The former US secretary of state left behind a legacy of bloody policies still embraced by US officials.
AHMED TWAIJ FROM ALJAZEERA
“No hay mal que dure 100 anos, ni cuerpo que lo resista”, a famous saying in Spanish goes. It translates to “There is no evil which lasts 100 years, nor a body that can bear it”. The former US national security adviser and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, may have tried to prove it wrong, making it past his 100th birthday, before finally meeting his maker six months later, on November 29.
Following his passing, there was a flood of obituaries and encomiums in media outlets around the world, some calling him “controversial”, others praising his legacy.
Amid these attempts to whitewash Kissinger’s atrocities, we must not lose track of who he really was.
This is a man, who, through his actions, was directly responsible for the murders of between three and four million people during his eight years in office between 1969 and 1977, according to Yale University historian Greg Grandin’s book Kissinger’s Shadow. The bloody policies he promoted paved the way for America’s never-ending wars in later years.
Kissinger was seen as the architect of the United States efforts to contain the Soviet Union and communist influence around the world. To achieve this, he introduced the “bombs over diplomacy” approach, pushing for some of the most brutal bombing campaigns in modern history.
This approach was first applied during the Vietnam War when the US was trying to stop communists from taking power. Kissinger, who at that time served as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, pushed for carpet bombing not only Vietnam itself but also neighbouring Cambodia, where both Cambodian and Vietnamese guerrillas were operating.
In 1969, the military assault was approved secretly and proceeded without Congress being informed. In declassified Pentagon reports, it was stated that Kissinger personally approved 3,875 air raids which dropped some 540,000 tonnes of bombs in Cambodia within the first year of the campaign. To this day, innocent Vietnamese and Cambodians are being killed by remaining unexploded US ordnance.
Needless to say, the carpet bombing did not stop but rather facilitated the Vietnamese and Cambodian communists taking power. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge emerged victorious in the country’s civil war and went on to commit countless atrocities, including a genocide of between 1.5 and two million people. As TV chef, Anthony Bourdain, famously wrote, “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands”.
For his role in the war in Southeast Asia, Kissinger was abhorrently awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. A war in which he secretly helped Nixon sabotage peace talks between the US administration and Hanoi. A war, in which only regret was that he had not applied more brutal force to secure US victory.
The peace prize was a slap in the face for the victims of Kissinger’s brutality and has been yet another affirmation that the West refuses to hold its own war criminals to account.
Kissinger’s crimes stretch beyond Vietnam and Cambodia. In South Asia, worried about a Soviet-leaning India causing the collapse of Pakistan, a US ally, Kissinger gave support to Islamabad as its forces were carrying out a genocide against the Bengali population of East Pakistan, today’s Bangladesh in the early 1970s. Despite receiving multiple warnings from US diplomats about atrocities being committed, Kissinger approved shipments of weapons that perpetuated them.
