"Henry Kissinger, America’s Most Notorious War Criminal, Dies At 100," was the headline in HuffPost announcing the death of Henry Kissinger.
Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara were responsible for getting the U.S. involved in the quagmire in Vietnam, but they were Democrats who worked for Democratic presidents. When the left talks about "war criminals" and "genocide" in Vietnam, they always leave those foreign policy leaders out of the discussion. It's almost as if Lyndon Johnson didn't send 500,000 Americans to Vietnam and leave a horrific mess for President Nixon to get out of.
Kissinger had the unique ability to drive left-wing radicals beyond the bend. His abilities in that department have been surpassed only by Donald Trump. But Kissinger's greatest sin was that he was smarter than all of them.
Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, authors of the book "Fail Safe," had Kissinger in mind when they created the character Professor Groeteschele, seen in the film and novel regaling an audience at a dinner party with stories about how nuclear war might start.
The notion that Kissinger was some kind of warmonger persisted until his death. In fact, no one had done more for the cause of peace than Henry Kissinger.
Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China and special assistant to Kissinger on the National Security Council, probably knew him best.
"The world has lost a tireless advocate for peace. America has lost a towering champion for the national interest. I have lost a cherished friend and mentor," he said. "Henry blended the European sense of tragedy and the American immigrant’s sense of hope."
Kissinger's bombing campaign in Cambodia is always described as "illegal." However, the area in Cambodia along the border with Vietnam that was being bombed was not controlled by Cambodia. The writ of Cambodian law did not run there. And, of course, that's where the North Vietnamese prepared for their attacks on American soldiers.
How many American lives did the bombing campaign save? No one knows. However, the damage to Cambodia's civil society allowed the rise of the Khmer Rouge and its murderous brand of Communism.
Kissinger's other "sins" were a by-product of Cold War gamesmanship.
During his time in charge of the American foreign policy machine, Kissinger also directed illegal arms sales to Pakistan as it carried out a brutal crackdown on its Bengali population in 1971. He supported the 1973 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected socialist government in Chile, gave the go-ahead to Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, and backed Argentina’s repressive military dictatorship as it launched its “dirty war” against dissenters and leftists in 1976. His policies during the Ford administration also fueled civil wars in Africa, most notably in Angola.
Even the most generous calculations suggest that the murderous regimes Kissinger supported and the conflicts they waged were responsible for millions of deaths and millions of other human rights abuses, during and after the eight years he served in the American government.
Holding Kissinger responsible for all of this is a stretch. What the left is complaining about is that Kissinger, Nixon, and later Ford didn't break relations with these right-wing regimes or perhaps sanction them or even work to overthrow them.
Left-wing saint Franklin D. Roosevelt said of Nicaragua's strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle, "He may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch." Kissinger probably thought about the autocrats and dictators that the U.S. supported over the years in much the same way that the left saw them.
The difference is that Kissinger was responsible for protecting the United States and that meant preventing the Soviet Union from spreading its influence to threaten not just the U.S. but our friends as well. He didn't have the luxury of moral posturing. He lived in the real world and in the real world, the Soviet Union could not be allowed to spread its ideology across the world.
If that meant supporting some bad actors who killed many thousands of people, so be it. It might be interesting to point out that Communism murdered more than 94 million people, according to the "Black Book of Communism." Preventing a Communist takeover may have saved lives for all anyone knows.
Henry Kissinger was a tireless worker for peace. He prevented several wars in the Middle East while keeping the Soviet Union out of the region. He negotiated an end to the Vietnam War, as unsatisfactory as it was. The fact that Democratic and Republican presidents and nominees for president always sought his advice says something important about his vast knowledge of world affairs and how America best fits into it.
His counsel will be missed by anyone who wishes to understand the world around us.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member