DAILY TRIFECTA: Kissinger's Handiwork
Who bleeds for dying Bengalis?
TITLE: Henry Kissinger, Colossus on the World Stage
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-obituary-cambodia-war-crimes-secretary-of-state/
EXCERPT: In the view of some biographers, Kissinger ranks in stature with George Kennan, the principal author of America’s successful Cold War containment strategy, as well as with other hallowed architects of the post-World War II global system. “The structure of peace that Kissinger designed places him with Henry Stimson, George Marshall, and Dean Acheson atop the pantheon of modern American statesmen,” Walter Isaacson wrote in his 1992 biography of Kissinger. “In addition, he was the foremost American negotiator of this century and, along with George Kennan, the most influential foreign policy intellectual.”
Yet Kissinger also came to be reviled, especially by liberals, for practicing what they regard as a cold-blooded projection of American power that contributed to countless deaths. At Nixon’s side, he supported the disastrous bombing of Cambodia that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and its monstrous slaughter of more than a million people. Following the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, Kissinger completed peace talks with Vietnam that won him a Nobel Peace Prize but ultimately led to the humiliating North Vietnamese takeover just two years later in America’s worst defeat in a war until that point.
Kissinger also backed the 1973 coup d’etat against elected President Salvador Allende in Chile, who was considered friendly to communism, and turned a cold eye to the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh. Nixon and Kissinger stood behind Pakistani generals as they sought to prevent independence by East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) and armed them, in violation of U.S. law, as they oversaw the mass slaughter and rape of Bengalis. Gary Bass, a political scholar at Princeton, later characterized this episode as “among the darkest chapters in the Cold War.” Declassified White House tapes and documents quoted by Bass show that, in internal meetings at the time, Kissinger expressed contempt for those who “bleed” for the “dying Bengalis.”
TITLE: Henry Kissinger’s policies on Chile, Vietnam had deep impact on Latin America, U.S. Latinos.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/henry-kissinger-policies-chile-vietnam-deep-impact-latin-america-us-l-rcna127356
EXCERPT: Stephen G. Rabe, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Dallas, is the author of “Kissinger and Latin America: Intervention, Human Rights, and Diplomacy,” published in 2020.
He described Kissinger’s legacy in the Americas as “very, very mixed, but more positive than most people give him credit for.” Rabe noted that Kissinger helped resolve economic and trade disputes with Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Kissinger helped formulate the basic outlines of the Panama Canal Treaty, an agreement signed during the Carter administration to return the canal to Panamanian control.
But Kissinger is best known for his support of the right-wing dictatorships that spread across Latin America in the 1970s. For this reason, Rabe said that many Latin Americans perceive Kissinger “as a war criminal ... their fury at him is still so strong.”
“By and large, it would be fair to say that most Latin Americans consider Kissinger the most destructive force in the history of inter-American relations,” Rabe said. Kissinger oversaw foreign policy at a time when the U.S. supported dictatorships in countries like Argentina, greenlighting their harsh crackdown on dissidents. He helped destabilize governments throughout the region, including Bolivia, Uruguay and — most notably — Chile.
The reality in Latin America during this time was starkly at odds with Kissinger’s refined image as a global statesman. As Graciela Mochkofsky wrote in The Atlantic in 2016 about South America during the 1970s, “Tens of thousands of people were tortured and killed in clandestine camps, their bodies dumped from planes into rivers, their children given away under false identities.”
Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects at the National Security Archive, told NBC News that “Henry Kissinger’s legacy in Latin America is a dark one, and that’s because he didn’t give a damn about human rights. ... He had no problem dealing with and supporting some of the most cutthroat dictatorships in the history of the region. And Chile will be known as his Achilles’ heel, forever.”
According to Kornbluh, Kissinger was the chief architect of efforts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. “He [Kissinger] became the chief enabler of Gen. Augusto Pinochet when he took power in 1973. The documentation that has been declassified on this is unequivocal.” Under Pinochet’s regime in Chile, thousands of people were tortured, and over 3,000 people died or disappeared due to political violence. An estimated 200,000 Chileans fled into exile in Europe and the U.S.
Such emigration became part of a broader pattern throughout Central and South America, whereby U.S. intervention in Latin America led to waves of immigration to cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Washington, D.C.
“In Latin America, Kissinger will be remembered and recognized for undermining democracy and human rights,” Kornbluh said.
Yet the denunciations over what critics called Kissinger’s disregard for human rights led to such rights subsequently becoming an institutionalized criteria of U.S. foreign policy, according to Kornbluh.
“The laws that are in place now, bringing aid to countries that support human rights, came out of the repulsion in Congress of Kissinger’s embrace of Pinochet,” he said.
TITLE: Henry Kissinger’s bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians − and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge
https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaign-likely-killed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-cambodians-and-set-path-for-the-ravages-of-the-khmer-rouge-209353
EXCERPT: Cambodia wasn’t officially a party in the Vietnam War, with Sihanouk declaring the country neutral. But Washington looked for ways to disrupt communist North Vietnamese operations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail – which cut across Cambodia’s east, with Sihanouk’s blessing, and allowed the resupply of North Vietnamese troops on Cambodian soil.
Kissinger was the chief architect of the plan to disrupt that supply line, and what he came up with was “Operation Menu.” The secret carpet-bombing campaign – with breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert and supper representing different targets and missions within Cambodia – was confirmed at a meeting in the Oval Office on March 17, 1969. The diary entry of Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, reads: “ … Historic day. K[issinger]‘s 'Operation Breakfast’ finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P[resident].”
The following day, Haldeman wrote: “K’s ‘Operation Breakfast’ a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive.”
And so began four years of Kissinger’s legally dubious campaign in Cambodia.
To Kissinger, Cambodia was a “sideshow,” to use the title of William Shawcross’ damning book exposing the story of America’s secret war with Cambodia from 1969 to 1973.
During that period, the U.S. bombing of neutral Cambodia saw an estimated 2,756,941 tons of ordnance dropped on 113,716 targets in the country.
Kissinger and others in the White House tried to keep the campaign from the public for as long as they could, for good reason. It came as public opinion in the U.S. was turning against American involvement. The bombing campaign is also considered illegal under international law by many experts.
But to Kissinger, the ends – containing communism – seemingly justified the means, no matter the cost. And the cost to Cambodians was huge.
It resulted in the direct deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. With the U.S. government keeping the bombings secret at the time, comprehensive data and documentation are limited. But estimates on the number of deaths range from as few as 24,000 to as many as a million. Most estimates put the death toll in the hundreds of thousands.
Kissinger’s campaign also destabilized Cambodia, leaving it vulnerable for the horrors to come. The capital, Phnom Penh, ballooned in population because of the displacement of more than a million rural citizens fleeing U.S. bombs.
Meanwhile, the bombing of Cambodian citizens contributed to an erosion of trust in Camodia’s leadership and put at question Sihanouk’s policy of allowing the North Vietnamese access through the country’s east. On March 18, 1970, Sihanouk was ousted in a coup d’etat and replaced by the U.S.-friendly Lon Nol. Direct U.S. involvement in the coup has never been proven, but certainly opponents to Lon Nol saw the hand of the CIA in events.
The ousted Sihanouk called on the country’s rural masses to support his coalition government in exile, which included the Khmer Rouge. Until then, the Khmer Rouge had been a ragtag army with only revolutionary fantasies. But with Sihanouk’s backing, they grew. As journalist Philip Gourevitch noted: “His name became the Khmer Rouge’s greatest recruitment tool.”
But Kissinger’s bombs also served as a recruitment tool. The Khmer Rouge were able to capitalize on the anger and resentment of Cambodians in the areas being shelled. Rebel leaders portrayed themselves as a force to protect Cambodia from foreign aggression and restore order and justice, in contrast to the ruling government’s massive corruption and pro-American leanings.
Kissinger’s bombing campaign was certainly not the only reason for the Khmer Rouge’s rise, but it contributed to the overall destabilization of Cambodia and a political vacuum that the Khmer Rouge was able to exploit and eventually seize power – which it did in 1975, overthrowing the government.
Led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge inflicted unimaginable atrocities upon the Cambodian people. Its genocidal campaign against political opponents, Cambodian minorities and those deemed counterrevolutionaries saw between 1.6 and 3 million people killed through executions, forced labor and starvation – a quarter of the country’s then population.