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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Keeps Honoring One of Its Worst Mass Murderers: Henry Kissinger
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/america-keeps-honoring-one-its-worst-mass-murderers-henry-kissingerApril 16, 2013 |
AlterNet / By Fred Branfman
America Keeps Honoring One of Its Worst Mass Murderers: Henry Kissinger
Including ten quotes that illustrate his megalomania and indifference to the deaths of untold numbers of civilians.
Henry Kissinger's quote recently released by Wikileaks," the illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer", likely brought a smile to his legions of elite media, government, corporate and high society admirers. Oh that Henry! That rapier wit! That trademark insouciance! That naughtiness! It is unlikely, however, that the descendants of his more than 6 million victims in Indochina, and Americans of conscience appalled by his murder of non-Americans, will share in the amusement. For his illegal and unconstitutional actions had real-world consequences: the ruined lives of millions of Indochinese innocents in a new form of secret, automated, amoral U.S. Executive warfare which haunts the world until today.
And his conduct raises even more fundamental questions: to what extent can leaders who act secretly ,illegally and unconstitutionally, lying to their citizenry and legislature as a matter of course, legitimately claim to represent their people? How much allegiance do citizens owe such leaders? And what does it say about Americas elites that they have honored a man with so much innocent blood on his hands for the past 40 years?
Mr. Kissinger's most significant historical act was executing Richard Nixon's orders to conduct the most massive bombing campaign, largely of civilian targets, in world history. He dropped 3.7 million tons of bombs** between January 1969 and January 1973 - nearly twice the two million dropped on all of Europe and the Pacific in World War II. He secretly and illegally devastated villages throughout areas of Cambodia inhabited by a U.S. Embassy-estimated two million people; quadrupled the bombing of Laos and laid waste to the 700-year old civilization on the Plain of Jars; and struck civilian targets throughout North Vietnam - Haiphong harbor, dikes, cities, Bach Mai Hospital - which even Lyndon Johnson had avoided. His aerial slaughter helped kill, wound or make homeless an officially-estimated six million human beings**, mostly civilians who posed no threat whatsoever to U.S. national security and had committed no offense against it.
There is a word for the aerial mass murder that Henry Kissinger committed in Indochina, and that word is evil. The figure most identified with this word today is Adolph Hitler, and his evil was so unspeakable that the term is by now identified with him. But that is precisely why it is important to understand the new face of evil and moral depravity that Henry Kissinger represents. For evil not only comes in the form of madmen dreaming of 1000 year Reichs. In fact, in our day, it is more likely to be committed by sane, genial and ordinary careerists waging invisible automated war in far-off lands against people whose screams we never hear, whose faces we never see, and whose deaths go unrecorded and unnoticed. It is critical to understand this new face of evil, for it threatens not only countless foreigners but Americans in coming years. And no one has embodied it more than Henry Kissinger.
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randys1
(16,286 posts)we are a badly, severely broken and immoral society
all of our immorality comes from wall street, religious right and the oligarchs
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)leftstreet
(36,103 posts)...The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry Kissinger, from March 10, 1975 Meeting With Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey
What a fucking waste of carbon
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)So it doesn't keep fucking happening.
alterfurz
(2,473 posts)"He does not lie for an advantage, he lies because it is part of his character."
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)The American Aristocracy.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Legitimize Torture and reward war criminals
We never did that before. ''We tortured some folks'' but do nothing about it. Is not a sign of a healthy society.
The middle is not holding and the rich keep getting richer is not the sign of a healthy society
The oil companies are helping humans to destroy this planet is not the sign of a healthy society
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower, first inaugural address, 20 January 1953
We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability and dignity
Is not the sign of a healthy society
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)valerief
(53,235 posts)malaise
(268,890 posts)That's my line for all the war criminal Kissinger's fans.
Kissinger is beyond evil.
Tikki
(14,556 posts)beck and call.
Writers and artists and musicians lost their lives simply because they held a place of honor
and connected with the people.
https://www.facebook.com/CambodianRock
kissinger, rot in hell...
Tikki
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)and hanged or jailed for life 40 years ago. A monster in human form and, apparently, HRC's new BFF, Sickening.
PatSeg
(47,370 posts)We could do a whole thread of vile Kissinger quotes.
Uncle Joe
(58,342 posts)Thanks for the thread, Karmadillo.
hibbing
(10,095 posts)Have to give the war criminal his proper title. Another one the corporate media gets a hard on about if he happens to grace their presence. Just like Dr. Rice.
Peace
Scuba
(53,475 posts)RandiFan1290
(6,229 posts)The money is gone and the bodies have long rotted away. Can't we just look into each others eyes, cut taxes for the rich, clear the "table", and move forward?