Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dies aged 100

[Doodoo]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/henry-kissin ... 46505.html

[Irish Alan]

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who played a pivotal and polarising role in US foreign policy during the Cold War, has died at the age of 100.

He served as America's top diplomat and national security adviser during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Despite leaving office in the mid-1970s, he continued to be consulted by generations of leaders for decades.

The German-born former diplomat died at his home in Connecticut.

Former US President George W Bush led tributes, saying the US had "lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs".

Meanwhile, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described him as an artist of diplomacy, saying Kissinger was motivated by "a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it".

President Richard Nixon's daughters, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, said that Kissinger's life story was "so unique - and so thoroughly American".

More: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67574495

[jackspratt]

He leaves with a mixed legacy.

It will be interesting to read what the Obituaries say.

[jackspratt]

As predicted.

Kissinger’s amoral vision made a tortured and deadly legacy


.... When Kissinger entered government as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, he espoused a narrow perspective of the national interest, known as realpolitik, that was primarily centred on maximising the economic and military power of the United States.

This power- and transactionalist-oriented approach to foreign policy produced a series of destructive outcomes. They ranged from fomenting coups that put in place murderous dictatorships, as in Chile, to killing unarmed civilians, as in Cambodia, and alienating potential allies, as in India......
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/202 ... id=2098601

[FrazeeDK]

you wouldn't see something like, "contributed to the policies which resulted in the secret bombing of Cambodia meant to destroy logistics dumps established by the North Vietnamese Army to attack South Vietnam in violation of Cambodia's neutrality..."

Yes, Kissinger was a serious player in US foreign policy back then, but I've serious doubts it was Kissinger crawling around on the floor with a spread out maplike LBJ personally picking targets.. Approval for such actions emanated from Nixon then Ford...

Looked at some late 60's of Kissinger giving a speech then one from the 90's Really weird how his German accent got thicker, more Strangelovian as he grew older.

[David Chop]

I've serious doubts it was Kissinger crawling around on the floor with a spread out maplike LBJ personally picking targets

Kissinger was obsessive about recording himself. It has made for a spectacular historical record. One of the benefits is that nowadays we don't have to guess what was going on, we can just check the recordings. In this particular case Kissinger told his assistant Al Haig that Nixon,

wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.

and Kissinger and Haig made sure that happened. Nixon said do it and was thereafter out of the loop.

I'll let others do their own surfing to get the tone of the obituaries/retrospectives going on out there. My own take on them (and Kissinger) is that you should live your life in such a way that the entire internet doesn't jizz itself with glee when you die.

[jackspratt]

Another quote, from another opinion column, that sums Kissinger up very well IMO.

Henry Kissinger, the Hypocrite

Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday, exemplified the gap between the story that America, the superpower, tells and the way that we can act in the world. At turns opportunistic and reactive, his was a foreign policy enamored with the exercise of power and drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/opin ... crite.html

[tamada]

Jewish immigrant done good.

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal stated in the aftermath of his death "Kissinger was a target of both the right and left in those perilous Cold War years, often unfairly..." The article noted that he was often criticized by American conservatives for overlooking human rights in China, while saying "he had no illusions about the Communist Party or its nationalist ambitions. His view was that the U.S. and China had to achieve some modus vivendi to avoid war despite their profound cultural and political differences" while claiming that "the alternatives then, as now, weren't usually [democracy advocates] of the left's imagining. They were often Communists who would have aligned themselves with the Soviets... The U.S. provided covert aid to Allende's political opponents, but declassified briefings from the time show the U.S. was unaware of the military coup that deposed him. Kissinger wasn't responsible for Augusto Pinochet's coup or its bloody excesses. Chile eventually became a democracy... Cuba remains a dictatorship."

Historian David Greenberg rejected both reputations, arguing that they are caricatures and overstate both his genius and immorality: "In fact, if there's a single word I'd apply to Kissinger, it's 'overrated.' He was overrated as a scholar (famous mainly for writing a very long dissertation). He was overrated as a strategist (he often gave bad advice, as he did in urging George W. Bush not to withdraw troops from Iraq). He was even overrated as a villain – the 'Christopher Hitchenses' of the world loved to call him a "war criminal," but this was a fundamentally unserious charge. The Defense Department, not the State Department, prosecutes wars, and the president oversees it – but the Hitchenses preferred to go after Kissinger than (Defense Secretaries) Mel Laird or James Schlesinger or even Nixon."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger

[Whistler]

Kissinger had gravitas, but that was not always backed up with sound judgement. During his heyday he became bigger than his intellect supported. When figures reach this status they become known as authorities in their field, go figure, he was not that good to justify that reputation.

[UdonExpat]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... -criminal/

[UdonExpat]

https://thehill.com/opinion/internation ... n-a-fraud/

[Udon Map]

Really weird how his German accent got thicker, more Strangelovian as he grew older.

His brother, Walter, lost his accent fairly early on.