Hillary: Kissinger Stands Up for American Values [View all]

[markpkessinger]

I have no words for this. Is this really who we want to field in 2016? Aaargh!

[font size=5]Hillary Clinton Praises a Guy With Lots of Blood on His Hands[/font]
[font size=3]In lauding Henry Kissinger, the possible Democratic presidential nominee goes far beyond her usual hawkish rhetoric.[/font]
—By David Corn | Fri Sep. 5, 2014 1:44 PM EDT

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Sure, perhaps there is secretary's privilege—an old boy and girls club, in which the ex-foreign-policy chiefs do not speak ill of each other and try to help out the person presently in the post. Nothing wrong with that. But former-Madam Secretary Clinton had no obligation to praise Kissinger and publicly participate in his decades-long mission to rehabilitate his image. In the review, she calls Kissinger a "friend" and reports, "I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels." She does add that she and Henry "have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past." But here's the kicker: At the end of the review, she notes that Kissinger is "surprisingly idealistic":

Even when there are tensions between our values and other objectives, America, he reminds us, succeeds by standing up for our values, not shirking them, and leads by engaging peoples and societies, the sources of legitimacy, not governments alone.

Kissinger reminds us that America succeeds by standing up for its values? Did she inhale?

Corn goes on to remind us of the "values" Kissinger upheld in places like Chile, Argentina, East Timor, Cambodia and Bangladesh. He continues:

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And there's more. Kissinger's mendacity has been chronicled for years. See Gary Bass' recent and damning book on the Bangladesh tragedy, The Blood Telegram. There's Seymour Hersh's classic, The Price of Power. In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens presented the case against Kissinger in his full polemical style. As secretary of state, Kissinger made common cause with—and encouraged—tyrants who repressed and massacred many. He did not serve the American values of democracy, free expression, and human rights. He shredded them.

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