Photo The Daily Beast
Henry Kissinger: The Chief Architect of America’s Wanton Global Meddling
By Mohajer Ansari
CA
Henry Kissinger died last month. He was 100 years, 4 months, and 2 days old. When a person as old as Kissinger dies, the world reflects on such a life, its shadow on humanity and contribution to the world. They say a person’s true legacy is measured by how he/she is remembered by others after death. This is true for Henry Kissinger too.
Unfortunately, the fealty expressed by the elites in Washington from either political aisle on the death of this centenarian could come only from those who were complicit in and gained from his lifelong crimes against humanity, across the globe. Despite plaudits from political oligarchs, Rolling Stone headlined Kissinger’s obituary as, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”. The late TV chef Anthony Bourdain characterized Kissinger as a “Murderous Scumbag”. Travis Waldron and George Zornick of HuffPost gave him a scathing title, “America’s Most Notorious War Criminal”. Given his long, ruthless, and bloody streak of monstrosity, these adages truly epitomize Kissinger. The utter disdain towards Kissinger expressed by Rolling Stone, Anthony Bourdain, Travis Waldron and George Zornick can be gaged by their anecdotal reference to his devilish thinking and execution of diabolical plans on international scene.
As a National Security Advisor and then as the Secretary of State from Nixon and Ford era, to an indispensable consultant (Kissinger Associates) to the successive US presidents and their respective secretaries of State, he is viewed as the chief architect of America’s unwanted meddling across the globe: From Vietnam to Cambodia to Laos to Chile to East Timor to Argentina to Angola to East Pakistan (Bangladesh). Kissinger had also supported George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is estimated that Henry Kissinger was responsible for the killing of at least 3 million innocent peasants, civilians as well as unwilling army men who were drawn into vicious political feuds orchestrated by the United States in these and many more countries.
Commenting on the indelible scars his vicious foreign policies had left on Cambodia, the veteran internationally celebrated chef Anthony Bourdain said, once you've been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. Commenting similarly, HuffPost’s Travis Waldron and George Zornick said, p erhaps the most infamous crime Kissinger committed was a secret four-year bombing campaign in Cambodia that killed an untold number of civilians, even though it was a neutral nation with which the United States was not at war.
And who can forget the infamous Iran-Contra affair, during Ronald Reagan’s second term (1981-1986)? Despite an arm sales embargo on Iran being in place, Reagan administration secretly facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran. It then clandestinely funneled a part of the proceeds of this arms sale to fund an anti-Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) rebel group - the Contras ( la contrarrevolución, counter-revolution in Spanish) - in Nicaragua. Since, under the Boland Amendment, Congress did not allow funding of the Contras via legislative appropriation, the Reagan administration found a loophole to secretively use non-appropriated funds instead for this coup.
In his feature article dated September 30, 2015, in In These Times, Greg Grandin wrote: Despite being revered in establishment circles, Kissinger’s policies have wreaked havoc in the Middle East and produced blowback for the United States. One can clearly see the full fruition of those policies, today. For example. the Cambodia script is being played in Gaza and West Bank today: Palestine is not at war with the US, but American-made tank shells, white phosphorous, bombs and planes have been deployed to strafe innocent civilians – 70% of whom are women and children.
In good old days of US-Iran relationship, Kissinger’s job was to pump up Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - the Shah of Iran - to make him feel like he truly was the “king of kings”. While that was going on, Kissinger was maneuvering another move. Fantasizing about which gas-pump country he could knock off, as early as in November 1973, Kissinger had hubristically wondered: Can’t we overthrow one of the Arab Sheikhs just to show that we can do it? Let’s work out a plan for grabbing some Middle East oil if we want. Words of a visionary indeed!
Since the 70s, he also had been a key figure in making the iron-clad alliance between the House of Saud’s medieval ‘moderates’ and Washington, indispensable for decades to come. Saudis, in one year (1974-1975) alone, purchased arms worth about $4 billion, plus an array of training missions and construction projects worth over $10 billion. That ensured that the Saudi oil wells were kept open for American life, but also acted as a balancing act against Shia radicalism in neighboring Iran. So, the arms spigots that Kissinger turned on, still remain wide open. Today, arms sale to Saudi has surpassed $100 billion mark - world’s 4th largest defense market - and increasing every year. Other gulf states have also followed suit and are in an arms race in the region. All in the name of ‘defense’ against Iran! Now, Saudis are rearing to add nuclear capability to their already burgeoning defense stockpile, to further their safeguard from Iran fear! It is this scare of Shia radicalism, that made brokering the alliance between Israel and the Gulf countries by the US an easy task, though the consequence of that unholy matrimony is yet to be realized. In Middle East alone, all Henry Kissinger contributed to, were a regional arms race, petrodollar addiction, Iranian radicalization, and the Tehran-Riyadh conflict.
Wouldn’t that be bad enough? Not really. He does bear far more responsibility for our proliferated world’s disequilibrium of power today than anyone usually recognizes.
Some would argue that Kissinger’s so-called ‘vision’, ‘foresight’, ‘realpolitik’ and ‘shuttle diplomacy’ from the 60s and 70s until his last breath, is what transformed the US into something very unpleasant, beneath the veneer of ‘nice guy’. Once viewed as a defender and upholder of human rights globally, is now seen as a symbol of hegemony and warmongering with the ultimate goal of being Number 1 on the map - no matter what. That zeal has earned us two things: enmity, ill-will and ire of Russia, China and Iran, and a sordid opportunistic alliance with racist regimes such as the one in New Delhi, which sends its goons to assassinate Sikh dissidents on Canadian and American soil.
