Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Henry Kissinger Is a War Criminal, Hillary Clinton Is a War Criminal

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On February 12, 2016

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Of course they admire each other and are friends.

And I’m not just referring to Clinton’s vote for Iraq, I’m referring to her involvement in Libya and Syria.

As for Kissinger, in addition to his genocide in Cambodia and Laos, amongst his other crimes is Kissinger’s support for Pinochet in Chile.

I want to remind you of something about Pinochet’s Chile.

Not only did Pinochet have rape rooms, his security forces used trained dogs to rape women and implanted rats in their orifices.

Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger both belong in the dock at a war crimes trial.

I believe in humane treatment of prisoners, however. Since they are friends, they can be cellmates.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing, and want more of it, please consider donating.)

Update: I want to say one more thing about this. That Clinton thinks this is acceptable, that it is not shameful to embrace Kissinger, shows just how little not just Clinton, but American elites, think of human rights and war crimes. Clinton simply can’t imagine why people are so upset over Kissinger, all the victims somehow don’t register with her

Now, it is possible that Kissinger is a great thinker one must listen to, despite him being an abominable human, but in such cases one doesn’t publicly embrace him.

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17 Comments

  1. buermann

    Everybody forgets the 1971 Bangladesh genocide — I mean, I know listing every crime would prove tiresome but that one may top the bodycounts — he supported just to keep a redundant back channel to China.

  2.

    Ian Welsh

    I spent time in Bangladesh in the 80s. Heard stories about that stuff from people who were there. Nasty shit, there’s a reason they’re still indicting people in Bangladesh.

  3. shh

    I can never tell whether evil intent is worse than incompetence, if judged by outcomes.

  4. fdf

    Rohinton Mistry’s take on the Bangladesh affair in Such a Long Journey is truly withering.

  5. Bruce Wilder

    I know this has come up before, and it is obviously trivial, but Mrs Clinton’s first name has two L’s.

    Completely agree though that Mrs Clinton’s admiration for Kissinger is a gravely significant tell, and it is far more important than a possible misjudgment of a man she knows personally. That she admires Kissinger and has no political instinct to be cautious in associating herself with him is a clear indication that she intends to further empower the Washington foreign policy establishment, a group that continues in power thru administrations of either Party and by any reasonable standard is seriously unbalanced in its neoconservative worldview and its dependence on the pathologies of the deep state.

  6.

    Ian Welsh

    Not at all, thanks for the reminder.

  7. EmilianoZ

    Sartre: Castor [Simone de Beauvoir] tells me you had a talk with [Salvator] Allende. What did he have to say?

    Gerassi: He expects a military coup soon. We actually had a big argument over that. I said that since he was so sure, he should distribute arms to the cordones, that’s the rings of workers that live near the factories, grouped just outside the capital, Santiago; they have organized defense committees, but they have no arms.

    Sartre: What did he answer?

    Gerassi: He said that if he distributed arms to the workers, the Communist Party would quit the government and not support it.

    in “Talking with Sartre, conversations and debates”, John Gerassi, 2009

  8. Tony Wikrent

    I remember how difficult it was, after the 2008 election, when Obama’s economic team was announced, to get people worked up over the fact that Geithner, slated for Sec Treas, had worked for Kissinger & Associates, and had written at least one report at the personal request of Kissinger. Have people finally learned their lesson? Or is it just that they’re paying more attention because this time it’s Kissinger’s possible influence in the Oval Office that is in question?

  9. markfromireland

    That would the Hillary who laughs in public about someone being murdered by a mob who in the process of the said murder sodomised him with a bayonet. That would be the same Hillary who is friends with and allied with Ms “we think murdering ½ a million of other peoples’ children is worth it”. Now it turns out that she’s a devotee and admirer of Mr. Multiple war crimes coupled with multiple mass murders coupled with complicity in at least one genocide and arguably two.

    Ian this is not even slightly surprising. Disgusting and reprehensible yes – surprising no.

    Particularly when it comes to foreign policy there is no difference none whatsoever between neocons and “liberals”.

    As I remarked in one of your recent threads De Maistre had a point when he said that a people get the government they deserve.

  10. V. Arnold

    markfromireland
    February 13, 2016

    It’s been my observation that people generally get what they want. That’s why it’s so important to know what one wants. Most do not.
    U.S. citizens will elect another, in a long line of monsters come the elections of 2016. The name of the monster is irrelevant, IMO.

  11. Bill H

    She also referred to Mubarak and his wife as “friends of my family.”

  12. markfromireland

    @ V Arnold – Michael Brenner has an interesting and worthwhile essay up at SST:

    Fading prowess is one of the most difficult things for humans to cope with – whether it be an individual or a nation. By nature, we prize our strength and competence; we dread decline and its intimations of extinction. This is especially so in the United States where for many the individual and the collective are inseparable. Today, events are occurring that contradict the national narrative of a nation with a unique destiny. That creates cognitive dissonance.

    Our thoughts and actions in response to that deeply unsettling reality conform to the classic behavioral pattern of those suffering from acute cognitive dissonance. Denial is its cardinal feature. That is to say, denial of those things that cause stress and anxiety. Sublimation methods of various kinds are deployed to keep them below the threshold of conscious awareness. We all do that, to some degree, on a personal level. Collectivities can do it as well. In the latter case, the mechanisms are more numerous and diverse. Even truths that touch on the essence of the collectivity personality can be sublimated because normally they are not experienced immediately and directly by the individual. We are speaking of military actions, abusive state behavior like the conduct of torture, diplomatic deals that are permissive of unsavory actions by others, or studied misrepresentations by government and media which hide unpleasant truths from the populace. At a more abstract level, we repress or minimize perceptions of us by other peoples, relative well-being compared to other societies (medical care, maternity leave, pensions), or national competence as demonstrated by accomplishment in comparison with other societies (constructing mass transportation systems).

    Read in full: Sic Semper Tyrannis : AMERICA AT BAY – EVADING DESTINY by Dr. Michael Brenner

    @ Bill H

    I’d forgotten that one thanks for the reminder.

  13. alyosha

    @MFI – thanks for that terrific essay by Dr Brenner, bookmarked. It contains themes and ideas I’ve thought about for years but have rarely found anyone I could discuss with. His clinical background is superb in dissecting all of it.

  14. markfromireland

    @ aloysha – Glad you found it useful – SST is a good site well worth keeping an eye on.

    mfi

  15. V. Arnold

    markfromireland
    February 13, 2016

    Thanks for that. Great read.

  16. markfromireland

    @ V. Arnold – you’re welcome.

  17. hemeantwell

    The very large problem with the quote from the Brenner piece is that he overloads on collective narcissism without talking about the conflicts within society that drive its formation. He misses the vital point that non-elites suffer many assaults on their narcissism in daily life, assaults which might potentially lead to hostility towards ruling elites. Whooping up a war is a great way to displace these hostilities and to concoct a national unity. Elites are relieved because they are not assaulted by “the masses,” while the masses are relieved because their conflicts with threatening social superiors are forgotten. This is obvious to anyone who takes both takes class conflict seriously and pays attention to processes that suppress or displace it. That Brenner fails to address this is another example of a nominal insight by a psychologist that is actually suppressive because he can’t quite get himself to think about class relations.

    I’d add that comments to the effect that “people get the government they deserve” are similarly suppressive, only in a more offhand, arrogant way.

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