Let's not pretend that it's bashing a candidate for the presidency of the United States to simply tell the truth about them. To claim it is, without any basis in fact, is the weakest of defenses. If your candidate can be utterly devastated by the truth, perhaps you should review your criteria for selecting candidates.
The simple truth will be the end of the Clinton campaign.
Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton’s Tutor in War and Peace Last night, Clinton once again praised a man with a lot of blood on his hands.Clinton just can’t quit him. Even as she is trying to outflank Bernie on his left, Hillary Clinton can’t help but stutter the name of Henry Kissinger. Last night in the New Hampshire debate, Clinton thought to close her argument that she is the true progressive with this: “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.”
Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the US’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. Read all about it in Kissinger’s Shadow!
A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. Pull but one string from the current tangle of today’s multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran? “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf? Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.
And yet Clinton continues to call his name, hoping his light bathes her in wisdom.
Henry fucking Kissinger. That she could be this tone deaf is gob-smacking, mind-boggling, bizarre, grotesque and utterly fantastical. What universe does she live in? Apparently one where this ginormous asshole is considered a worthy human being. That's not the universe most of us live in.
Here’s the Top 10 Quotes from Hillary Clinton’s Friend and Monster Henry Kissinger On Soviet Jews:“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Maybe?
On bombing Cambodia:“[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything about it. It’s an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”
On bombing Vietnam:“It’s wave after wave of planes. You see, they can’t see the B-52 and they dropped a million pounds of bombs … I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month … each plane can carry about 10 times the load [a] World War II plane could carry.”
On Khmer Rouge, from a meeting with the Thai Foreign Minister in 1975:“How many people did [Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary] kill? Tens of thousands? You should tell the Cambodians [i.e., Khmer Rouge] that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.”
On Dan Ellsberg from a July 27, 1971 Oval Office tape:“Because that son-of-a-b*tch—First of all, I would expect—I know him well—I am sure he has some more information—I would bet that he has more information that he’s saving for the trial. Examples of American war crimes that triggered him into it…It’s the way he’d operate….Because he is a despicable bastard.”
On Robert McNamara:“Boohoo, boohoo … He’s still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty. ”
On assassination, from a National Security Council meeting in 1975:“It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.”
On Chile:“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
On Illegality-Unconstitutionality, from a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in March of 1975:“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
On himself, from a 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci:“Americans like the cowboy … who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.”
Allow me to add one more of Henry fucking Kissinger's illustrious quotations:
And in case you were wondering, it's not just Henry fucking Kissinger, it's a whole shitload of Hillary's friends and backers. Her judgment couldn't be worse nor her ties to these kinds of people more questionable and worrisome:
Half the Foreign Policy Experts Signing Clinton’s Anti-Sanders Letter Have Ties to Military ContractorsHillary Clinton’s campaign released a letter this week in which 10 foreign policy experts criticized her opponent Bernie Sanders’ call for closer engagement with Iran and said Sanders had “not thought through these crucial national security issues that can have profound consequences for our security.”
The missive from the Clinton campaign was covered widely in the press, but what wasn’t disclosed in the coverage is that fully half of the former State Department officials and ambassadors who signed the letter, and who are now backing Clinton, are now enmeshed in the military contracting establishment, which has benefited tremendously from escalating violence around the world, particularly in the Middle East.
We need to be done with this bone-chilling lust for blood and war. We cannot in good conscience continue to allow ourselves to be dominated and driven by these monsters.