Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace
http://www.thenation.com/article/henry-kissinger-hillary-clintons-tutor-in-war-and-peace/
(Hillary) Clinton just cant quit him. Even as she is trying to outflank Bernie on his left, Hillary Clinton cant help but stutter the name of Henry Kissinger. Last night in the New Hampshire debate, Clinton thought to close her argument that she is the true progressive with this: I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.
Lets consider some of Kissingers achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixons top foreign policymaker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistans ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the USs arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissingers Shadow!
A full tally hasnt been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissingers actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. Pull but one string from the current tangle of todays multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? Thats Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran? An act of folly was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissingers relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf? Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.
And yet Clinton continues to call his name, hoping his light bathes her in wisdom.
You guys need to get your candidate to stop praising this monster.
And we should have a right to expect that NO Democratic president will ever do anything in the Kissinger tradition.