Henry Kissinger is dead. I thought he was going to outlive me. Writing an opinion piece in anticipation of his death was an item on my to-do list that I never completed. Now, the time has come.
Kissinger, U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser, was abominable in the most complete sense of the word. His policies disregarded human rights, human values and basic human decency. That makes his thinking and policy implementations consistent with every thug since and before Attila the Hun.
The notion that he was a brilliant foreign policy practitioner playing chess while those around him could not master checkers is a myth. He relied on the exact mechanisms of pain pioneered by so many before him — torture, death and destruction — all with a 20th-century twist known as the carpet bombing of civilian populations in Cambodia and Laos.
Worse, his foreign policy perspective shaped subsequent policies and attitudes. He modeled a disregard for the death of innocent civilians. That made it much easier for the Reagan administration to support the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in El Salvador by vicious, right-wing death squads during the 1980s.
Bo Thao Urabe, a regent at the University of Minnesota, spoke on National Public Radio about the impact the bombings had on the Hmong people of Laos and Cambodia. She cited the 2 million tons of bombs that were dropped on Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, including many cluster bombs.
The death and destruction of the secret bombing campaign were so severe that the estimated number of civilians killed varies considerably. There is general agreement the number lies somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 during 1969 and 1970.
William Shawcross wrote the definitive history of the bombing of Cambodia. The book was titled “Sideshow” to clarify that the carpet bombing of a nation we were not at war with was not their primary concern. Nixon had promised to end the Vietnam War, and he and Kissinger were desperate.
Worse, Shawcross persuasively argues that the bombing and displacement of so many Cambodians led to the deadly reign of the Khmer Rouge. United States intervention in Cambodia had already led to a puppet regime. And that regime was incapable of responding to the growing problem of internal refugees fleeing the bombing in eastern Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge took advantage of the chaos, seized power and went on to murder an estimated 2 million Cambodians.
After their illegal bombing in southeast Asia, Nixon and Kissinger went on to support Yahya Khan in Pakistan as he launched a genocidal campaign against Bengali nationalists. Again, hundreds of thousands died.
As for Kissinger’s often acclaimed “genius” in foreign affairs, the horrific gambling with Bengali lives divided the world’s largest democracies, the United States and India, for decades.
From there, Kissinger allied himself with the repressive shah of Iran by providing military support to Kurds in Iraq. With little thought, Kissinger abandoned the Kurds in 1975. Saddam Hussein gained power and control as he defeated the Kurds and used that victory as momentum to destabilize the region. Eventually, he attacked Iran in a war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The uncountable deaths from southeast Asia, up through India and Pakistan, and then on to Iraq and Iran are the collective toll that Kissinger’s policies are best measured by.
No summary of Kissinger’s misdeeds is complete without remembering his role in ousting Chile’s democratically elected leftist president, Salvador Allende, in 1973. Kissinger worked to undermine Allende, leading to his death during a military coup that brought a brutal general, Augusto Pinochet, to power.
Thousands of Chileans were tortured and murdered under his military rule. The worst of the slaughter was in the early years of the regime, and Kissinger provided vital support to Pinochet throughout that horrible time in Chile’s history.
After leaving his government role, Kissinger continued to advise international leaders and never apologized for his trail of death and destruction.
[image_caption]Keith Luebke[/image_caption]
It is not naive to criticize Kissinger’s record of disregarding human rights and basic human decency. Using the complexity of foreign policy decisions, their context and their implications as an excuse or cover for Kissinger’s policies only obscures the disastrous outcomes of his actions.
Sadly, we are not a nation that cares about foreign policy issues unless U.S. soldiers are coming home in body bags. But those who determine the direction of U.S. foreign policy can learn many lessons from Kissinger’s legacy. Mostly, they are lessons in what not to do.
Keith Luebke retired from teaching nonprofit leadership courses and has several decades of experience directing nonprofit organizations. He lives in Mankato, Minn.
