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Henry Kissinger is a war criminal in the same club as Adolf Eichmann and Pol Pot. He is responsible for the deaths of millions. The US, at least since WW2, are

by jmyeet 2y ago

Henry Kissinger is a war criminal in the same club as Adolf Eichmann and Pol Pot. He is responsible for the deaths of millions. The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. Look at what happened to the perpetrators of Unit 731. Or all the Nazis that ended up in positions of power in the West. I mean, look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger [1]. The US were the bad guys in the Cuban missile crisis, almost precipitating WW3. The USSR putting missiles in Cuba was a direct response to the US putting Jupiter MRBMs in Turkey. It's for the restraint of one man (Vasili Arkhopov [2]) that we didn't have a nuclear war. In the 1950s, we started overthrowing governments at the behest of the interests of Western companies (eg Guatemala [3], Iran [4]). Anytime any country has even hinted that they'd nationalize extraction industries of someone who was left-leaning won an election, that country would have a coup and the CIA's fingerprints would be all over it. Pinochet is just one of dozens of examples. Now we largely exact vengeance for defying US interests by starving people to death (aka "economic sanctions"), a policy that has also killed millions. None of this is principled. People may point to the Monroe doctrine or the Truman doctrine or defending democracy but we've overthrown too many democracies for that claim to have any credibility. If this were Star Wars, we we would be the Empire. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

GordonS 2y ago
I agree with everything you've said here. The question is, what can really be done about it?
- tokai 2y ago
  Dig him up and put his corpse on trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod
  - GordonS 2y ago
    Lol, I meant what can we do about the CIA destroying the entire world, piece by piece... not specifically Kissinger.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  The CIA is a symptom rather than the problem. The CIA simply reflects US foreign policy. This isn't a political issue either because you'd be hard-pressed to find a difference between Democratic and Republican administrations when it comes to foreign policy. The so-called War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq persisted through 4 presidents, 2 from each party. Both parties are neoliberals. Abrahm Lincoln [1]: > Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. sounds an awful lot like Karl Marx and the Labor Theory of Value [2]. So what happened? The two world wars massively increased US wealth, power and influence [3] and there was also the Red Scare, particularly after WW2 (although there were concerns about communists prior to that). The Red Scare (and Reagan in particular) destroyed the labor movement in the US. Now we people who champion tax cuts for Jeff Bezos. That's how successful the propaganda has been. What's clear is the capitalists will side with fascists to destroy socialists and communists. Every time. Fascism is capitalism in crisis. Why do I bring all this up? Because when you make a materialist analysis of historical events, you see the US acting in the interests of capital owners every time. So after WW2, with the red Scare, who was good at fighting communists? Nazis obviously. So is it any surprise that Nazis ended up in the command structure of NATO? Not in the slightest. So there's no reforming the CIA in the current system. The entire system is corrupt. And the only antidote is class consciousness and class solidarity. Any polarization you see in modern politics is merely a tool to prevent class solidarity by workers. Racism was fanned in Reconstruction to avoid unity between freed slaves and poor white people. Race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, the middle class (as distinct from the "lower class"), whatever it is. There's always some manufactured culture war nonsense to keep people divided. Until people realize they have more in common with their fellow worker than they do the guy who owns the warehouse they work in, nothing will change. [1]:https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/lincoln-abraham_on-labor-and-capital-1861.htm https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/lincoln-abraham_on... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value [3]: https://archive.is/QxfjL https://archive.is/QxfjL
  - GordonS 2y ago
    I think this is a sound analysis, if rather depressing! I really just can't see how this ever changes. You are right that the Dems and Republicans are two cheeks of the same arse - but worse, they don't even play fair within their own rules; just look at the shenanigans they've been undertaking to keep Jill Stein's Green party underfunded and off the ballot!
aguaviva 2y ago
The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. I'll go with "the US has been bad". But to say that they were simply "the bad guys", in a world bursting full of bad guys in practically every corner, is simplistic and naive. It also (ironically) denies these other societies any respect for their own agency, and their own salient capacity to be corrupt, incompetent, genocidal and warmongering, and run themselves into the ground in countless other ways without any help at all from the US. In that sense, it's actually quite a myopic and hegemonic way of looking at things.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  This amounts to "other people are bad too". Is that really a defense? It's also a question of scale. The amount of direct and foreseeable harm caused by the United States goes all the way back to its founding. The genocide of Native American peoples, the translatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, segregation and then in the 20th century we go global. The British Empire is described as the first drug dealer empire. First tobacco then opium. Well the US is the arms dealer empire. Eisenhower's farewell address warned of the increasing threat and power of the "military industrial complex" [1]. But in virtually every conflict post-WW2 we've been on the wrong side. Take the defining moment of 9/11, a terrorist attack perpetrated by Saudis, funded by members of the Saudi royal family. What did we do? We turned around and invaded Afghanistan (who offered to hand over bin Laden [2]) and Iraq (who had absolutely nothing to do with it), killing millions. [1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    It's not a defense; just a (much) more grounded contextualization, in my view. This amounts to "other people are bad too". It's also not whataboutism. To suggest that it is amounts to, well, an "either/or" response. All I'm saying is: it seems you're trying to essentialize the woe and evil the world in a way I don't find valid or useful.

by jmyeet 2y ago

GordonS 2y ago

I agree with everything you've said here. The question is, what can really be done about it?

tokai 2y ago
Dig him up and put his corpse on trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod
- GordonS 2y ago
  Lol, I meant what can we do about the CIA destroying the entire world, piece by piece... not specifically Kissinger.
jmyeet 2y ago
The CIA is a symptom rather than the problem. The CIA simply reflects US foreign policy. This isn't a political issue either because you'd be hard-pressed to find a difference between Democratic and Republican administrations when it comes to foreign policy. The so-called War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq persisted through 4 presidents, 2 from each party. Both parties are neoliberals. Abrahm Lincoln [1]: > Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. sounds an awful lot like Karl Marx and the Labor Theory of Value [2]. So what happened? The two world wars massively increased US wealth, power and influence [3] and there was also the Red Scare, particularly after WW2 (although there were concerns about communists prior to that). The Red Scare (and Reagan in particular) destroyed the labor movement in the US. Now we people who champion tax cuts for Jeff Bezos. That's how successful the propaganda has been. What's clear is the capitalists will side with fascists to destroy socialists and communists. Every time. Fascism is capitalism in crisis. Why do I bring all this up? Because when you make a materialist analysis of historical events, you see the US acting in the interests of capital owners every time. So after WW2, with the red Scare, who was good at fighting communists? Nazis obviously. So is it any surprise that Nazis ended up in the command structure of NATO? Not in the slightest. So there's no reforming the CIA in the current system. The entire system is corrupt. And the only antidote is class consciousness and class solidarity. Any polarization you see in modern politics is merely a tool to prevent class solidarity by workers. Racism was fanned in Reconstruction to avoid unity between freed slaves and poor white people. Race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, the middle class (as distinct from the "lower class"), whatever it is. There's always some manufactured culture war nonsense to keep people divided. Until people realize they have more in common with their fellow worker than they do the guy who owns the warehouse they work in, nothing will change. [1]:https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/lincoln-abraham_on-labor-and-capital-1861.htm https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/lincoln-abraham_on... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value [3]: https://archive.is/QxfjL https://archive.is/QxfjL
- GordonS 2y ago
  I think this is a sound analysis, if rather depressing! I really just can't see how this ever changes. You are right that the Dems and Republicans are two cheeks of the same arse - but worse, they don't even play fair within their own rules; just look at the shenanigans they've been undertaking to keep Jill Stein's Green party underfunded and off the ballot!

aguaviva 2y ago

The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. I'll go with "the US has been bad". But to say that they were simply "the bad guys", in a world bursting full of bad guys in practically every corner, is simplistic and naive. It also (ironically) denies these other societies any respect for their own agency, and their own salient capacity to be corrupt, incompetent, genocidal and warmongering, and run themselves into the ground in countless other ways without any help at all from the US. In that sense, it's actually quite a myopic and hegemonic way of looking at things.

jmyeet 2y ago
This amounts to "other people are bad too". Is that really a defense? It's also a question of scale. The amount of direct and foreseeable harm caused by the United States goes all the way back to its founding. The genocide of Native American peoples, the translatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, segregation and then in the 20th century we go global. The British Empire is described as the first drug dealer empire. First tobacco then opium. Well the US is the arms dealer empire. Eisenhower's farewell address warned of the increasing threat and power of the "military industrial complex" [1]. But in virtually every conflict post-WW2 we've been on the wrong side. Take the defining moment of 9/11, a terrorist attack perpetrated by Saudis, funded by members of the Saudi royal family. What did we do? We turned around and invaded Afghanistan (who offered to hand over bin Laden [2]) and Iraq (who had absolutely nothing to do with it), killing millions. [1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
- aguaviva 2y ago
  It's not a defense; just a (much) more grounded contextualization, in my view. This amounts to "other people are bad too". It's also not whataboutism. To suggest that it is amounts to, well, an "either/or" response. All I'm saying is: it seems you're trying to essentialize the woe and evil the world in a way I don't find valid or useful.