From the NYTimes... The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger By NEAL POLLACK AUSTIN, Tex. There has been much moaning over the appointment of Henry Kissinger to lead an investigation into the root causes of Sept. 11. As the author of "Henry Kissinger, Murderous Corporate Toady," a pamphlet published secretly by paranoids, I would ordinarily join the chorus of coordinated outrage. But these are different times, and they call for a different ideology. I'm more than willing to change my stance on important matters if it helps win our War on Terror. So today I'm jamming the S.U.V. of my mind into reverse and backing his appointment. Let me, as one of the world's leading dissident Kissinger scholars, tell you a few things about him that until now only I have known. • Henry Kissinger is a master sleuth. Scotland Yard often calls upon him in moments of bafflement. On a rainy Saturday afternoon, he'll be playing his violin or teaching himself forensic science when there'll be a knock at the door. "Why, inspector! What a delightful surprise!" Dr. Kissinger will say. "Afternoon, guv'nor," the inspector will say. Dr. Kissinger will then say, "The hotel bombing in Kenya was definitely the work of Al Qaeda." "How did you know?" the inspector will ask. To which the doctor will reply, "I saw it on Fox News." • Henry Kissinger can shoot powerful laser beams from his eyes. This is an invaluable skill if he's cornered by terrorists or questioned by a nosy Spanish judge. It also means he'll never die, except by natural causes, and even then his death will be concealed to prevent uprisings. • Women love Henry Kissinger, and have since about 1967. His powers of seduction are widely discussed in the salons of the famous. Rarely has a true lady been able to resist entreaties to return to his moated estate and listen to his book-on-tape version of Zbigniew Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard." • Henry Kissinger can kill vampires. He is a slayer, once a generation born. He fights them with karate chops and plunges stakes into their hearts. One time, I was with him when he killed a demon in the cellar of a Los Angeles-area high school. "I perform this role reluctantly," he said. "But my destiny was foretold in the great book." Then we went out for beers. • Henry Kissinger has a secret castle and he often walks its parapets. The president trusts Dr. Kissinger, and has told him that he's the perfect candidate to rout the rebels in the Middle East. "I will do it," Dr. Kissinger says. But then a man appears to him in a dream and tells him his extraordinary power and ambition can only be used for evil. The torment in his soul is matched only by his love for his children. • Henry Kissinger is a mathematician gone mad with his own genius. He sits babbling incoherently about shadowy figures who want to read his e-mail messages and track his credit-card purchases. But only he is able to decipher Osama bin Laden's secret code. His wife, Nancy, who fell in love with his brilliance years ago, tries to persuade him, through tenderness, to save the world for democracy. "When will they all stop staring at me?" he shouts through his sobs.
"In contrast to Berman's carefully researched analysis and measured, though damning, conclusions, ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger,'' by Christopher Hitchens, is a philippic pure and simple, a propaganda screed devoid not only of balance but also of proper recognition of the distinction between domestic criminal law and international law. Hitchens says Kissinger committed ''identifiable crimes'' that ''might or should form the basis of a legal prosecution.'' But it should be noted that Kissinger was not the ultimate authority for any of the acts cited here; he was acting in accord with policies approved by, and sometimes initiated by, Presidents Nixon and Ford. Indeed, to the degree that American armed forces or clandestine operatives were involved in these ''crimes,'' it was under the authority of the president, not that of his assistant for national security or secretary of state. Hitchens makes six accusations against Kissinger, five of which ignore or distort the context in which United States policy was formed and reek of double standards. Thus, pace Hitchens, orders were not given by Kissinger to kill civilians deliberately in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese not only encouraged the Vietcong to terrorize civilians, but invaded South Vietnam with their regular forces. Normally, those who start a war are held responsible for the violence, not those who resist the invaders and terrorists. Whatever criticism may be properly directed at the way the United States fought the war in Vietnam, it is a travesty to characterize the attempts to resist Communist aggression as criminal acts. Similarly, the evidence Hitchens cites for ''collusion in mass murder'' in Bangladesh, ''personal suborning and planning of murder'' in Chile, ''personal involvement in a plan to murder'' the president of Cyprus and ''incitement'' to ''genocide'' in East Timor would be inadequate to persuade a dispassionate grand jury to approve an indictment, even without the countervailing evidence a defense attorney would present. The sixth accusation, of Kissinger's ''personal involvement in a plan to kidnap and murder a journalist living in Washington, D.C.'' (Elias Demetracopoulos), is that of a crime punishable under American law. If the accusation has substance, there is no need to resort to an international tribunal. In fact, Hitchens's evidence, which he admits is incomplete, is exceedingly flimsy. Even if we accept it at face value, the most it would justify is further investigation by the Department of Justice to determine whether there is credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing. In the meantime, a presumption of innocence, to which even people Hitchens dislikes are entitled, would seem to apply. Hitchens sees his accusations as a blow to the ''sovereign immunity'' principle traditionally protecting senior government officials from tribunals outside their own countries. His intemperate diatribe may, however, have the opposite effect. Many will reason that if this is the sort of thing that could be brought before an international criminal court, the world will be better off without one." Jack F. Matlock Jr., the author of ''Autopsy on an Empire,'' is a former United States ambassador to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.
Folks, this thread was intended to insert some levity into our serious discussions about the future of the world and everything we hold dear. Remember, there's a "murderers" thread out there somewhere.
Rimrocker, It is true that there is a "murders" thread out there. <A HREF="http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46572&pagenumber=1">George Bush is hanging out with liars and murderers again</A> It is also true that I posted in that thread and never got a response.
that's why you click the bump icon. Doesn't it show up for you? But anyway, sure, I'll play the game... Kf3!
Rimrocker, Achebe and others who rubberstamped & endorsed that article.........<b>thanks for playing.</b> The discussion never happened.........but I still learned from this.
"rubberstamped", did you "learn from this" that you didn't read my last post in that thread? sometimes you sound like you're taking names Mango. honestly, you can be a weirdo.
I read it the first time, saw no mention of Bangladesh in your last post and failed to find it upon second and third readings. So my query was still unanswered. I have been called worse than "weirdo" on this bbs....so that is not anything new. I had let the Kissinger topic drop and only brought my query back when Rimrocker started another Kissinger thread. I believe that a key/principal/significant poster should be responsible for defending their position/post. By being the thread starter (a key poster), it seems like you would have taken some responsibility for defending you case against Kissinger. <b>Nobody</b> had the desire to post against me and I let it drop. Lately, people seem to dodge me and abruptly exit threads when I join in ...............it is something I am used to by now and only grumble about privately. The reason I had high expectations for you to respond to my query is because of this thread: <A HREF="http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45332&pagenumber=2">Seriously</A> <b>11-16-2002 05:59 PM </b> <b>11-18-2002 07:52 PM </b> Two different times in that thread, you pointed out that Refman was not responding to something you wanted him to answer. Refman did respond to you query at <b>11-18-2002 10:42 PM</b>. A few weeks later, my query to you about Bangladesh and Kissinger is ignored. If Refman responding was important enough for you to repeatedly call for it..........it seems that you would be sure to extend the same courtesy to others when they pose a query to you. I understand the tactical advantage inherent in calling out others to respond to difficult queries posed by you and ignoring them when they are put to you. A nice trick if you can get away with it. Tactically great..............I can't think of anything else good to say about that method of posting.
Mango, did you read in my last post (in that thread) where I made the comment that I originally started that thread to be silly. I didn't know much about Kissinger before I started the thread... I know little more about him now (and I had hoped before I started the thread that my post (in MadMax's thread) on the idiocy of the media would be conveyed by only referencing two liberals). If you'd like to continue the conversation about Kissinger, I'd like to learn more about him. Perhaps you'd like to make a post/thread on the strategy in Bangladesh? If memory serves (it rarely does on little sleep) you also wanted to address Chile? Btw if I am gone for a while, it is because I have to crank out a paper in the next few days on a different topic (pop gen/mc1r variants). But I'll be reading.
Here's what Hitchens had to say in Harper's: BLOODBATH IN BANGLADESH Cyprus was not the first instance in which a perceived need to mollify China outweighed even the most minimal concern for human life elsewhere. On April 6, 1971, a cable of protest was written from the United States Consulate in what was then East Pakistan, the Bengali "wing" of the Muslim state of Pakistan, known to its restive nationalist inhabitants by the name Bangladesh. The cable's senior signatory, the consul general in Dhaka, was named Archer Blood, though it might have become known as the Blood Telegram in any case. Sent directly to Washington, its purpose was, quite simply, to denounce the complicity of the United States government in genocide. Its main section read: OUR GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO DENOUNCE THE SUPPRESSION OF DEMOCRACY. OUR GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO TAKE FORCEFUL MEASURES TO PROTECT ITS CITIZENS WHILE AT THE SAME TIME BENDING OVER BACKWARDS TO PLACATE THE WEST PAK[ISTAN] DOMINATED OVERNMENT. OUR GOVERNMENT HAS EVIDENCED WHAT MANY WILL CONSIDER MORAL BANKRUPTCY, IRONICALLY AT A TIME WHEN THE USSR SENT PRESIDENT YAHYA KHAN A MESSAGE DEFENDING DEMOCRACY, CONDEMNING THE ARREST OF A LEADER OF A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED MAJORITY PARTY. ... BUT WE HAVE CHOSEN NOT TO INTERVENE, EVEN MORALLY, ON THE GROUNDS THAT THE AWAMI CONFLICT, IN WHICH UNFORTUNATELY THE OVERWORKED TERM GENOCIDE IS APPLICABLE, IS PURELY AN INTERNAL MATTER OF A SOVEREIGN STATE. PRIVATE AMERICANS HAVE EXPRESSED DISGUST. WE, AS PROFESSIONAL PUBLIC SERVANTS, EXPRESS OUR DISSENT WITH CURRENT POLICY AND FERVENTLY HOPE THAT OUR TRUE AND LASTING INTERESTS HERE CAN BE DEFINED AND OUR POLICIES REDIRECTED.... [Italics added.] This was signed by twenty members of the United States' diplomatic equipe in Bangladesh and, on its arrival at the State Department, by a further nine senior officers in the South Asia division. It was the most public and the most strongly worded demarche, from State Department servants to the State Department, that has ever been recorded. The circumstances fully warranted the protest. In December 1970, the Pakistani military elite had permitted the first open elections in a decade. The vote was easily won by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Bengali-based Awami League, who gained a large overall majority in the proposed National Assembly. (In the East alone, it won 167 out of 169 seats.) This, among other things, meant a challenge to the political and military and economic hegemony of the Western "wing." The National Assembly had been scheduled to meet on March 3, 1971. On March 1, General Yahya Khan, head of the supposedly outgoing military regime, postponed its convening, which resulted in mass protests and nonviolent civil disobedience in the East. On March 25, 1971, the Pakistani army struck at the Bengali capital of Dhaka. Having arrested and kidnapped Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and taken him to West Pakistan, it set about massacring his supporters. The foreign press had been preemptively expelled from the city, but much of the direct evidence of what then happened was provided via a radio transmitter operated by the American consulate. Archer Blood himself supplied an account of one episode directly to the State Department and to Henry Kissinger's National Security Council. Having readied the ambush, Pakistani regular soldiers set fire to the women's dormitory at the university and then mowed the occupants down with machine guns as they sought to escape. (The guns, along with all the other weaponry, had been furnished under American military-assistance programs.) Other reports, since amply vindicated, were supplied to the London Times and Sunday Times by the courageous reporter Anthony Mascarenhas and flashed around a horrified world. Rape, murder, dismemberment, and the state murder of children were employed as deliberate methods of repression and intimidation. At least 10,000 civilians were butchered in the first three days. The eventual civilian death toll has never been placed at less than half a million and has been put as high as 3 million. Since almost all Hindu citizens were at risk by definition from Pakistani military chauvinism (not that Pakistan's Muslim co-religionists were spared), a vast movement of millions of refugees--perhaps as many as 10 million began to cross the Indian frontier. To summarize, then: first, the direct negation of a democratic election; second, the unleashing of a genocidal policy; third, the creation of a very dangerous international crisis. Within a short time, Ambassador Kenneth Keating, the ranking American diplomat in New Delhi, had added his voice to those of the dissenters. It was a time, he told Washington, when a principled stand against the authors of this aggression and atrocity would also make the best pragmatic sense. Keating, a former senator from New York, used a very suggestive phrase in his cable of March 29, 1971, calling on the administration to "PROMPTLY, PUBLICLY AND PROMINENTLY DEPLORE THIS BRUTALITY." It was "MOST IMPORTANT THESE ACTIONS BE TAKEN NOW," he warned, "PRIOR TO INEVITABLE AND IMMINENT EMERGENCE OF HORRIBLE TRUTHS." Nixon and Kissinger acted quickly. That is to say, Archer Blood was immediately recalled from his post, and Ambassador Keating was described by the president to Kissinger, with some contempt, as having been "taken over by the Indians." In late April 1971, at the very height of the mass murder, Kissinger sent a message to General Yahya Khan, thanking him for his "delicacy and tact." We now know of one reason why the general was so favored at a time when he had made himself--and his patrons--responsible for the grossest crimes against humanity. In April 1971, an American Ping-Pong team had accepted a surprise invitation to compete in Beijing, and by the end of that month, using the Pakistani ambassador as an intermediary, the Chinese authorities had forwarded a letter inviting Nixon to send an envoy. Thus there was one motive of realpolitik for the shame that Nixon and Kissinger were to visit on their own country for its complicity, in the extermination of the Bengalis. Those who like to plead realpolitik, however, might wish to consider some further circumstances. There already was, and had been for some time, a "back channel" between Washington and Beijing. It ran through Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania; not a decorative choice but not, at that stage, a positively criminal one. To a serious person like Chou En-Lai, there was no reason to confine approaches to the narrow channel afforded by a blood-soaked (and short-lived, as it turned out) despot like the delicate and tactful Yahya Khan. Either Chou En-Lai wanted contact, in other words, or he did not. As Lawrence Lifschultz, the primary historian of this period, has put it: Winston Lord, Kissinger's deputy at the National Security Council, stressed to investigators the internal rationalization developed within the upper echelons of the Administration. Lord told [the staff of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace], "We had to demonstrate to China we were a reliable government to deal with. We had to show China that we respect a mutual friend." How, after two decades of belligerent animosity with the People's Republic, mere support for Pakistan in its bloody civil war was supposed to demonstrate to China that the U.S. "was a reliable government to deal with" was a mystifying proposition which more cynical observers of the events, both in and outside the U.S. government, consider to have been an excuse justifying the simple convenience of the Islamabad link--a link which Washington had no overriding desire to shift. Second, the knowledge of this secret diplomacy and its accompanying privileges obviously freed the Pakistani general of such restraints as might have inhibited him. He told his closest associates, including his minister of communications, G. W. Choudhury, that his private understanding with Washington and Beijing would protect him. Choudhury later wrote, "If Nixon and Kissinger had not given him that false hope, he'd have been more realistic." Thus the collusion with him in the matter of China increases the direct complicity of Nixon and Kissinger in the massacres. Only a reopened congressional inquiry with subpoena power could determine whether there was any direct connection, apart from the self-evident ones of consistent statecraft attested by recurring and reliable testimony, between the secret genocidal diplomacy of 1971 and the secret destabilizing diplomacy of 1975. The task of disproving such a connection, meanwhile, would appear to rest on those who believe that everything is an accident.
rimrocker, In 1947, there was the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India with a composite religious population with a Hindu majority (85%?) and Pakistan with a Muslim majority of roughly 95%. The death toll figures and population transfer during the spring - summer of 1947 was roughly the same or perhaps a bit higher than the Bangaldesh - Pakistan Civil War of 1971. I have done repeated searches at <i>Google</i> with various combinations of <b>Secretary + State + Marshall + India + Pakistan + partittion + condemnation + 1947</b> and have not found a citation of Marshall coming out publicly against the carnage there. Even if there would be a condemnation, would that have stopped the bloodshed? Marshall was one of the more notable Secretaries of State and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Marshall Plan. Marshall was working on the formulation of the Marshall Plan during the spring - summer of 1947 while the mayhem happened on the Indian Subcontinent. <A HREF="http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1953/">The Nobel Peace Prize 1953</A> In regards to U.S. weapons being used..........Democratic Administrations prior to the Nixon Presidency had been selling weapons to Pakistan. <a HREF="http://www.cfr.org/background/background_pakistan.php">http://www.cfr.org/background/background_pakistan.php</A> <i>...........<b>Has the United States had good relations with Pakistan in the past?</b> At times. After Pakistan was created in 1947, the United States began providing the fledgling state with military and economic assistance. Relations between the countries improved further with Pakistan’s participation in the 1955 Baghdad Pact, a U.S.-backed security agreement designed to block Soviet expansion into the Middle East. When Pakistan and India went to war in 1965, however, the United States suspended military aid to both countries. Washington restarted arms sales with Pakistan in 1975 on the grounds that it made a more attractive ally than India, which was viewed in Washington as being too closely connected to the Soviet Union...........</i> In spring - summer of 1994, there was violence/war/genocide in Rwanda. <A HREF="http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-04.htm">Numbers</A> <i>..........Although our research indicates considerable killing of civilians by RPF forces during this period, including massacres and executions, we have too little data to confirm or revise these estimates. In any case, they appear more likely to be accurate than claims that the RPF killed hundreds of thousands of people from April to August 1994.</i> Accounts of U.S. action and inaction in regards to the events in Rwanda that reflect badly on Warren Christopher and the U.s. State Department. <A HREF="http://mediafilter.org/CAQ/CAQ52Rw4.html">U.S. Fiddles While Rwanda Burns</A> <A HREF="http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/rwan0108.htm">Rwanda: Bystanders to Genocide</A> In the late 1990's, there was war in Congo with various countries and factions participating in the bloodshed. <a HREF="http://www.peacelink.it/users/bukavu/rs/CON5_1.html">Chirac's Congo 'Peace' Has Little Chance</A> <i>..............However, having prevented the fall of Kinshasa in the early stages of the war, Angola now seems more interested in keeping central Congo's diamonds out of Unita's hands than in joining Zimbabwe's assault. Angolan and Rwandan troops have yet to clash in the eastern Kivu region. But Rwanda has a problem with its donors, on whom the still impoverished country is relying to bridge the yawning gap between its meagre export earnings and hefty import requirements. Both the British and United States governments, Rwanda's two main international backers, were angered by Rwanda's three month-long denial of its presence in Congo, only broken in early November by Kagame at a press conference with President Nelson Mandela. Rwandan officials concede the damage done to their government's credibility by its stubborn denial, but insist that it was necessary in order to force the world's recognition of significant internal as well as external opposition to Kabila's rule. However plausible they considered the justification for the incursion and its cover-up, donors regard Rwanda's presence in Congo as illegal under international law. <b>Nonetheless, the donors appear to have agreed to withhold public condemnation for now in order to give forthcoming talks in Lusaka in early December a chance of success..........</b></i> <A HREF="http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/africa/06/21/congo.killing.fields/">Aid group estimates war-related death toll in east Congo at 2 million</A> The Secretarty of State Albright might have spoken out against the violence..............but the killing continued. There are other foreign conflicts that have occured under Democratic Administrations during the post WW II period such as Nigeria - Biafra 1967-70. <A HREF="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/biafra.htm">Biafra War</A> <b> I fail to see how Kissinger - Bangladesh in 1971 was unique after examing the various events that were allowed to happen under Democratic Administrations post WW II. If one wishes to criticize Kissinger, do it for events, actions and specific performances that were totally beyond the levels displayed by Democratic Secretaries of State. </b> Perhaps the death toll the world suffered from WW II could have been lessened if the U.S. had been less isolated and had a more involved foreign policy prior to Dec 7, 1941. That is the subject for another thread. A nice link for further analysis. <A HREF="http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm">Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century</A> In closing, it appears that <i>condemnation</i> and other words don't always check the violence and hatred amongst conflicting groups. Intervention in various civil wars and even international conflicts is something that the U.S doesn't always do whether a Democrat or Republican is President. There will always be a moral struggle in deciding to intervene with force or just <i>condem</i> despicable events throughout the world. Thanks for responding.
I agree with your conclusion. Sometimes we are bound by internal or external politic pressures, othertimes by realpolitick considerations, xenophobia, or irrational anti-communism. There's no doubt that since WWI in particular, we have had multi-generational multi-party failures in our foreign policy and there have been times when no matter how strong we thought we were, we were incapable of making a big difference. I think a lot of Kissinger critics look at it as a cumulative problem--meddling in several countries, undercutting self-government and American principles abroad, lying to congress, etc. I fully admit I don't know enough about the particulars of foreign policy in the last 50-60 years to fully engage you, but I don't think we disagree about the big picture greatly. With Kissinger, perhaps it is a matter of degree rather than extraordinary actions.
Rimrocker, The thing about the article that caught my attention was the mention of the misery in Bangladesh and use of that as part of the criteria to find fault with Kissinger. If one desires to grade poorly, writeup or even terminate an employee; criteria is used that demonstrates marked differences between that employee and the rest of the group that is deemed acceptable. If that person is producing 25 widgets @ day and the rest of the group is at the same performance level, then it would be unwise to use low productivity as part of the negative employee assessment. The same method would be used in regards to attendance, tardiness etc. Will be back to this topic later.
