So tragic!

[JKane]

 

With all the Covid deaths lately, this is particularly sad to see...

 

 

[msclelovr]

Am I missing some irony or ‘fake news’ here @JKane ?

Whether you like or dislike him, there’s no doubt he’s a significant thinker on international affairs. He wrote a forthright opinion piece last month in the WSJ on how failure to address the adverse impacts of the pandemic would be disastrous. 

[Lonnie]

1 hour ago, JKane said:

this is particularly sad

I see you and Salvador Allende's widow share the same news source.

[PeterRS]

7 hours ago, msclelovr said:

Whether you like or dislike him, there’s no doubt he’s a significant thinker on international affairs. He wrote a forthright opinion piece last month in the WSJ on how failure to address the adverse impacts of the pandemic would be disastrous. 

I suggest you read the first truly perceptive book to be written about the genocide in Cambodia - Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross. Shawcross is a journalist who spent much time in Cambodia. His father happened to be one of the judges at the Nuremberg Trials. Once you have done that, do some research about the Indonesian takeover of East Timor, the Pakistani invasion of what became Bangladesh and a host of other episodes in recent history involving the warmonger Kissinger. It so happens that Kissinger was in Jakarta giving his country's OK to the Indonesian action the day before it started. And surprise, surprise! He was also in Pakistan just the day before East Pakistan was invaded, again giving America's nod.

Once you have taken that in, I suggest another book - The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens.

That said, I think the subject matter in the OP disgraceful.

[msclelovr]

As it happens @PeterRS I first met William Shawcross’s father - Hartley Shawcross - in the 1980s. He was in fact the Chief British Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. I had several long conversations with him about his career. 
 

As to Kissinger, I read the book by Christopher Hitchens when it first came out. I wrote above  “whether you like or dislike him” because Kissinger clearly divides opinion: I do not agree with your description of him as a “warmonger”. I certainly think he was a master of ‘realpolitik’. 

[PeterRS]

Well, we met two generations. I met William Shawcross at a media briefing in Hong Kong. We did not discuss his Cambodia book nor Kissinger, as I recall.

But I think Kissinger can rightly be called both a warmonger and one who played the realpolitik game. For that is what it was. A game in which other countries and peoples were the pawns and vast numbers of human lives ended up being lost. Millions! For Kissinger, the game was American interests - and to hell with the consequences. He could easily have stopped the East Timor annexation had he merely told Suharto the US did not agree. But he told Suharto the US would not object. His only stipulation that it be done "fast". Realpolitik for Kissinger meant supporting dictators and the repression of democracy. I saw with my own eyes what that realpolitik resulted in in The Philippines under Marcos. It was a near total disaster. 

Ever since Mao, successive US administrations had been completely blinkered by the "Who Lost China?" mantra. From then on, every country was considered a communist target. If Roosevelt, Truman, Acheson, Dulles and their successors including Kissinger had only stopped to think about countries like Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, had only looked closely at their own files, had only considered the desire of leaders like Ho Chi Minh for a national identity, not a communist state allied to Russia and China - after all Vietnam had fought alongside the US in World War II, Asia and the world would not have had to endure mass slaughter.

Whatever good he actually achieved - and there was indeed some - I wish that the names of the dead could be carved on his mausoleum. A gravestone would be vastly too small.

[RockHardNYC]

It's too bad some of you don't appreciate JKane's humor. I love the fact that he finds some of the funniest screenshots I've ever seen, and is brave enough to post them here where the copyright rules are ill-defined and hypocritical.

I know plenty of Kissinger haters who would love this one. It made me chuckle. Lighten up guys. Humor is the best food for the tired, angry soul.