Kissinger Is Not Our Friend

By Engler, Mark New Internationalist, October 2016

Kissinger Is Not Our Friend

Engler, Mark, New Internationalist

If there's a living symbol of the United States' inability to reckon with its disastrous
history of military adventurism and embrace of undemocratic regimes, it's Henry
Kissinger. Unfortunately, his influence in Washington has proven exceptionally sticky.

Although rare, it's not unprecedented for the US government to acknowledge some of
its most undeniable foreign-policy catastrophes. During a 1999 trip to Guatemala,
then-President Bill Clinton apologized for the US's role in that country's genocide in
the 1980s, expressing remorse over 'support for military forces' which 'engaged in
violent and widespread repression'. Likewise, travelling in the Middle East at the
beginning of his first term, President Obama delicately suggested of America, 'We
sometimes make mistakes.' Conservatives were outraged.

The preferred posture in imperial Washington is to refuse to learn from the past, and
hence to repeat it. So maybe it's not surprising that many leading US boosters of
Reagan-era death-squad governments in Central America (figures such as Elliott
Abrams and John Negroponte) returned to serve again under George W Bush.

But none of these henchmen has racked up as many war crimes - nor accumulated as
much official esteem - as Kissinger.
The former secretary of state and national security advisor's sordid professional
history is familiar to many New Internationalist readers: for starters, Kissinger was
architect of the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia in the 1970s. He then
provided US cover for campaigns of mass murder in Bangladesh and Timor Leste. All
told, millions perished.

Today, Kissinger remains entirely unrepentant, even as further evidence of his crimes
accumulates.

This August, newly declassified memos added to the paper trail showing that
Kissinger not only knew about Argentina's 'Dirty War', but actively cheered it on. The
notorious campaign of abduction and torture led to the deaths of some 30,000 people,
including trade unionists, students, human rights advocates and religious activists.
Amid the horror, Kissinger recommended tens of millions of dollars in expedited US
'security assistance'.

One new document shows that, in 1978, the US Ambassador to Argentina sent a cable
to Washington expressing concern about Kissinger's unrestrained praise for the
country's bloody military government: 'There is some danger that Argentines may use
Kissinger's laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights
stance,' the ambassador warned.

All this is a problem for Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic candidate has called Kissinger 'a friend', praised his 'astute
observations', and stated that she 'relied on his counsel' during her tenure as secretary
of state. Hillary and husband Bill have regularly spent their winter holidays in the
Dominican Republic, at the villa of fashion designer Oscar De La Renta, with an
exclusive group that also included... you guessed it... Kissinger and his wife.
During the Democratic presidential primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders denounced this
disturbingly cosy relationship: 'I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my
friend,' Sanders remarked. 'I happen to believe that [he] was one of the most
destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.'

Apparently unchastened by this high-profile exchange, Clinton was reportedly seeking

Kissinger's endorsement for her campaign just days before the new documents were
declassified this summer.

Clinton has shown that she can be susceptible to grassroots pressure on foreign policy:
she admitted that her vote to authorize the Iraq war was 'a mistake', and she has
flipped, at least temporarily, on her support for the Trans- Pacific Partnership. But her
consistently hawkish posturing and her handling of incidents such as the 2009 coup in
Honduras have suggested that the tenets of Kissingerism - particularly a championing
of the National Security State and willingness to sanction undemocratic manoeuvres
abroad - would remain alive and well should pressure on her prospective
administration lag.

Bernie got it right, and his sentiment should speak for all who care about democracy
and human dignity: Kissinger is not our friend. And he shouldn't be hers, either.

[Sidebar]

Bosom buddies: Hillary Clinton's cosy relationship with Henry Kissinger is nothing to
laugh about.

[Author Affiliation]
Mark Engler's new book is entitled This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is
Shaping the Twenty-first Century (Nation Books). He can be reached via the website
DemocracyUprising.com.

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication information: Article title: Kissinger Is Not Our Friend. Contributors: Engler, Mark - Author. Magazine title: New Internationalist.
Issue: 496 Publication date: October 2016. Page number: 12. © New Internationalist Magazine. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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