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Henry Kissinger Has Died
- cushychicken 3y agoI can’t remember if it was Kissinger or Nixon that Hunter S. Thompson claimed required screws to affix their pants to their crooked bodies. Whatever the case, it was incisive and memorable prose.
- slibhb 3y agoIt was Nixon. The joke doesn't apply to Kissinger because he wasn't a crook.
- genter 3y agoYou're right. Kissinger was way worse.
- slibhb 3y agoThe whole point of the joke is that Nixon famously said "People have gotta know whether or not their president is a crook. Well I am not a crook". Posting a gibe that Hunter S. Thompson wrote about Nixon after Kissinger died is just stupid. At least post what he wrote about Kissinger: > It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that -- but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end. > Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.
- buildbot 3y agoYup, War criminal, traitor…
- andyjohnson0 3y agoHe died a long time ago.
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- a1o 3y agoThe article is just the headline
- s5300 3y ago[dead]
- arp242 3y agoI'm surprised at the extreme brevity of this obituary; were they taken by surprise someone could die of old age as young as 100 and didn't have anything prepared? I would have expected at least an brief summary of his career, highlights, major points of controversy, etc. e.g. like this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/29/henry-kissinger-dies-secretary-of-state-richard-nixon https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/29/henry-kissin... (and undoubtedly many others). Also, this ruins my "Jimmy Carter v. Henry Kissinger in 2024"-joke.
- jszymborski 3y agoSeeing as he was 100, I doubt they were taken by surprise. These things are usually canned and updated once in a while for people of interest, especially past a certain age (or at least that's my understanding).
- arp242 3y agoYes exactly, so why doesn't the BBC have more than 3 lines on Kissinger?
- xanderlewis 3y agoI think it’ll come. Probably within fifteen minutes or so. The BBC usually takes its time (sometimes to the point of absurdity — more than any other news outlet I can think of).
- breput 3y agoDo yourself a favor and listen to at least one of the six part series that Behind The Bastards podcast[0] did on Kissinger. It will give you a background, with sources, on the "controversial" statesman that you'll read eulogies about over the next few days. [0] https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-one-kissinger https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-one-kissinger [1] https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-two-kissinger https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-two-kissinger [2] https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-three-kissinger https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-three-kissing... [3] https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-four-kissinger https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-four-kissinge... [4] https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-five-kissinger https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-five-kissinge... [5] https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-six-kissinger https://omny.fm/shows/behind-the-bastards/part-six-kissinger
- klik99 3y agoHaven't listened to the podcast (yet) and don't know much about kissinger but the description "the Forest Gump of war crimes" made me laugh out loud, whether or not it's accurate.
- nicbou 3y agoIt’s a light entertainment show. The host is an ex Cracked writer. It’s mean-spirited but very funny.
- phatskat 3y agoAnd very well-researched - I think this part is important especially for people skeptical of the show’s name. Also “light entertainment” really depends on the particular episode’s subject imo
- buildbot 3y agoYes seriously - there’s a strong argument the Kissinger committed actual treason several times. He’s responsible for the deaths (hundreds?) of thousands.
- jszymborski 3y ago[flagged]
- westcort 3y agoHe was a very influential political operator. It’s true what they say though, at least in this case. Only the good die young.
- V-eHGsd_ 3y ago[flagged]
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- Obscurity4340 3y agoHate that Imma live forever like him :(
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoCorollary to genius and madness only being definitively discernible after the fact.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoIts a bit of a dance
- civilitty 3y ago[flagged]
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- emchammer 3y agoJews are often accused of dual loyalty. Kissinger would have been livid at the suggestion that he placed Jewish interests above the American national interest.
- thesuperbigfrog 3y agoMonty Python tribute to Henry Kissinger: https://youtu.be/ABeGhyAD_DM?si=6eAeatEaB7U_znd7 https://youtu.be/ABeGhyAD_DM?si=6eAeatEaB7U_znd7
- xanderlewis 3y agoFirst thing that came to mind.
- senectus1 3y agofor me it was the great late Christopher Hitchens and his crusade against Kissinger https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=christopher+hitchens+on+kissinger https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=christopher+hit...
- anotherhue 3y agoThis is incredible. This is the quality of discourse we have lost.
- chrisco255 3y agoHitch was one of the rare, great journalists and commentators that had the capacity to independently think for himself.
- senectus1 3y agoeven the people calling him up on the call in section on the were more sane than what we get today.
- sotix 3y agoDirect link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ant6tY-MOIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ant6tY-MOIk
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- progne 3y ago> Kissinger saw combat with the [84th Infantry Division] and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge. Thank you for your military service Mr. Secretary. Fighting real Nazis earns my gratitude.
- good_lord_dang 3y ago[dead]
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- cocacola1 3y agoI can understand why people despise Kissinger, but he’s a pretty interesting figure on the whole. Not the best diplomat or Secretary of State we’ve had, but certainly a seminal figure in American foreign policy.
- lolbert5 3y ago[flagged]
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- anigbrowl 3y agoCertainly, but lots of terrible people are also interesting. Kissinger strikes me as a prime example of Lord Acton's dictum at how power corrupts; by any reasonable standard he committed absolutely egregious acts, but because they inured to the USA's strategic benefit, there has never been any political will to hold him accountable. It's like how the US promotes the idea of a 'rules based international order' but habitually diminishes the UN, refuses to participate in the International Criminal Court and so on.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 627467 3y agoBecause "rules based international order" can only really be enforced by a hegemon, and obviously the hegemon can't really "be it" and "be in it" simultaneously
- thrway63245 3y ago[dead]
- jakobnissen 3y agoOf course they can. The police can't just arbitrarily kill people, either.
- jmclnx 3y ago>Born in Germany in 1973, Kissinger first came to the US in 1938 He had a time machine ? :) I think there was a typo in the article, they many 1923 I would say. Anyway, may he Rest in Peace. EDIT: the date is now fixed
- digdugdirk 3y agoAre we sure? I was beginning to wonder if the afterlife was going to be holding out on this one. Poor taste jokes aside - is there anyone else as directly responsible for as much modern day suffering, who has "gotten away with it" more cleanly in the eyes of the public? I've always found the disconnect between history and legacy to be rather... jarring.
- romanhn 3y agoDepends on perspective I suppose. Lots of people in Russia, for instance, feel this way about Gorbachev. Putin even denied him a state funeral.
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- rajup 3y agoChurchill?
- pphysch 3y agoThe neocons? Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kagans, Nuland, Bolton, et al. In terms of stopping ongoing and future conflicts, this is the group we need to hold accountable. Not Kissinger, whom they hate(d), and hasn't been making policy for decades.
- speedylight 3y agoBush is probably a contender.
- david927 3y agohttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-ki... "Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, his consulting firm said in a statement. The notorious war criminal was 100."
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- __loam 3y agoMaybe one of the few publications with the integrity to publish those words.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> one of the few publications with the integrity to publish those words And a symptom of the term being neutered into meaninglessness. A critical element of war criminality is command. If you don’t command armed forces, it’s difficult to commit war crimes, legally speaking. You can have condoned or collaborated or contributed to them.
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- acdha 3y agoYes, I’m sure that’s why he was never seriously threatened legally: the closest you could get to command would probably be Cambodia where he very explicitly told General Haig to start bombing a neutral country but in that case was also very clearly passing on Nixon’s direct order: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?” I’m sure that if he’d ever had to face a hostile inquiry his defense would have been that when the President of the United States tells you to make a phone call, you do, and he’d almost certainly have been successful.
- koolba 3y agoDoes this mean the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been resolved? If so, he probably died of boredom.
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- Kye 3y agoThe pro-Kissinger side will obviously have plenty of defense. Here's a good unrolling of the "piss on his grave" perspective for those who are confused (or angry but concerned they may not be showing enough consideration to a different perspective): https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-ki... Anthony Bourdain on Kissinger [0]: “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” And [1]: "Frequently, I’ve come to regret things I’ve said. This, from 2001, is not one of those times" [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to-cambodia-you-ll-never-stop-wanting-to https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to... [1] https://twitter.com/Bourdain/status/960322190993477632 https://twitter.com/Bourdain/status/960322190993477632
- ninjin 3y agoTo quote Tom Lehrer: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Kissinger's legacy will be debated for a long time and I have personally only scratched the very surface. I do however intend to read Hitchen's "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" [1] one day, if not just to enjoy the fire with which he could write. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger
- aidenn0 3y agoDo you have a source for the Lehrer quote? I've been told he didn't say that.
- ninjin 3y agoGood question. I have heard it referenced multiple times, but that does not make it true. Wikiquote cites The Sydney Morning Herald [1], but that is probably not a great source. I did a bit of digging online and also found The Guardian mentioning it too around the same time [2] (some twenty or so years ago). But I do not have a source that I would be willing to bet my life on. [1]: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/stop-clapping-this-is-serious-20030301-gdgcoz.html https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/stop-cla... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures1 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures... This feels like a rabbit hole best left to proper quote investigators (and a timely one at that). Lehrer is alive though (unlike a certain someone...), so maybe one could even ask him? Do you have a source questioning the authenticity? Not asking you to prove a negative here, just asking since I did not find one skimming a few pages on DuckDuckGo.
- btbuildem 3y agohttp://ishenrykissingerdead.com/ http://ishenrykissingerdead.com/ is lagging behind the news
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoThey had one job!
- SantalBlush 3y agoGod, I hope the person who made that site didn't die before they could make this update.
- realce 3y agoHenry's final victim?
- tacocataco 3y agoWhat if Kissenger ran the site himself?
- khazhoux 3y agoDomain creation Date: 2020-11-26T22:32:58Z They've paid for 3 years of domain registration, and missed their big day
- evan_ 3y agoIt’ll be right longer than it was wrong.
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- prvc 3y agoFull NYT obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.h...
- js2 3y agoGift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CU0.rrj4.f8Az82XRcs7X&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.h...
- thrdbndndn 3y agoDon't even know this is a thing. Thank you kind stranger.
- js2 3y agoSubscribers get 10 gift links a month. They added this sometime in the last year or two. I've been able to stay perennially subscribed to the NYT for $5/month. It's a love/hate relationship and I've probably unsubscribed and re-subscribed more than a dozen times. Unsubscribing got a lot easier a few years back. It used to be super annoying.
- __loam 3y agoNot a second too soon. He's responsible for hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths around the world. Do not celebrate him.
- lyu07282 3y agoCelebrate his death, may he and any other neocon burn in hell for eternity
- throwaway743 3y ago[flagged]
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- inspector14 3y agoWill we ever get to see the Coens' biopic, "Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go"? https://youtu.be/subNgWRPLg4?si=IsF0hQTJ-4D6otOJ https://youtu.be/subNgWRPLg4?si=IsF0hQTJ-4D6otOJ
- NaOH 3y agoProbably as good a time as any to re-link the Mother Jones piece "Daniel Ellsberg on the Limits of Knowledge": https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsbe... Linked on HN numerous times but largely only discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296691
- nopassrecover 3y agoGreat link! I wonder whether we look at this with new eyes in light of the recent discussions in Congress around UAP. I think it illuminates the profound insight of Ellsberg’s commentary if, even for the sake of argument, you entertain the idea of non-human life being amongst that information and then, as he describes, imagine sitting and being briefed on any number of topics from any number of perspectives knowing that you know there to be non-human life, that they don’t, and that if they did they would see the world very differently as you have come to. Of course I think Ellsberg’s perspective holds regardless of what that significant unknown information is (so long as it is significant) - true might of adversaries, how close we’ve come to various failure scenarios, what tech we’ve actually developed, who shot Kennedy etc.
- padjo 3y agoNon human life? Like cats?
- nopassrecover 3y agoHaha good pickup. I meant "non-human intelligence", but cats still tick that box too.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIt's also a good reminder that public judgement isn't worth much for any personality who had access to lots of bonafide top secret information. A lot of sensitive diplomatic and military records from even the 60s are yet to be declassified, so the final verdict of future historians will likely rest on much different information then we can access today.
- credit_guy 3y agoMan, too bad, I really wanted to see what Kissinger thought of the Israel-Gaza conflict. RIP Mister. You were a great intellectual. For anyone else who might care I found yesterday a great take on that conflict by Lawrence Freedman. [1] https://samf.substack.com/p/why-not-losing-is-not-tantamount https://samf.substack.com/p/why-not-losing-is-not-tantamount
- Bondi_Blue 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZwtaM2EcgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZwtaM2EcgY
- slibhb 3y agoIn foreign policy you have to walk a line between moralism and realism. Kissinger was too much a realist. But moralism has its dangers too, as we saw with the Bush (Iraq, Afghanistan) and Obama (Libya) administrations. At any rate, it's hard to think of anyone who is more responsible for the continued post-war global dominance of the US than Henry Kissinger.
- master_crab 3y agoFDR, Eisenhower, Truman. Hell even Clinton is more responsible for post war global dominance than Kissinger.
- rgmerk 3y agoAny number of Fed chairs. Whoever started DARPA. America's global dominance, and China's challenge to it, depends far more on economic heft than the machinations of diplomats, even ones as ruthless as Kissenger.
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- photochemsyn 3y agoIf you really want to understand the Kissenger era, the best raw source IMO is this: > "The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East is a 2011 book by Andrew Scott Cooper" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oil_Kings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oil_Kings > "The book discusses Henry Kissinger, the 1970s oil embargo, and the Iranian Revolution. Cooper had stated that the story on how the U.S. became dependent on Saudi Arabia and how U.S. reliance on oil began was "Less well known" compared to the general understanding of U.S. reliance on oil." Henry Kissenger along with his British and Gulf Arab partners seem to have invented the concept of petrodollar recycling which has buoyed up the value of the US dollar since about 1975 or so. Balance of payments was a problem and Kissenger said to the Gulf Arabs, "we'll maintain your medieval system of government and the special priviledges of the House of Saud just so long as you keep investing the bulk of those profits back into the US economy (see Saud investments in Uber, today)." If you read Machiavelli's "the prince" you'll know everything you need to know about Kissenger. Never had an original idea in his whole life.
- HeWhoLurksLate 3y ago> If you read Machiavelli's "the prince" you'll know everything you need to know about Kissenger. Never had an original idea in his whole life. I mean Steve Jobs didn't do a lot of invention either, but he was still quite the character and bent the course of history
- photochemsyn 3y agoWell yes, right up there with Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin, I guess. Which circle of Dante's Inferno do you think these characters end up in?
- eru 3y ago> If you read Machiavelli's "the prince" you'll know everything you need to know about Kissenger. Never had an original idea in his whole life. Have you actually read 'The Prince'? It's hopelessly naive, and doesn't have much to do with real politics (or real life in general). So I doubt you could learn everything there is to know about Henry Kissinger in there. (To explain more: 'The Prince' is willing to say some things that shocked contemporaries, and might even shock some people today. But it's still rather naive in its reasoning, and believes in simple 'one weird tricks'.)
- rajup 3y ago[flagged]
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- poidos 3y agoI always go back to this quote from Bourdain when it comes to Kissinger: “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” Referenced many places, but I got it from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/anthony-bourdain-really-really-hated-henry-kissinger.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/anthony-bourdain...
- ChumpGPT 3y ago[flagged]
- zmgsabst 3y agoI think his book on World Orders is interesting. https://www.amazon.com/World-Order-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143127713 https://www.amazon.com/World-Order-Henry-Kissinger/dp/014312...
- galacticstone 3y ago[flagged]
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- issafram 3y agoAbout 100 years too late
- 5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN 3y ago“The illegal we do immediately,” he quipped more than once. “The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” - Henry Kissinger
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- ShrugLife 3y agoHere's a good writeup of his war crimes: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/henry-kissinger-dies_n_6376933ae4b0afce046cb44f https://www.huffpost.com/entry/henry-kissinger-dies_n_637693...
- gonzo41 3y ago[flagged]
- 0xDEADFED5 3y agoAnd Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Bangladesh, Angola, Timor-Leste, ...
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- Frummy 3y agoHe wrote a fair amount of books for the interested
- ted_bunny 3y agoI'm suddenly interested in books for the disinterested.
- Frummy 3y agoRight, I would like to stick my head in the sand and not understand people who influenced modern history as well. Or maybe you would like to read about anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism of which there are plenty of books, get your fill. Most direct criticisms are poorly written and sprinkled with conspiratiorial delusions, such as A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind by Stephen Mitford Goodson if you truly want a recommendation, which certainly attempts to go for the jugular but not well at all.
- CSMastermind 3y agoI found Diplomacy by him to be surprisingly good. I came into it with a negative perception of him presumably from being around threads like this one and found a cogent framework to think about foreign relations well articulated.
- vkou 3y agoI've read that book It's well articulated, in the same sense that lebensraum can be well-articulated. If you don't believe in the rule of law, but do believe in might makes right, it's entirely coherent. It also puts you on a similar moral ground, and value to civilized society that being, say, a mob boss, or some other violent, dangerous psychopath does.
- good_lord_dang 3y ago[dead]
- photochemsyn 3y agoHey have you ever thought about the role Henry Kissenger played in the development of the Israeli nuclear weapons program? It's not inconsequential: > "Kissinger then defines what the U.S. wants overall, agreed broadly in the group: Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal is dangerous, but public knowledge is also dangerous, given that it could lead to a Soviet-Arab nuclear guarantee. Thus, at a minimum, the U.S. should keep it secret." Sounds nuts, right? Reputable source I guess: https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/blog/israeli-nuclear-program-memo-president-nixon-henry-kissinger-71669 https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/blog/israeli-nuclear-pro... Kissenger was a remarkable character, his legacy is worth examining with a fine-tooth comb... isn't it?
- fsckboy 3y ago>"Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal is dangerous, but public knowledge is also dangerous, given that it could lead to a Soviet-Arab nuclear guarantee. Thus, at a minimum, the U.S. should keep it secret." explain what is nuts about that in the middle of the cold war. The US has intelligence that Israel has the bomb, and Kissinger thinks we shouldn't broadcast it? >the role Henry Kissenger played in the development of the Israeli nuclear weapons program? It's not inconsequential what role is that in the development of Israel's weapon? (If there is one weapon you aren't going to keep the Jewish state from developing, I'd think it would be one based on 20th century physics...) Other than "oooh Kissinger bad", I don't get what you are saying. (*fine-toothed comb)
- charred_patina 3y agoThe fact that nuclear weapons are about deterrence means you don't want them to be secret. A secret nuclear weapon's primary use would be a revenge weapon. Or to blow up a city in a surprise attack. Neither of which is particularly "defensive". There's a reason why we have arms treaties and try to be transparent about our nuclear capabilities. I know it's a movie but Dr. Strangelove is a great example of the thinking behind this. I get that the point is to keep the balance of power in the favor of the US, but the practical outcome was letting Israel secretly develop a revenge/offensive nuclear bomb. If it got used potentially millions would die, and you can't even make the argument that it acts as a stabilizer via MAD.
- euzi 3y agoEternal hellfire
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- MichaelMoser123 3y agoKissinger wrote an interesting book "A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822", actually found it online: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012330695&seq=11 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012330695&se... i think he had his moment here with the 1975 Helsinki accord. That one is often overlooked, but it gave dissidents in communist countries a basis to press their case, where their own government signed a document that on paper obliged them to respect human rights.
- csomar 3y agoKissinger is way over hyped. What I find more interesting is the total deflection of the blame of everything that happened to his person. I believe that Kissinger is talented but far from being the person who orchestrated a world order. He was a tool. A very nice and charismatic persona who took the fall when events went south. He was paid for it and protected up until his death.
- rufus_foreman 3y agoHis value was similar to the value of consulting companies to a CEO. When a CEO decides he wants to do a layoff, he can either show up one morning and say he has decided to fire 7% of the workers, or he can hire a consulting company to prepare a thorough and very expensive report which the CEO knows will contain advice to layoff precisely 7% of the workers. Firing people is sometimes necessary in a budgeting process, and bombing people is sometimes necessary in a war, but it's better if it looks like it is someone else's decision, even when the responsibility obviously rests with the executive.
- Reubachi 3y ago"very nice and charismatic persona" Not sure I've ever heard anyone refer to Henry Kissinger as "a very nice and charismatic person". Even if he was just "the face" of US Policy at the time, and not an actual implementer, he was instrumental in furthering the suffereing of millions around the world through meddling in foreign governments/civil unrest. If I make $10 dollars off of your suffering in perpetuity, and let it continue as the public face of your suffering, am I less evil than the actual person implementing your suffering?
- anjel 3y agoI was riding an elevator to my hotel room when it stops on another floor and in gets Henry Kissinger in the company of beautiful young blonde. So I say "Hey! Aren't you Kissinger?" Henry replies "no I'm Fsckinger." (The last time I can tell a 50 year old joke)
- maybelsyrup 3y agoDamn, he was cooking here
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- ksenzee 3y agoThat's not how Kissinger is pronounced. It's a soft g. Sorry to spoil your joke, but as you say it's reached the end of its natural life anyway.
- chirau 3y agoAs a person from the third world and more specifically Africa, I cannot find myself to mourn his death or say any good thing about Kissinger. Good riddance actually. I would have loved to see him get his day in court when he was still alive. What he masterminded in Angola and several other African countries that ended up in civil wars because of him are some of the greatest atrocities to people of the third world. I wish history would remember as such, but hey, we don't write the history, they did.
- buildbot 3y agoA lot of people in the US sadly have 0 knowledge about his crimes in Africa :( It doesn’t even get mentioned in pretty critical articles!
- KingMob 3y agoIt's the Donald Trump/George Santos blizzard method: do so much crime it's impossible to keep track of it all!
- glompers 3y agoIt's not. https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/opinion/editorial/guest-column-as-heinz-and-henry-kissinger-brought-germany-redemption/article_18fcecf0-90b4-11ee-9b38-e38662896e74.html https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/opinion/editori...
- MiguelX413 3y agoThis doesn't discount the millions he caused the death of.
- Gibbon1 3y agoIt's disturbing the vast difference of opinion between ordinary citizens of the US who think he's a monster that inflicted an enormous amount of evil upon the world. Ever more worse because it was in our name. And how the political class in the US views him.
- Metacelsus 3y agoFrom the obituary in the New York Times: "Michael T. Kaufman, a former correspondent and editor for The Times who died in 2010, contributed reporting." So, Kissinger outlived the guy who wrote his obituary!
- MichaelMoser123 3y agoarchive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20231130042426/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231130042426/https://www.nytim...
- jhbadger 3y agoThat's very common. Basically all elderly people of note have obituaries written by reporters on staff so that an article can be gotten out quickly if the subject dies suddenly. Not uncommonly, the targets of the obituary are of a higher class and have better medical treatment and so live beyond their obituary writer.
- shadowgovt 3y agoPerhaps worth noting that he lived 13 years past the time the obituary was penned.
- actuallyalys 3y ago13 years past how long a contributor to the obituary lived. The contributor may have started work on the obituary even earlier and probably did, as Kissinger was 87 and it probably would have made sense to pre-write the obituary sooner.
- bgergen 3y agoI wouldn't be surprised if a first draft of this one was written 50 years ago.
- 3y ago
- LAC-Tech 3y agoKissinger was a truly awful and hypocritical human being. Despite being a refugee from a murderous regime, he sat around and cracked jokes with a dictator whose body counts was in the multiples of the dictator he fled from. The "rapprochement" (read: appeasement) with the PRC that he spearheaded benefited China immensely while it was nothing but damaging to US interests. The damage he did to the long term peace in the Taiwan strait can still be felt to this day. He would remain a close friend of that regime until his dying days - I believe he met Xi this year. Good riddance.
- DeIlliad 3y ago[flagged]
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- halayli 3y agoHe's the reason why the middle east has been in shambles since the 70s.
- missedthecue 3y agoYou may be surprised to learn it's been in shambles for a while longer than that.
- Schiendelman 3y agoYeah, but it was meaningfully stabilizing before we fucked it again.
- ekianjo 3y agowhen was it ever stable?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- borski 3y agoA few thousand years of regular stabilization and destabilization would like a few words with you, lol
- oh_sigh 3y agoNo, it wasn't. What part are you even talking about? Israel was at war with all of its neighbors 5 years before Kissinger. The clerics were poised to take power in Iran since the 60s. same thing with the baaths in Iraq.
- Fricken 3y agoEurope was in chaos for centuries up until the end of WW2. Since WW2 western powers have worked to keep the middle east in chaos.
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- frob 3y agoNot only was he a war criminal, but he was a major player on the Theranos board who brought in multiple investors and raked in over a half million a year between his board position and "consulting." https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/elizabeth-holmes-trial-theranos/card/BkohXCrIWy7gmFPxVuKh https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/elizabeth-holmes-trial-ther...
- marssaxman 3y agoI revised my opinion of Elizabeth Holmes somewhat for the better when I found out how much of Henry Kissinger's money she ran off with. Mixed with her fraud, a genuine public service!
- deadbabe 3y ago[flagged]
- Deprogrammer9 3y ago[flagged]
- dharmab 3y agoI wonder who won the tontine: https://henrykissinger.rip https://henrykissinger.rip
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hionnode 3y ago[flagged]
- pierat 3y ago[flagged]
- dcassett 3y agoI read Kissinger The Adventures of Super-Kraut [1] when it came out in 1972. It was a fun read at the time. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Kissinger-Adventures-Super-Kraut-Charles-Ashman/dp/0818400471 https://www.amazon.com/Kissinger-Adventures-Super-Kraut-Char...
- foob 3y agoI’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. - Clarence Darrow Not the only war criminal to ever win a Nobel Peace Prize, but he's surely in the running for the one with the most blood on his hands.
- dcassett 3y ago[dupe]
- seatac76 3y agoTo have Hitch alive right now to comment, the Rollingstone article was pretty on point but his would have been special.
- redder23 3y ago[flagged]
- redder23 3y agoAh and OF COURSE I get downvoted. I know it. This fucking site is filled with braindead morons, almost as bad as Reddit. But also some people with brains who point out who he really was. A disgusting war criminal and nothing less. But you gonna honor a war criminal because the MSMBS media brainwashed you into praising him as a good man and great advisor or whatever the fuck they tell you to believe. He was the personification of evil foreign policy, typical elitist with no empathy and only one goal to expand the US empire by all brutal means possible. Seeing millions of lives just to be sacrificed for his great chess game. https://www.corbettreport.com/kissinger/ https://www.corbettreport.com/kissinger/
- __loam 3y agoMany on this site believe that unregulated technology and capitalism is the surest way to a better world, so it really shouldn't be surprising that some of the people who benefit the most from the neoliberal order are praising one of its architects.
- redder23 3y agoI don't think its even that deep. People are just repeating the praise mainstream media is doing and thing everyone who succeeds in government is just a great person. The believe the propaganda about Kissinger. Or they just can't take me cursing and using strong words they reflex dislike because they have Reddit brain.
- dannylandau 3y agoMany people have a positive view of Kissinger --https://www.wsj.com/articles/henry-kissingers-century-01a1a932?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/henry-kissingers-century-01a1a9...
- prpl 3y agoAmericans maybe. Plenty of Cambodians, Chileans, Argentinians, and more, will spit on the grave.
- canjobear 3y agoHe’s quite popular in China too.
- notthemessiah 3y agoIt's hard to do that level of genocide and escape the Hague without a few admirers
- timeon 3y agoEven those that did not escape the Hague have admirers.
- mrweasel 3y agoI think it's a generational thing. Kissinger should have stopped commenting on world affairs 20 decades ago. It became increasingly oblivious that the world was evolving in a direction he didn't understand or comprehend. He continued to attempt to apply his cold war era world view and solutions to current issues, when it was obvious to most that his ideas where nonsense. An example: His idea that Ukraine should give up territory to please Russia made it clear that he don't understand modern Russia or Putin. It's not a conflict in which he has no relevant experience or any deep insight, yet he felt the need to use his influence to present his poorly thought out idea. Had he stepped back from the public 20 years ago, then may the majority of at least Americans would have remembered him as a great statesman, but he need to be heard and saying stupid shit has made people more aware of his past and his terrible actions.
- flome 3y agoAh yes, the real life Varys.
- dccoolgai 3y agoBefore Henry Kissinger, there were walls in the world - just as there are now. The difference was those walls - by-and-large - were designed to keep people _in_. A very subtle but meaningful difference. The people who built _those walls_ wanted you inside with them. That was their dream - and they were quite frank about it. Just something to ponder.
- tw04 3y agoAre you suggesting there aren’t today? You’ve never heard of North Korea? Xinjiang? If you’re referring to the USSR - Jimmy Carter is the first president to arm the Mujahideen (for better and worse), without the help of Kissinger.
- dccoolgai 3y agoThose places exist, but they are the exception rather than the rule in 2023. I'm not offering a full-throated apology of Kissinger (or, by extension, Nixon) just pointing out that a lot of the people jumping out to proclaim what a terrible human he is a few hours after his death was announced might consider that they would be demonstrably worse off if the forces Kissinger worked to keep at bay had prevailed.
- oska 3y agoThe DeathList website finally gets to mark him off their list, after nominating him for likely death in the next year 10 times previously (and I believe he first made the list back in 1993). https://deathlist.net/ https://deathlist.net/ https://forums.deathlist.net/forum/31-2023-names/ https://forums.deathlist.net/forum/31-2023-names/
- danso 3y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 3y agoHenry Kissinger, how I'm missing you, and wishing you were here. He's got better legs than Hitler, and nicer tits than Cher! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5vo7jLGOb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5vo7jLGOb8
- guender 3y ago[dead]
- 5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN 3y agoKissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians, according to Ben Kiernan, former director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and one of the foremost authorities on the U.S. air campaign in Cambodia. That’s up to six times the number of noncombatants thought to have died in U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the first 20 years of the war on terror. Grandin estimated that, overall, Kissinger — who also helped to prolong the Vietnam War and facilitate genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America — has the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands All the while, as Kissinger dated starlets, won coveted awards, and rubbed shoulders with billionaires at black-tie White House dinners, Hamptons galas, and other invitation-only soirées, survivors of the U.S. war in Cambodia were left to grapple with loss, trauma, and unanswered questions. They did so largely alone and invisible to the wider world, including to Americans whose leaders had upended their lives.
- tetrisgm 3y agoMy thoughts to the people whose family still reel from his actions
- AYBABTME 3y agoI have a feeling that people who hate him were on the receiving end of his work, or associate him as one of those bogeyman characters that their in-group is expected to hate, or whom it's popular and fashionable to hate. He seems to have been quite good at what he did, and this made his opponents hate him particularly vehemently. If you bother to read what he wrote, he had a pretty humble but accurate view of things in their moment, and also contrarian ideas that might have proven out to be correct despite the horror they imply.
- kelnos 3y agoIt isn't only his opponents who hated him, it's the countless families and friends of the innocent bystanders who got caught in Kissinger's crossfire.
- AYBABTME 3y agoThe victims "were on the receiving end of his work", like I said. The man served the US and the US first and wasn't shy about sacrificing left and right for his perceived greater good. In the trolley problem, he was clear eyed. You may disagree with his trolley problem solution, but then would you have one, or would you stall and do nothing in the face of this problem?
- defrost 3y ago> You may disagree with his trolley problem solution Many more correctly disagree with his championing of a specific Trolley Problem framing that likely didn't exist outside a hobgoblin of tiny minds frightened of reds under the bed. Kissenger loved that Domino Theory: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/27/archives/skepticism-on-domino-theory-administration-view-disputed-by-aides.html https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/27/archives/skepticism-on-do... That judgment, however, is not shared by Administration foreign policy specialists, the American intelligence community or many foreign diplomats. The U.S. put much effort into suppressing "people’s movements" in Chile, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Laos, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. “The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, 'Why not us?'” ~ Chomsky on the “threat of a good example".
- __rito__ 3y agoA war criminal. He saw mass murder and genocide along with the rape of tens of thousands of women in East Pakistan in 1970 and not only did nothing he said nothing should be done at all because Pakistan was an US ally. He did it all full on record and on paper. There's nothing "alleged". He is a war criminal. Plain and simple. And I abhor this man.
- shmde 3y agoRest in piss.
- ivanb 3y agoOn a practical side of things, how did he manage to make it to 100? Did he maintain a nutrition plan, was he physically active? Fun fact: Henry Kissinger was elected an international member of Russian Academy of Sciences in 2016.
- philjohn 3y agoSome people just live longer. My grandmother made it to 98, she rode horses when she was a younger woman (in Australia during the war, she was able to follow my grandfather who was an RAF mechanic out there on the last passenger ship through the Suez). She used to enjoy a tipple, never smoked though, but in her later years never really exercised.
- mountainriver 3y agoMy grandma lived to 93 and smoked her whole life. Didn’t die of any lung related illness either. Obviously don’t recommend
- bigbacaloa 3y ago[dead]
- speedylight 3y agoWhen people like this guy die, I always wish that hell is actually real place because he has by all accounts earned a seat at that table.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- carabiner 3y agoGood night, sweet prince.
- jakobnissen 3y agoThe good ones die so young...
- pyuser583 3y agoIt’s really inappropriate how many people are glad he’s dead. Now is not the time or place to have a hate fest. He’s dead. He had family. He’s a real person who died today. I don’t know what this has to do with Hacker News ethos. And using someone’s death as occasion to talk ill about them just isn’t appropriate.
- __loam 3y agoHe was partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of people around the world, and was responsible for some of the darkest chapters of us foreign policy during the 20th century. When do you think is an appropriate time to have these conversations? He's dead. Criticizing his impact on the world can hardly affect him now. The people in Cambodia he helped murder had families too. Are hackers not supposed to care about ethics or humanity? Why wouldn't Kissinger's death be an inappropriate time to discuss his legacy?
- rtuulik 3y agoKissinger is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands people. They had families. They were real people who died. Death doesn´t absolve someone from committing crimes against humanity. To claim that people should only talk about the good things person did is a serious case of decorum poisoning. Nobody celebrates serial killers.
- farka01 3y agoGo to the hell
- Gud 3y agoI am reminded of Hunter S Thompsons euology for Nixon. Good Riddance! Should have died in jail. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-...
- leobg 3y agoWow. What a refreshing directness: > He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. How come they could publish this without getting sued into oblivion?
- pvg 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-3-9vtpjdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-3-9vtpjdU
- scandox 3y agoYou can't libel the dead
- leobg 3y agoThe dead have estates.
- estomagordo 3y agoAs an outsider, it seems like the lawyer population must be approaching 100% of Americans soon. Is there anything or anyone Americans can't sue?
- mhh__ 3y agoDoes this like look a man who has had all he could eat?
- r0ckarong 3y agoFinally
- freetanga 3y agoA shadowy character. For all his public appearances brokering Peace Deals, he engineered military coups all over Latin America in the 70s (Allendes government for one) and helped set up “School of the Americas” in Panama, where the US trained military juntas how to fight leftist “insurgency”(or civilian opposition, depending who you ask). A lot of the torturing and dirty wars that crippled Latam for 15 years is his doing. While I recognize a number of good deeds he pulled, I get upset when his shadowy part gets untold.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chucke1992 3y ago[flagged]
- seydor 3y agoAdd the division of Cyprus to his accomplishments https://twitter.com/eevriviades/status/1036176772478496768 https://twitter.com/eevriviades/status/1036176772478496768
- warbaker 3y agoKissinger gets a lot of flak for the bombings in Cambodia and Vietnam, but... I mean, it was awful when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, and it was also awful when the Viet Cong took over Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge murdered 25% of the country! 2 million people!! https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/cambodian-genocide https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/cambodian-genocide The Viet Cong were also horrible (excepting, of course, their intervention in Cambodia against the Khmer Rouge!) and devastated Vietnam, and the CPV rules it with an iron fist to this day. Communism really is and was extremely, horribly bad. In South Korea, the seemingly insane plan of the US (install a pro-Western dictator as a bulwark against Communism, and eventually transition to a liberal democracy) eventually worked. The Korean War pre-dates Kissinger's rise to power, but his overall principle of oppose-Communism-no-matter-what seems kind of reasonable, even in hindsight. Anti-communist dictatorships and militias were often terrible, too, but it is really hard to be worse than Communists.
- skrebbel 3y agoIt worked in South Korea and it failed everywhere else. Everything this man did was extremely short-sighted and had cause widespread mistrust of America in the majority of the world.
- glompers 3y agoThat's readily disproven by example. https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/opinion/editorial/guest-column-as-heinz-and-henry-kissinger-brought-germany-redemption/article_18fcecf0-90b4-11ee-9b38-e38662896e74.html https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/opinion/editori...
- grimmx 3y agoHis own biographer credited Kissinger with killing 3 million people, those numbers make the Khmer Rouge blush, but your bias against communism makes you see Kissinger as some sort of hero? That's morally fascinating.
- tgv 3y agoI don't think there's any evidence that Allende was worse than the regime that took over. You might argue Allende wasn't a communist (which would be true), but the coup was of Kissinger's making. Cuba was communist, and was absolutely not the hell-hole that Cambodia was or North-Korea is.
- onecommentman 3y agoHow can an obit about a 100 year old man garner 328 comments in 5 hours on HN? This is Nixon era stuff. I would have assumed most HN reader’s parents weren’t born when Kissinger was actually relevant. The HN demographic is way older than I imagined.
- futureamish 3y agoIt's because we'll never stop feeling the effects of trade normalization with China that placed the final nail in the coffin of unionized labor in the US, resulting in the poor quality of life we feel daily here.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Vosporos 3y agoRIP bozo!
- scandox 3y ago> He has a brother who came to America when he did. Recently, the brother was asked why he had no German accent but Henry did. “Because,” said the brother, “Henry never listens.” https://jacobin.com/2012/08/gore-vidal-dead-and-yet-henry-kissinger-still-lives https://jacobin.com/2012/08/gore-vidal-dead-and-yet-henry-ki...
- Obscurity4340 3y agoHenry is such a strange name for a child. It just doesn't make sense to me. Henry is like an adult name :/
- vore 3y agoThis is the most perplexing comment I've ever read.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoYour handle sounds familiar. Have we crossed paths previously? Hmm
- euazOn 3y ago[flagged]
- Novosell 3y agoHow about this one then, my grandmother is named Lillemor which is Swedish for "little mother". It was a fairly common name even. People out there naming their kids "little mother".
- Obscurity4340 3y agoDo people ever call her Lill or Lilly (phonetically)?
- 3y ago
- botanical 3y ago> “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” — Anthony Bourdain https://henrykissinger.rip/ https://henrykissinger.rip/
- skrebbel 3y agoI just can’t help think how much wider the global support for the west (incl eg ukraine) would be today if Kissinger’s “we can do war crimes and install dictators all we like cause we’re the good guys” doctrine hadn’t made it to the forefront of US policy. Even from a hardcore neorealist perspective, the harm has by now well outlasted the benefit.
- picadores 3y agoRealpoliticans are always playing for the autoritarian team, as it flattens the playing field, giving up the moral high ground, one of the reasons russian bots desperatly push it as the "default" mindset. Got to turn everyone a psychopathic maniac out for themselves, to justify being one.
- einpoklum 3y ago[flagged]
- octodog 3y agoNonsense. Ukraine already had an agreement with Russia that turned out to be worth less than the paper it was written on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
- parineum 3y agoIt's honestly refreshing to see this information about Ukraine posted with minimal partisanship. The West has, with every decision, made the choice that put Ukrainian lives and sovereignty at risk starting from practically the day the wall fell.
- timeon 3y ago> Ukraine. It could very well have maintained neutrality and avoided the invasion. This seems naive. Ukraine was already invaded in 2014. I guess you are not from Eastern Europe when you deny these nation sovereignty.
- chmod775 3y ago
- aryonoco 3y agoNo newspaper obituary will say it like this, so I feel obliged to say it. One of the world's most notorious war criminals, a man with millions of people's blood on his hands, a man directly responsible for the rise of anti-liberal regimes across the world from Russia to Iran, died today. He brought misery to the world and set the course of human progress back by decades. People only think of the likes of Stalin or Pol Pot when they think of "evil". But the name Henry Kissinger belongs right up there.
- stareatgoats 3y agoRIP Henry Kissinger. I am as far apart on the political spectrum from Kissinger as can be imagined, but it is useless to imagine a counterfactual, somehow better, history where he did not make his mark. We often think powerful people have the power to command the course of history, and therefore is somehow more culpable than the cheering onlooker. But we are all vessels on the tides of history. Applying criminal law to state leaders, spearheads of broad sectors of society is therefore fraught with peril bordering on a misuse of the judiciary, unless they broke some law that is also applicable to anyone else, like theft, willful deceit or bodily harm to others (in their vicinity).
- nabla9 3y agoKissinger's book "Diplomacy”(1994) is incredibly good and well-written Must read for anyone interested in international politics. To understand Kissinger, you must understand his worldview. He had an acute sense of tragedy, and understanding that things can go wrong in an instant. For him the job of foreign policy was very modest: to keep the most horrible disasters away by using power against power. By preventing the worst from happening, others had the opportunity to better the humanity. Cynical realpolitik was necessary to prevent everything from going to hell. In the last 30 years Kissinger was not very consistent or well thought in his opinions in public. He just wanted to get included and consulted in the highest level, so his opinions were often grafted to be accepted. For example, the plan to invade Iraq was fundamentally against Kissinger's realpolitik world view. Neoconservative foreign policy is idealistic (spread democracy trough military strength) but Kissinger rationalized the invasion for neocons.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwawayfg 3y ago[flagged]
- tazjin 3y agoGood! Lets start the clock for Nuland then.
- icemanx 3y agoGreat News for the peace of the world.
- teitoklien 3y agoHe was responsible for the genocide of millions of Bengali Hindus, he supplied weapons and arms meant to kill us, knowing fully-well what its sole purpose was. The only thing he was great at doing, was spilling innocent blood across the world. [1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide) [Nixon-Kissinger](https://youtu.be/bEytw5Zv0wc?si=P_tbwHcvsm1N8amP https://youtu.be/bEytw5Zv0wc?si=P_tbwHcvsm1N8amP)
- croes 3y ago“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” ― Anthony Bourdain
- thewileyone 3y agohttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-ki... Rolling Stone said it best
- nojvek 3y agoGuy was a crook and had no remorse for killing millions of civilians and cozying up with dictators. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/henry-kissinger-dies_n_6376933ae4b0afce046cb44f https://www.huffpost.com/entry/henry-kissinger-dies_n_637693... The world needs less people like him. No one should ever be complicit in carpet bombing. It's inhumane. We in the US ought to hold the govt accountable everytime they drop bombs from the sky on civilians. We're currently helping Israel do that in Gaza with our tax dollars. Hospitals and Schools getting air bombed. That is not who we are.
- marcelluspye 3y ago>That is not who we are. No, that is not who you would like us to be/have been. Very evidently, that is who we are.
- stormking 3y agoHospitals and schools that are used by Hamas.
- burnerburnito 3y agoWhile I agree to an extent, this begs an obvious question: How far do we take this line of thinking? Is an attack like 9/11 justified since even the twin towers were used by the US government indirectly, owing to nearly everyone within paying taxes that supported US wars and expeditionary-ism? Likewise, I'd want to keep in mind things like relative size and options on the table. WW2 incendiary and atomic bombing is one thing in the context of the ferocity and consumption of that war. Yet in the case of a small territory under varying degrees of military occupation and without full self determination, is there really no capability to take any action but bombing such places? (And no moral imperative to try to cause less collateral if it's realistically possible?)
- Always_Anon 3y ago>While I agree to an extent, this begs an obvious question: How far do we take this line of thinking? It be cool if military and geopolitical leaders got together to define some of these things. They could get together and have a convention of sorts, maybe in a central, neutral place, like Geneva. >Is an attack like 9/11 justified since even the twin towers were used by the US government indirectly, owing to nearly everyone within paying taxes that supported US wars and expeditionary-ism? Were there uniformed military personnel operating out of the Twin Towers? Of course there weren't, so it's not even close to being comparable.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoRest in peace patriot.
- matthewfelgate 3y ago[flagged]
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- neycoda 3y agoI won't say that I'm glad, just that I hope the world becomes a better place.
- rldjbpin 3y agopoor comparison but his legacy will probably be split like churchill. anyways for me it was a reminder that the world is not fair.