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“The illegal we do immediately,
the unconstitutional takes
a bit longer.” - Kissinger
About Kissinger
The United States’ most
notorious living war criminal
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L-R Kissinger, Suharto,
unknown, Ford, Dec
6, 1975. |
Henry Kissinger
was Secretary of State (1973-77)
and National Security Adviser
(1969-73). He is the United
States’ most notorious living
war criminal and has done
more than most in such senior
positions to undermine respect
for human rights and international
law.
The U.S. would be better
served by in-depth hearings
examining Kissinger's record
and the failure of to hold
Kissinger accountable for
his acts of omission and
commission that supported
repression, facilitated
mass murder, and undermined
governments throughout Asia,
Africa, Latin America and
elsewhere. This failure
to hold Kissinger accountable
has allowed him to continue
to promote new wars and
foreign interventions.
Kissinger geopolitical scheming
in the Indonesian archipelago
had particularly dire consequences
for the peoples there. In
1969, the U.S. conspired
with the Indonesian dictator
Suharto to facilitate the
illegal annexation of West
Papua through a transparently
bogus propaganda exercise
known as the "Act of
Free Choice." U.S.
behind-the-scenes support
at the United Nations for
this undemocratic farce
was essential to solidifying
the Indonesian dictatorship's
control of West Papua and
the more than four decades
of genocidal policies which
have decimated the Papuan
population.
Under
Kissinger's direction,
the U.S. gave a greenlight to
the 1975 Indonesian invasion
of East Timor (now Timor-Leste)
which ushered in a 24-year brutal
occupation by the Suharto dictatorship.
The Indonesian occupation of
East Timor and West Papua was
enabled by U.S. weapons and
training. This illegal flow
of weapons contravened congressional
intent, yet Kissinger bragged
about his ability to continue
arms shipments to Suharto (“The
illegal we do immediately, the
unconstitutional takes a bit
longer.”) These weapons
were essential to the Indonesian
dictator's consolidation of
military control in both East
Timor and West Papua, and these
occupations cost the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Timorese
and Papuan civilians. Kissinger’s
policy toward West Papua allowed
for the U.S.-based multinational
corporation
Freeport McMoRan to pursue
its mining interests in the
region, which has resulted in
terrible human rights and environmental
abuses; Kissinger was rewarded
with a
seat on the Board of Directors
from 1995-2001.
Just prior to reassuring Suharto
of continued U.S. support should
Indonesia invade East Timor,
Morocco moved to seize
Western Sahara, then a Spanish
colony. He worked for a West
Papua solution for Western Sahara,
where the UN would bless a phony
referendum endorsing annexation.
While Morocco and its allies
do all they can to delay a referendum,
Morocco continues to illegally
control most of Western Sahara.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, writing
of his time as U.S. ambassador
to UN in 1975, said that when
it came to East Timor and Western
Sahara that “The Department
of State desired that the United
Nations prove utterly ineffective
in whatever measures it undertook.
This task was given me, and
I carried it forward with no
inconsiderable success."
As National Security Adviser
and subsequently as Secretary
of State in the first and second
Nixon administrations and the
Ford administration Kissinger
prolonged prosecution of the
U.S. war in Indochina at the
cost of tens of thousands of
U.S. and allied service personnel’s
lives and hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese, Cambodian and
Lao civilians. Under Nixon-Kissinger
policies, the U.S. military
employed Agent Orange and other
chemicals which maimed and killed
U.S. and allied personnel, and
the long-term consequences of
exposure to Agent Orange and
other chemicals continues to
kill and affect the health of
millions in the region. Similarly,
the U.S. military's extensive
use of bombs and other munitions
throughout Indochina, and especially
in Laos, during Kissinger's
tenure, continues to cause casualties.
The illegal, secret invasion
of officially neutral Cambodia,
including extensive bombing
in the eastern portions of Cambodia,
shattered the weak and fragile
infrastructure of that country,
and contributed to the triumph
of the infamous Khmer Rouge
over the U.S.-backed, feckless
and corrupt Lon Nol regime in
1975.
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The infamous legacy
of Kissinger's tenure
entails a web of policy
failure that encircles
the globe.
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Beyond
the tragic Kissinger policies
in Indochina, the infamous legacy
of Kissinger's tenure entails
a web of policy failure that
encircles the globe. U.S. support
of the West Pakistani military's
1971 invasion of East Pakistan
facilitated the murder of hundreds
of thousands in what is now
Bangladesh. The U.S.-backed
1973 coup and assassination
of President Salvador Allende
inaugurated the brutal Pinochet
dictatorship in Chile. U.S.
greenlighting of the Turkish
military's 1974 invasion of
Cyprus created a political division
in that island nation that continue
to this day. U.S. support of
the Portuguese colonial regimes
in Angola, Guinea Bissau and
Mozambique, as well as racist
settler regimes in Northern
and Southern Rhodesia and South
Africa perpetuated the suffering
of civilians and effective colonial
rule in sub-Saharan Africa.
We
would applaud a congressional
hearing which carefully examined
Kissinger's policies and sought
to draw lessons from their disastrous
impact. However, the Senate
hearing will no doubt serve
as yet another opportunity for
Kissinger to hold forth on grand
foreign policy principles, while
ignoring the very real harm
to people's lives and livelihoods
from his actions.
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