The question people usually ask if the ends justify the means. They present a scenario over whether it’s worth killing 100 people if it saves 100,000 people. We live in a society where we have to constantly question that even if we don’t want to, nor wonder why we should.
Henry Kissinger finally died on Nov. 29, the same day family and friends said goodbye to former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Leave it to Kissinger to upstage someone like Rosalynn being laid to rest. The divide between the two couldn’t have been more wider. Describing them as polar opposites probably would’ve been accurate, because they were so distant in their thinking it would be as if they were from opposite ends of the world.
Greg Grandlin, a historian who wrote Kissinger’s Shadow, estimates that Kissinger’s policies with the Nixon and Ford Administrations led to the deaths of at least three million people, if not four million, worldwide. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Richard M. Nixon, there were repeated bombings of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973. This of course led to the 1975 fall of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge genocide that followed for years.
Then, he turned his attention from southeast Asia to the country of Chile where Kissinger was instrumental in the death of Salvator Allende, who was the democratcially elected socialist president. But he was a socialist. And what better than a socialist than to install a dictator like Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who installed a military junta. Other parts of the world saw bloodshed from Kissinger’s involvement in East Timor and Bangladesh. Ask the Kurds what they think of there late statesman.
There’s too much to describe on how many bad things he did. You can probably Google it all yourself. The man was no angel. While he may have been with Nixon on his last night as President and admitted that the 37th President broke down and began crying, he was by no means someone you wanted to pray with. Kissinger was a war criminal. He just had the right people saying he wasn’t in the wrong.
I remember getting a lot of calls from people, probably since deceased, about how their 35-year-old babies got in trouble with the law but it “wasn’t their fault.” I needed to look at the police report or interview the arresting officer. And there was always a girl who had a beef with their “baby.” That’s the way people acted with Kissinger. It was perfectly ok at the time because the world was a different place. We couldn’t let some nation like Chile halfway across the world to turn into a “socialist” paradise. Considering that most Americans couldn’t tell the difference between Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam, what the hell made anyone think they could spot Chile on a map?
It’s quite possible Kissinger helped keep the Cold War ongoing through the 1980s even though the Soviet Union was falling apart left and right every day. I’ve said the Fall of Saigon was the end of the Cold War. People quit fighting until the Soviet Union officially fell in 1991. Leonid Brezhnev wasn’t a Saint, but he was not a Stalin. The USSR wasn’t going to nuke America or any of its terrorities because they knew the risk just as much as we did.
One has to ask why someone who was born in Germany during the Weimar Republic in the aftermath of the disastrous World War I would be so keen on destroying the rest of the world? Kissinger was Jewish and his family were constantly harassed by the Hitler Youth while they were in Germany until they left in 1938. This type of behavior for his formative years could’ve turned Kissinger into a different person. But instead, he ended up being no different than the same people who harassed him. Being Jewish in America then wasn’t too easy then. (It still isn’t in some areas.) And even after he served in the U.S. Army, he was probably the subject of ridicule especially being both Jewish and German-born. A lot of other people would’ve decided to do things for the good and betterment of others for the rest of their lives.
So, why did Kissinger do what he did? In his own sick twisted way, I guess Kissinger did think he was doing the right thing. He couldn’t see the forest for the trees and thought it he helped stopped the threat of communism and socialism in the world, that would be the right thing. But instead the results were no different that the time of Hitler and just as violent if not more.
Eric Idle may have sung how he was missing Kissinger on a Monty Python comedy album, but I don’t think people will be missing him now that he’s gone.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 