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Henry Kissinger "Regrets"
That is, he regrets the intrusion of moral questions into professional matters best conducted by wise men like himself; regrets, in other words, that human beings everywhere consider him to have conducted himself barbarously in prosecuting the Vietnam war with reckless disregard for human life and health.
According to HuffPost, Kissinger said in Washington this week that
he regretted that what should have been straightforward disagreements over the U.S. approach to Vietnam became transmuted into a moral issue - first about the moral adequacy of American foreign policy altogether and then into the moral adequacy of America."
Next, I suppose that Kissinger "regretted" that irritating way in which the sun keeps rising in the east.
The HuffPost reporter scrambles over Kissinger's typical evasion. Consistently, tenaciously, for forty years, Kissinger has insisted that it would be unseemly to judge his policies--policies that cost the lives of (at least) hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia--as morally debased. And he has done so without losing his wise man status in the eyes of official Washington.Comments
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72 Comments so far
Show AllScum. Ugly on the inside, ugly on the outside. Murderer.
Kissinger is nothing but a very evil,fascist war criminal and would have been comfortable in Hitlers Nazi Third Reich, and if he had been; he would have been convicted at Nuremberg for war crimes. The fact that he has not lost his "wise man" status in the eyes of official Washington Deceit, tells you all you need to know about how endemic is the corruption there!
Well said. One of the worst mass murderers in history reflects the fascist amerikan empire, and those war criminals who have followed him !
Henry Kissinger's greatest regret should be that he was ever born. His end could come any day now. Unlike Robert McNamara, he will not make a public spectacle of his last days and try to get right with God. Kissinger will revel being in the Inner Ring of hell with blood brothers like Stalin and Pol Pot . . . until, that is, the latter puts a plastic bag over his head and seals it with duct tape. Have a good ride, Heinz.
Why? He gets all the chicks. I'm old enough to remember all the adulation - his sepulchral voice, his authority, his command presence, his (hold on to something) sex appeal - power=sex appeal, no matter how closely he resembles a Cane Toad, physically and morally.
(My apologies to fine, upstanding Cane Toads everywhere).
Just shows you - evil is an ecumenical, equal-opportunity phenomenon.
His alleged "sex-appeal" is not universal. Take a good look at the people he attracts and ask yourself, would you want them?
Barbara Streisand?
TRYLON: I seem to remember Kissinger dating Barbara Walters, but I have no recollection of any tie to Barbra Streisand. (She spells her name Barbra.) Can you supply any link to back up this assertion?
Redballoon, as much as I'd hate to let the air out of a good laugh, I heard back in the early '80s that Kissinger hired a PR flack to spread that 'sex appeal' guff. Sure, he dated a few starlets, like Susan St. James, but most of them were apparently as creeped out by the nasty Old Codpiece as the general public. These were 'dates' arranged by press agents for the purpose of goosing up some publicity for each of the 'lovers' -- they were as authentic as the dates Rock Hudson went on with Hollywood starlets in the '50s.
Is nothing sacred?
;-)
Wow, what an icky night that must have been for Susan et al. ooo-yuk!
I always thought that saying of Kissinger, "Power is the greatest aphrodisiac", sounded contrived.
Translation: "I gotta use power, as I've got nothing else."
LOL -- Kissinger probably invented that phrase!;) Like Karl Rove, Kissinger was kind of a pathetic, rejected little man before he attained some power of the type where he could work out his vengeful psychosis on the world. So were each of their bosses, Bush Junior and Nixon, respectively. Kissinger apparently thought he was Nixon's 'brain,' at least on foreign policy.
I think you mean Jill St. John.
See: http://bit.ly/aG97rs
Right heaven, wrong saint! ;)
I stand corrected. Thanks, OS -- it was Jill St. John.
Personally, I hope that "Uncle" Pol Pot ties Hank to a post, shoves a gasoline-soaked rag down his throat and then lights it (another common Khmer Rouge prank).
"...that despite (or rather, because of) all that he did, Kissinger retains "his wise man status in the eyes of official Washington." –(RichM)
Yes.
It is not in the least bit cynical to understand that Kissinger's continued eminence among the Washington elite is strictly because of what he did: Applied, extreme evil administered with a leer.
There are no 'nuanced equivocations' offered. There are no 'explanations' necessary. There are no 'misgivings.' There are no 'crimes.' There are no 'consequences.' Certainly no apologies.
Henry Kissinger is a great American. His birthday should be feted as a national Holiday. Nothing would be more appropriate.Holding a mirror up to America itself.
Kill one person you are a murderer.
Kill 15 people at once you are a mass murderer.
Kill 15 people over a series of years you are a serial killer.
Kill a million or more people you are a National Hero.
Strange world we inhabit...
Stalin once said, "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic."
I bet that Kissinger wishes that he had made it up himself.
Rich M, these are the same people who think dopey out-of-it jughead David Broder knows what he's talking about and that George 'Eff' Will is an expert on climate change. As a rule of thumb, whoever they admire is a fraud and whoever they condemn is worthy of admiration. If only they were all born chalk-white and blocky so that we could easily spot them in a crowd.
'George Will'
I used to subscribe to NEWSWEEK, often writing the editors to get rid of this moron. This self-aggrandized pseudo-intellectual is so totally repulsive that I’ve wondered why he was never called to be a 'Republican leader'.
When my subscription ran out, the magazine continued, of course, to send me re-subscription offers. The final one was something like $15 for three years.
No way.
It's amazing Will has held his columnist job all these years after it was revealed he posed as an 'objective' observer of the 1980 presidential campaign while secretly acting as a debate coach for Ronald Reagan without disclosing that fact to his readers. At one time, that would be the kind of thing that would get you fired immediately, but times have changed. If I want to know what the nation was thinking ten years ago, I turn to a current copy of Newsweek; a shame so many trees die to provide such worthless content.
This hardly seems worth posting as Gitlin has written something without any substance whatsoever. In fact, it is shorter than most comments on articles in Common Dreams. How puzzling. There is a very long article, yet to be written, on the very long career of Kissinger. Indeed, a perhaps more interesting article might go into Kissinger & Associates' players like L. Paul Bremer, as seen here on 9/11/01--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2pW6WZhZrQ
I agree with your comments about Gitlin. He, like Kissinger, long ago lost his own moral compass. Ho hum. There's something painfully tedious about most of the comments here. Gitlin just spit on Kissinger's name and most of the commentators followed suit. Very lame.
So is your premise Rich that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. That there is no difference between the way the Tea Party candidates would/will govern, and the way the Dems govern? That there are even no differences in the Democratic party between a Ben Nelson and a Bernie Sanders?
Common Dreams will be an interesting place when the Reps win the House of Reps in November.
As for Kissinger, people should hound him to his grave. Although the Daniel Ellsberg doc that came out last year makes it clear that Nixon was an even worse human being, if that were possible.
Tramaker, slight correction: Bernie Sanders is an independent, but he does caucus with the Dems. However, there is certainly a notable difference between Russ Feingold and Al Franken and, say, Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions. It would be nice if all of the Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson, and their enablers, like Harry Reid, were voted out of office in favor of more progressive Dems, but I don't see that happening. I think we're just going to have to ride this roller coaster to the bottom, since the banks and Wall Street are sure to meltdown again (they haven't changed their sleazy practices) and there will be no money to bail them out again. At the time of that massive collapse of ruthless global 'welfare' capitalism, we'll have to hope there is enough left of our country to elect true progressives, and maybe even some honest and conscientious conservatives, to office. But that's a big 'hope.'
Ah, yes. Paul Bremer
These corporate lackeys like to broadcast what they do to defraud us in public (in code). It's a game with them sort of like the verbal sneer of a gangster. When combat boots Bremer came back from he Iraq he said he was going to take a class in COOKING. I think he was talking past tense and the subject was 'books', not food (and he probably taught the class)... So many billions missing in Iraq. Geez, where did they go? Rumsfield didn't know...
And those numbers about Nam are too low. I read 4 million Vietnamese killed some time ago.
Henry is probably very grateful to the supreme corporate court for turning down the lawsuit of deformed victims of agent orange from Viet Nam.
I'm sure the lady who is the new Brazilian leader remembers Kissinger quite well. I don't think Henry will go anywhere near Brazil. People who got tortured during the operation Condor years have long memories.
The more or less official death toll of Vietnamese by the U.S. government states that about 1,200,000 Vietnamese died in the American War. The War Museum in Hanoi claims that more than 3,000,0000 were killed. No one will ever really know but for a nation of less than 20 million the death rate was horrific.
exactlt...and really, caused by the meddling of the USA.
and to think:
Americans BLARE all over the globe ....
"9/11, 9/11, 9/11 , 9/11......!!!!!!! DAMMIT WE WERE ATTACKED....9/11"
americans have a GREAT CONSCIENCE.....for 3,000 dead ONLY..oh , how they pray in the churches and to "bless and protect our TROOPS".....
but DON"T recall, for some reason, that THOSE TROOPS are the CAUSE of MILLIONS OF vietnamese, iraqis, afghans, pakistanis, iranians, south americans, etc.....
Suffered and Dead with the NOT SO INVISIBLE hand of the U S A...
they don't NOTICE that the only difference between the Terrorist that plunged 9/11 into chaos and horror and the AMERICAN ARMY and TROOPS are UNIFORMS ...but they are all of them MURDERERS...where the USA Grand Army has caused more death and destruction in the name of "saving" democracy and AVOIDING "death and destruction"...
EXCEPTIONAL in the hypocrisy. of that, there is NO question.
Hmmm, I thought there was a renewed interest in prosecuting "war criminals" recently. I guess the new definition of "war criminal" is "somebody who's p*ssed-off US business interests overseas". This fits right in with Obama's Peace Prize.
As a Mafia-connected pimp in New York once told me, back in 1969: "Morals? The rich don't need'em, and the poor can't afford'em."
It's a topsy-turvy world indeed, when a festering, stinking putule like Kissinger still commands respect. Reduces Obama's "soaring rhetoric" to vacuous, cliche-riddled pap from a high school debating team.
BTW, for those interested: George Galloway will be speaking in Toronto today, at Trinity-St.Paul's Church - he made it back! Yes! go to rabble.ca at 3:00pm EDT. Now, he offers real soaring rhetoric!
If you haven't already, read USMC Gen. Smedley Butler's revealing speech from 1933 on how he was used, in his official capacity as a Marine, as a 'high-class thug' for wealthy corporations.
Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1933 "War is a Racket" speech:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
Unfortunately, the sacrifice of American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan for higher profits for the rich is nothing new.
America has produced so many warless heroes recently: Shrub (‘stuffed-sock’) Bush, Michael Chertoff, Heartless ('Heroic Hunter') Cheney, Ronald Reagan, Paul Wolfowitz, John Wayne, Donald Rumsfeld, Joe Lieberman, Tom Ridge, Joshua Bolten, John Ashcroft, the Reverends Graham Cracker, Spencer Abraham, John Roberts, Tony Scales, Sammy the Fish, John Wayne, Spiderman, Ronald Reagan, John Negroponte, Richard Pearle, Newt Gingrich, Donald Duck, Rudy Giuliani, Rupert Murdock, Rush Limbaugh, The Big O, Glenn Beck, Jerry Falwell, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, Ralph Reed –the list goes on – a partial list of those who helped keep us safe in these perilous times (I have to stop for now; what’s with this thousand-word limit anyhow?)
“On the other hand, USMC Major General Smedley Butler is one of 19 people to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.”
—courtesy Wikipedia
Who are these people who support war? And why?
When Then, I've met few combat veterans who want or like war. It's always the deluded glorifiers and courageous desk jockeys who want to 'fight the good fight' as long as they are at a safe distance from the blood and death. It's telling that Dan Quayle and Junior Bush were both pro-Vietnam War while they, and their well-connected Daddys, were actively doing what they could to make sure they would never serve in it.
==Kissinger said in Washington this week that =he regretted that what should have been straightforward disagreements over the U.S. approach to Vietnam became transmuted into a moral issue - first about the moral adequacy of American foreign policy altogether and then into the moral adequacy of America.= ==
Up on Baffin Island, resister geezers won't whether to laugh, cry, or shit and go blind.
How about the overthrow of Salvador Allende, Mr. Kissinger? That's was Chile's 9/11.
Lets not forget about East Timor losing 1 out of every 3 people to the Indonesian Military, Armed with our guns and Helicopters which was also A Kissinger engagement....Kissinger and Ford told Sukarno to hold off on the invasion until their plane had left IndonesiaN AIRSPACE and was airborne for at least AN HOUR OR TWO...There was blood spilled anywhere and everywhere that BASTARD cast A shadow...
A disgusting piece of humanity unfit to share the air that we breathe. To be considered a " wise man " by any except those of his equally evil peers is unthinkable. I hope, as with many others, he rots in hell for the damage he has done.
I Don't hope that
I would prefer he is reincarnated again and again as one of those Iraqi children with horrible birth defects that have been popping up all over there due to depleted Uranium.
in other words:
He regrets that the world sees him and america for what they are :
MORAL CRETINS...
and that the world sees them the way Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. SAW , during Mister Kissinger's rule:
"WE ARE A NATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC GIANTS and MORAL and INTELLECTUAL MIDGETS".
and that sums up , with all the TRUTH that it exposed that americans could not REALLY tolerate, is WHY Reverend King died. he died, truly, because he SPOKE TRUTH, not just
"ABOUT our government - the greatest purveyor of violence in the world"
but in a larger sense - because he spoke about AMERICA ITSELF.
and TRUE TO FORM -- since the day he said that and died.....America, "government and people" "united" , one way or another, one degree or another removed . but UNITED, nevertheless....
OBLIGED!!! and CONFIRMED what the greatest american of modern times said.
Kissinger is a war criminal, I don't f'in care what he thinks. I guess it is our popular (corporate) culture to worship war criminals: GWB, Cheney, Kissinger, Obama...
EXACTLY , socialist:
your words Sum it up, it reflects what Reverend king said when he said "WE"
"our popular culture" . WE. this is no longer or ever was only about arguments on "who is the culprit" , or even "which class"...
it is really about "WE"....and that is americans as a people, no matter HOW they got to be like that -- that TOLERATES American CapitalisT EMPIRE.
if anything - americans as a people DEFINE THEMSELVES THROUGH Empire. ..whether or not they admit to it. IF their empire wasn't CAUSING them so much distress , and instead ENRICHING every single family , imo, americans would NOT BAT an eyelash at CALLING themselves an EMPIRE - with flags waving. ..EVEN as they see the SAME things elsewhere:
impoverishment of other countries to "build this empire project of ours" (john perkins, former CIA "economic hitman").
I do NOT believe what JOhn Perkins said qualifingly:
"IF AMERICANS really saw what we are doing..they would not tolerate it".
on the contrary, my opinion is, SO LONG as americans did NOT have to FEEL the pinch of their imperial overreach - they WOULD tolerate it.
"WHAT MOST AMERICANS DO NOT REALIZE OR ADMIT IS: WE ARE AN EMPIRE...THE MOST SUCCESSFUL IN HISTORY...AND WE HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH BUILDING THIS EMPIRE THROUGH TORTURE, ASSASSINATIONS, COVERT AND OVERT WARS, BLACKMAIL, MANIPULATION AND PLAIN THEFT OF THE RESOURCES OF OTHER COUNTRIES...AND THAT WE ARE LIVING OUR LIFESTYLES ...ONLY BECAUSE IT IS PART OF A VERY, VERY VICIOUS SYSTEM OF EXPLOITATION THAT DEHUMANIZES AND ENSLAVES OTHERS".
my opinion is:
if americans "realized" this - but did NOT have to pay a price in their pocketbooks, they WOULD tolerate it and justify it with orwellian language, no different from being largely silent about torture as "enhanced interrogation". or impoverishment of other nations as "that's because they are not as hardworking as US".
it would be the way, as it is already even with the price being paid , the SAME WAY, either way, in "prosperity" or "blight" , that americans as a people would CHOOSE to justify "empire".
I guess - HAVE become very skeptical , after all these years, because I do not see, simply do NOT, a popular, general attitude or movement among americans to correct it.
the ONLY CONCLUSION I can make is :
knowingly or not, in some distant back of the mind consciousness, americans CHOOSE IT.
teddy - does the word 'brevity' have any meaning for you?
Your post is longer than tha article itself.
"Bad ideas usually result in bloodshed, but usually it is the blood of others that is shed. That is why some of our thinkers will say anything."
- Albert Camus -
Henry Kissinger, an unrepentant war criminal, should just die. Millions of lives were lost, and many people continue to experience undo suffering as a result of the bad ideas of Kissinger, McNamara, and their ilk. Interment in Hell for eternity, even if I actually believed in a Hell, would not be a sufficient punishment for Kissinger.
Sure, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he can pretend he's another sorry clown. I suppose we'll be seeing that from Obama in 2013, no?
maxpayne:
I forgot about that Oxymoron...
"Two Nobel Laureates have declined the Nobel Prize!
Jean-Paul Sartre, awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, declined the prize because he had consistently declined all official honours".
"Le Duc Tho, awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. They were awarded the Prize for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord. Le Doc Tho said that he was not in a position to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, citing the situation in Vietnam as his reason".
Looks as though Le Doc Tho shamed Kissinger, but Henry just couldn't walk away without the "Prize".
When peace finally came with our troop withdrawal, Henry's motive was not really for peace at all, but It was cheap political strategy to screw George McGovern out of the bid for the presidency with the re-election of Nixon...
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/nobelprize_facts.html
Thanks for the info stubones. That sure goes to show the decline in value of the Nobel "Peace" Prize.
Had the Jersey Girls not raised an ever loving STINK when GWB named Kissinger to head the 9/11 Commission, imagine the outcome??!
(As if it wasn't bad enough with Zelikow! Even Hamilton and Keane said the investigation was "obstructed".)
Yes, when Henry was asked by the Jersey Girls if his "Company" had any business dealings with the Bin Laden Family he about fell off of the couch and slinked out of the room...
It's slunk, rhymes with skunk.
Onw would have thought that the 9/11 Commission, assuming it had been a real investigation, which it was not (http://www.amazon.com/11-Commission-Report-Omissions-Distortions/dp/1566565847), might have asked GWB if he and his family had business dealings with the BL family?