Iata ca mersul lucrurilor in America face ca Greg Grandin scoate o alta biografie a aceluiasi personaj care inca mai fascineaza pe cei slabi de inger. De exemplu, Kissinger este unul din reperele pe politica externa ale candidatei Hillary Clinton.
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The metaphysic of Henry Kissinger and how it has affected us all
By Chris
This book follows the career of Henry Kissinger. It starts off a little slowly, with much quotation from Kissinger’s writings in the 50’s and 60’s. Then we learn How Kissinger wormed his way into the Nixon camp. After covering Kissinger’s career as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Grandin discusses how Kissinger has used his considerable prestige to influence US foreign policy since the 1980s. The author writes in his acknowledgements section that he approached this book differently than that which the late Christopher Hitchens did in “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Hitchens centered Kissinger’s involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity on Kissinger’s supposedly uniquely evil personality. In contrast, far more important to Grandin than Kissinger’s personality are the socio-economic conditions under which Kissinger rose to the top as well as the historical influences on Kissinger’s thinking. Kissinger was an innovator in reshaping the ability of the executive branch to conduct covert operations in foreign policy.
Some of the highlights portrayed in this book of Kissinger’s career:
--Kissinger engineered the bombing and invasion of Cambodia which killed many civilians, destroyed many villages, ravaged the country’s infrastructure, etc. The bombing generally destroyed the basis for civilized existence in the country and paved the way for the barbarous Khmer Rouge to gain power.
--The Nixon/Kissinger bombing of Laos left an abundance of unexploded ordnances, especially cluster bombs, strewn across the country. Hundreds per year have been killed and maimed by these ordinances since the conflict came to an end in the mid-70’s.
--Kissinger spearheaded American backing of the Pakistani military’s genocidal assault on the territory of what would become Bangladesh in 1971. In an endnote, Grandin notes that Kissinger, conversing with Gerald Ford about the affair in 1975, called it Nixon’s “finest hour.”
--Kissinger backed the establishment of violently repressive military dictatorships in Latin America. Grandin shows that in the transcripts of his conversations with the leaders of these regimes he always addressed the issue of repression with a message along the lines of “do what you have to do but try to get it over with quick.” He was quite unconcerned when the Assistant US Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs mentioned that the military junta in Argentina was butchering and torturing not just left wing terrorists but progressive dissidents in general. He warned the Pinochet regime that he was going to make a speech at the meeting of the Organization of American States and indulge in some pieties about the sanctity of human rights but that Pinochet shouldn’t take it too seriously.
--Kissinger and Ford visited the Indonesian dictator Suharto on December 6, 1975, the day before Indonesia invaded East Timor and began a genocidal campaign. Kissinger gave the go ahead for the invasion with the usual admonition to do what you have to do but get it over with quick.
--In cooperation with apartheid South Africa and Israel, Kissinger secretly established the US funding and supply network to the terrorist groups RENAMO in Mozambique and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola. Kissinger’s actions preceded Cuba’s decision to intervene in Angola.
--Kissinger did much to prop up the Shah of Iran and cater to the latter’s interests. One activity to help the Shah was the funding and supplying of an armed rebellion by Iraq’s Kurds against the Baghdad government. Once Iran negotiated a settlement with Iraq in 1975, US and Iranian aid was withdrawn and the Iraqi Kurds were left to face an ethnic cleansing campaign by Iraq’s government.
--Kissinger further solidified the system of recycled petrodollars that has provided a pillar of support to the US economy in cooperation with oil rich states like the Shah’s Iran and Saudi Arabia.
-- In the 70’s, Kissinger worked with the Shah and Pakistan’s ISI to lay the seeds of what would become the anti-Soviet Jihadi network in Afghanistan in the 80’s.
The author documents his book well, making heavy use of the transcripts of the Nixon tapes and archived official documents relating to the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy. The Nixon tapes, as quoted in this book, certainly reveal interesting material.
In a few instances of giving estimates of non-combatants killed, Grandin gives figures that some might feel are significantly lower than other estimates. For example he gives the figure of 100,000 civilian deaths from the US bombing of Cambodia and 100,000 non-combatants killed by Indonesia in East Timor.
A
new account of America's most controversial diplomat that moves beyond
praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America's
current…
amazon.com
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