Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died. Kissinger supported the military dictators of Greece and encouraged the anti Makarios coup in Cyprus and the subsequent Turkish invasions. Greeks will forever associate him with the loss of Cyprus. A thoroughly immoral and unscrupulous individual, Kissinger is the perfect example of how statesmen are mafia figures at a much higher and more sophisticated level.
Kissinger was born Jewish in the Weimar Republic and was ten years old when Hitler came to power. His family fled Germany just before the pogroms of Kristaalnacht in November 1938. Kissinger experienced the brutality of living as an oppressed minority in a totalitarian state and despite this lacked any empathy for the victims of dictatorships. Aside from supporting the dictatorship in Greece, Kissinger supported Augusto Pinochet’s fascist regime in Chile and was a backer of the Shah’s dictatorship in Iran.
The best indictment of Kissinger came from the late Christopher Hitchens in his book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”. Hitchens got tired of seeing journalists like Ted Koppel treating Kissinger as a statesman rather than as a thug and wrote an article that became the aforementioned book calling for Kissinger to be tried as a war criminal. The Hitchens book has a list of Kissinger’s crimes which include his offenses against Greece and Cyprus.
Hitchens of course wrote a previous book, “Hostage to History” about Cyprus which documented Kissinger’s crimes against Cyprus. More recently, the late Eugene Rossides wrote a book, “Kissinger and Cyprus a study in lawlessness”. We will not be forgetting Kissinger’s criminal legacy in Cyprus.
Ironically, Kissinger came to be disliked by the neoconservatives. Kissinger was a thug, but he was an intelligent thug and not a fanatic unlike the neoconservatives. Kissinger opposed the wars against Serbia in the Balkans and more recently opposed NATO actions against Russia.
Kissinger understood the realities of the world and had he been Secretary of State in 2003, there might have been no Iraq war. He was more intelligent than his successors such as Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, or Condoleeza Rice. Kissinger knew he was a thug and despite his lack of ethics and morality, his form of diplomacy would have made the wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Ukraine unlikely.
Greece and Cyprus continue the struggle to undo Kissinger’s legacy. The Kurds will also remember him. Kissinger sold out the Iraqi Kurds in the 1970’s who were massacred by the Baathist regime.
3 replies on “Henry Kissinger”
He can explain his actions to the Almighty now. To my knowledge he never apologized for any of his policy mistakes or errors in judgment-or tried to atone for the great misery they caused. Kissinger was a man in love with his intellect to the extent he failed to grasp that intellect without a moral foundation can be destructive. Not even in his last years did he try and reflect and make atonement, that says reams about the man. The NEOCONS carry on the Realpolitik that Kissinger delighted in, even recognizing they lack his intellect to properly assess these policies. Kissinger may have avoided the war Yugoslavia and probably would have avoided the Iraq war in 2004-but that doesn’t make his mistakes any less damning. He has enough to answer for and his current audience doesn’t contain his slavish admirers like so many in the msm today.
I largely consider the foreign policy establishment to consist of gangsters who operate on a larger level than the organized crime type of gangsters who operate on the streets. Kissinger in my opinion fits this profile. This guy was pure thug. Interests are to be considered and nothing more.
The neocons are ideologues who are narcissistic like Kissinger except they believe they are causing wars for the benefit of the people that are getting killed. Morally, both are reprehensible. Kissinger was a liar to the end and he has been accused of falsifying what he was doing in his memoirs.
The interesting thing is how universally loathed he really was. I rewatched an old documentary film “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” based on the book by Christopher Hitchens. Unfortunately, it did not have Greece or Cyprus mentioned, but the things that Kissinger did in so many other areas of the world are sickening.
What makes Trump such an appealing candidate is that he is not
interested in starting any more wars or doing the type of things that
Kissinger did. Kissinger to the end was treated like a statesman while Trump is denounced over January 6 (not a good thing, yes). But the
things that Kissinger did in so many parts of the world were so horrendous and yet we are supposed to believe one day of drunken
riots at the capital was worse than the horrors Kissinger was responsible for.
Kissinger is recognized for the misery his policies inflicted, at least by the masses around the world. The Elites will never acknowledge it, they believe only in power and politics, Realpolitik. Kissinger can plead his case to the Almighty now, I’m content with that.