Henry Kissinger: War Criminal Finally Dies

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger turned one hundred on May 27th of this year, an extremely rare occurrence with approximately only one in every 5,000 individuals in the US reaching that age milestone.  Then, less than two months later, Kissinger flew to Beijing, China, where, as a private businessman who peddled his global influence to those seeking connections to world governments and powerbrokers, he met privately with Chinese leaders.  And finally, capping off a very busy year, Henry Kissinger died at his home in Kent, Connecticut, the day before yesterday.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger had been born in Furth, Germany, in 1923, and fifteen years later he and his family fled Nazi Germany, as Jewish refugees, and settled in the Borough of Manhattan in New York City.   He would return to his native Germany five years later as a US Army sergeant and help to liberate it from the Nazis, an event that should have given him an on-the-ground perspective of the actual horrors of war.

Kissinger earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Harvard in 1950, graduating summa cum laude, and within the next couple of years he obtained a master's degree and a PhD from the same institution, and went on to join Harvard's Government Department where he taught for the next two decades.

Henry Kissinger's rise to political prominence began as an advisor on international affairs to Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.  Kissinger helped to craft Rockefeller's position on world affairs during the New York governor's presidential campaigns of 1960, 1964, and 1968, all of which brought Kissinger to the attention of Richard Nixon, a man who, unlike Rockefeller, eventually did become President.  Nixon made Kissinger his National Security Adviser, and when Nixon requested the resignation of his first Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, because of Rogers' refusal to become involved in Nixon'sWatergate mess, Kissinger was elevated to the position of Secretary of State which he held throughout the remainder of the Nixon and Ford administrations.

(During Kissinger's tenure as National Security Adviser, he had been involved in secret foreign policy negotiations at Nixon's request and without Secretary Rogers' knowledge.  There was speculation at the time that Kissinger had helped to engineer Rogers removal as Secretary of State and had strong-armed  his own way into the position.  When Nixon was finally driven from the presidency by political and public pressure in 1975, Kissinger was instrumental in helping the new President, Gerald Ford, in making the decision to name Kissinger's old mentor, Nelson Rockefeller, as the new Vice President.)

Henry Kissinger had an out-sized influence on American politics, but he is also well remembered, and often excoriated, for his equally out-sized role in international affairs while he was serving as the US Secretary of State.  Kissinger and his department helped to organize the overthrow of a democratically elected socialist government in Chile in 1973 by a military coup that resulted in an authoritarian regime which lasted the better part of two decades.  He declared, through Nixon, that the end of the Vietnam War was at hand in 1972, but the actual war outlasted that pronouncement by three more years.  Kissinger was also the primary influencer of Richard Nixon when he initiated the relentless and indiscriminate bombing of Laos and Cambodia, a carpet-bombing that killed thousands of innocent civilians and destroyed America's reputation as a peacekeeper.

Henry Kissinger was vilified, with much cause, throughout the world as a war criminal.

When Henry Kissinger finally left office at the end of the Ford administration in January of 1977, he formed a private group called Kissinger Associates, which sold his political and diplomatic expertise, as well as his connections, to various power-hungry entities around the globe.  He was still at work for the benefit of his private company when he visited China this past summer.

Rolling Stone Magazine, which was gaining its political footing during the years of Henry Kissinger's ascendancy in Washington, DC, referred to the still-working influence-peddler upon his death this week with the following headline:

"Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies"

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