Kissinger told the Thai
Foreign Minister on November 26, 1975 that “how
many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister
Ieng Sary) kill? Tens of thousands … you should
tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with
them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let
that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve
relations with them. Tell them the latter part,
but don’t tell them what I said before.”
Future historians will not only marvel at the
depth of his pathology, but ask a basic question:
what does it say about America and its elites that they honor such a man?
They will likely not have much interest in the
man himself who was indeed, after all, little
more than the man foresaw by the London Observer,
a "classless, bright young man ... with no other
original aim than to make his way in the
world"characterized both by a "lack of
psychological and spiritual ballast" and a skill
in handling "the terrifying technical and organizational machinery of our age."
Kissinger the man will likely be remembered, if
he is remembered at all, as the fellow best
described by the novelist Joseph Heller in Good As Gold:
“It was disgraceful and so discouraging … that
this base figure charged with infamies too
horrendous to measure and too numerous for
listing should be gadding about gaily in
chauffeured cars, instead of walking at Spandau
with Rudolf Hess ... Asked about his role in the
Cambodian war, in which an estimated five hundred
thousand people died, he'd said: ‘I may have a
lack of imagination, but I fail to see the moral
issue involved.’ Whereas another State Department
official, William C. Sullivan, had testified:
‘The justification for the war is the reelection
of the President.’ Not once … had Kissinger
raised a voice in protest against the fascistic
use of police power to quell public opposition to the war in Southeast Asia.
“In Gold's conservative opinion, Kissinger would
not be recalled in history as a Bismarck,
Metternich, or Castlereagh but as an odious shlumpf who made war gladly."
But what this insignificant man symbolized for
future war-making will be of great significance
to future historians. For, as the London Observer
also correctly predicted Mr. Kissinger did indeed
go far – taking America on a dark journey of
war-making characterized by mass murder by
machine, secrecy, lying, manipulation, betrayal
of democracy and the U.S. Constitution,
international criminality, overthrowing
democratically elected governments and support
for some of the world's most brutal and savage
dictators. Yes, as he joked, he was skilled at
engaging in "illegal" and "unconstitutional"
activities. But the rest of humanity, and this
nation, will be paying the price for this skill for generations to come.
** “Dollars and Deaths,” The Congressional Record, May 14, 1975, p. 14262.
TOP TEN KISSINGER QUOTES
1. Soviet Jews:“The emigration of Jews from the
Soviet Union is not an objective of American
foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas
chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an
American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” (link)
2. Bombing Cambodia: “[Nixon] wants a massive
bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to
hear anything about it. It's an order, to be
done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.” (link) (Emphasis added)
3. Bombing Vietnam: "It's wave after wave of
planes. You see, they can't see the B-52 and they
dropped a million pounds of bombs ... I bet you
we will have had more planes over there in one
day than Johnson had in a month ... each plane
can carry about 10 times the load of World War II plane could carry." (link)
4. Khmer Rouge:“How many people did (Khmer Rouge
Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? Tens of
thousands? You should tell the Cambodians (i.e.,
Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them.
They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that
stand in the way. We are prepared to improve
relations with them. Tell them the latter part,
but don’t tell them what I said before.” (from
November 26, 1975 Meeting With Thai Foreign Minister.)
5. Dan Ellsberg: “Because that
son-of-a-bitch—First of all, I would expect—I
know him well—I am sure he has some more
information---I would bet that he has more
information that he’s saving for the
trial. Examples of American war crimes that
triggered him into it…It’s the way he’d
operate….Because he is a despicable bastard.” (Oval Office tape, July 27, 1971)
6. Robert McNamara: “Boohoo, boohoo … He’s still
beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty.
” (Pretending to cry, rubbing his eyes.)
7. Assassination: “It is an act of insanity and
national humiliation to have a law prohibiting
the President from ordering assassination.”
(Statement at a National Security Council meeting , 1975)
8. Chile: “I don't see why we need to stand by
and watch a country go communist due to the
irresponsibility of its people. The issues are
much too important for the Chilean voters to be
left to decide for themselves.” (link)
9. Illegality-Unconstitutionality: “The illegal
we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a
little longer.” (from March 10, 1975 Meeting With
Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey)
10. Himself: “Americans like the cowboy … who
rides all alone into the town, the village, with
his horse and nothing else … This amazing,
romantic character suits me precisely because to
be alone has always been part of my style or, if
you like, my technique.” (November 1972 Interview with Oriana Fallaci)
Fred Branfman exposed the U.S. Secret Air War
against Laos while living there from 1967-1971,
and edited Voices From the Plain of Jars: Life
Under An Air War, the only book to emerge from
the Indochina war written by the villagers who
comprised 95% of the population. The book will be
reissued by the University of Wisconsin Press on May 31, 2013.
+44 (0)7786 952037
www.thisweek.org.uk
www.dialectradio.co.uk
Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered
that shall not be revealed; and nothing hid that
shall not be made known. What I tell you in
darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27
www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org
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--
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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