Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died, his consulting firm says. He was 100. Kissinger dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China.
  • mhague@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    I feel bad about being pro war after 9/11 even if I was a kid. It was because people like me that ‘unpatriotic’ voices were drowned out, that the feeling of “we need to do something” overwhelmed our institutions. It wasn’t because Bush et al lied about WMDs. It was because we yearned for retribution.

    Most people seem incapable of accepting responsibility for their governments actions, even when they were on the ‘winning side’, even if they contributed to the inertia. It easy to just blame the elites. I honestly don’t know how different the narrative around Kissinger is compared to post 9/11 Bush, but if it rhymes just a little then it makes sense why he’s blamed for so much. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the Killing Fields.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    With his gruff yet commanding presence and behind-the-scenes manipulation of power, Kissinger exerted uncommon influence on global affairs under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize.

    A Jew who fled Nazi Germany with his family in his teens, Kissinger in his later years cultivated the reputation of respected statesman, giving speeches, offering advice to Republicans and Democrats alike and managing a global consulting business.

    For eight restless years — first as national security adviser, later as secretary of state, and for a time in the middle holding both titles — Kissinger ranged across the breadth of major foreign policy issues.

    He was denounced on college campuses for the bombing and allied invasion of Cambodia in April 1970, intended to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to communist forces in South Vietnam.

    Kissinger, for his part, made it his mission to debunk what he referred to in 2007 as a “prevalent myth” — that he and Nixon had settled in 1972 for peace terms that had been available in 1969 and thus had needlessly prolonged the Vietnam War at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.

    He was still a lightning rod decades later: In 2015, an appearance by the 91-year-old Kissinger before the Senate Armed Services Committee was disrupted by protesters demanding his arrest for war crimes and calling out his actions in Southeast Asia, Chile and beyond.

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