The Wrongologist

The Daily Escape:

 Camden, ME – November 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner. Note the star: It’s on top of nearby Mt.Battie.

Kissinger may have changed the world, but that isn’t always a good thing. The media are calling his legacy “complicated”. For Wrongo, it isn’t complicated. He may have gotten Nixon to China and negotiated (?) the end of the war in Vietnam, but his time on our foreign policy stage is strewn with death and destruction. Think about the carpet bombing of Cambodia that led to the demonstrations against the war in May 1970 and to the murders at Kent State and Jackson State University. Think about the coup in Chile that overthrew Salvador Allende.

Now, Nixon’s entire Cabinet is dead.

Kissinger’s philosophy was to look at “the big picture”. He was gladdened by how his China diplomacy rattled the Soviets. Most of Wrongo’s current thinking about Kissinger comes from reading Christopher Hitchens’ 2001 book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”. Hitchens talks about Kissinger’s role in the destruction of Chilean democracy in favor of the Pinochet dictatorship. And when Pinochet ordered the assassination of dissenter and former U.S. ambassador Orlando Letelier on US soil by blowing up his car in Washington, Kissinger was fine with that.

He was responsible for the prolongation of the Vietnam War through the sabotage of Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 Vietnam peace talks along with the civilian deaths from the US’ bombing in Laos and Cambodia, helping to usher in the Khmer Rouge, while also not doing anything positive to win the Vietnam war. Kissinger then became supportive of the Khmer Rouge. He saw its leader, Pol Pot as a counterweight against North Vietnam. He asked Thailand’s foreign minister to tell the Khmer Rouge: “We will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them.”

That was Kissinger’s moral philosophy.

Kissinger was behind the Greek military junta’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and the Pakistani army’s crimes against humanity in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). And we shouldn’t forget the Indonesian invasion and subsequent destruction of East Timor.

Quite the record for a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Late in life. Kissinger continued supporting authoritarians including Putin. Kissinger intervened in Putin’s imperialist war in Ukraine in 2022 to support the idea that the West should bully Zelensky into giving up territory to the Russians. He was also on the board of Theranos helping to facilitate the fraud while lining his pockets.

Wrongo wrote earlier this year about how he started out as a Kissinger fanboy, having read his 1957 book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” while in high school. It criticized the Eisenhower Administration’s “massive retaliation” nuclear doctrine. It proposed the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to help win wars. By the time that Wrongo was running a tactical nuclear missile base in the mid-1960s, he was no longer a fan. From Wrongo:

“Wrongo met Kissinger in the mid-1980s at an event hosted by David Rockefeller at his Pocantico Hills estate. HK was walking his dog, a particularly obstreperous Golden Retriever. Wrongo asked “What’s the dog’s name?” Kissinger replied: “Madman”.  Could there be a more perfect name for a Kissinger family pet?”

Here are a few headlines announcing Kissinger’s death:

You’ve gotta love the Rolling Stone headline.

Kissinger’s legacy is defined by his role in the US’s resumption of ties with China. He did the groundwork for Nixon’s 1972 visit to China and made more than 100 trips to the country over the years. The WaPo noted that the China state broadcaster labeled Kissinger an “old friend of the Chinese people.”

Let’s close with another possibly apocryphal story about Kissinger by Corey Robin:

Let’s hope that Henry the K is having a really hot time in his new condo.