It’s obscene that Henry Kissinger could celebrate his 100th birthday on May 27. Patrice Lumumba, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Dr. King were all murdered before they reached 40.
Each of these heroes would be younger today than this war criminal if they had not been assassinated and were able to have long lives.
Kissinger deserves Nuremberg justice for mass murder on three continents. On his watch, millions of people were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, East Timor, Angola, South Africa, and Palestine.
Using his credentials as an “elder statesman,” Nixon’s former accomplice is a cheerleader for the proxy war against the Russian Federation in Ukraine. In a lengthy interview with “The Economist” ― a mouthpiece of the British and U.S. financial aristocracy ― Kissinger demanded that Ukraine be admitted to NATO.
That would turn the present conflict into a world war involving four nuclear powers: the United States, Britain, France, and Russia.
Kissinger also believes that Japan will develop nuclear weapons within five years. This is part of the war drive against the socialist People’s Republic of China.
It was by advocating so-called tactical nuclear weapons that Kissinger rose to prominence in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. His 1957 book, “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” claimed that wars could still be fought with nukes yet prevented from turning into World War 3.
The key would be using “only ” nukes equivalent to 50 kilotons (50,000 tons) of TNT. The bomb that killed over 100,000 people in Nagasaki, Japan, was less than one-third that size.
Kissinger hit the big time as a protégé of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a member of the world’s first billionaire family that founded Big Oil. When Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited the United Nations in 1961, Rockefeller harangued him.
“He talked to me about nothing but bomb shelters,” said Nehru. “Why does he think I am interested in bomb shelters? He gave me a pamphlet on how to build my own shelter.”
Like Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, the campaign to build fallout shelters was an attempt to convince people they could survive a U.S. nuclear war on the socialist countries.
Kissinger’s nuclear bullying
For decades the U.S. State Department was a Rockefeller property. John Foster Dulles ― Eisenhower’s first Secretary of State ― was managing partner of Sullivan & Cromwell, the family’s law firm.
Dean Rusk ― Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson ― had been president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Even Trump’s first Secretary of State ― Rex Tillerson ― was former CEO of ExxonMobil, the descendant of Rockefeller’s crown jewel, Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Henry Kissinger was another Rockefeller employee. Upon becoming Nixon’s National Security Adviser, the New York governor thoughtfully gave Kissinger $50,000, worth $426,000 today.
No one was prosecuted for this bribe. Kissinger illegally stored State Department papers in Nelson Rockefeller’s private vault at the family’s six-square-mile Kykuit estate in Westchester County, north of New York City.
Less than two months after Nixon was inaugurated president in 1969, he and Kissinger launched Operation Menu, the massive bombing of Cambodia. The killing of thousands of people in a sovereign country was a war crime and a violation of international law.
So is Biden’s occupation and bombing of Syria.
Nixon and Kissinger could have made the same peace agreement in 1969 with Vietnam that they finally did in 1973. Millions of lives would have been saved in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as 20,000 fewer dead GIs.
Despite Kissinger’s barely disguised threats at the Paris peace talks to use nuclear weapons, Vietnam refused to surrender. At the Dec. 4, 1972 meeting, Vietnamese negotiator Lê Đức Thọ told Kissinger off:
“We … sometimes think that you would also use atomic weapons because, during the resistance against the French, Vice President Nixon proposed the use of atomic weapons. …
“If we do not achieve … [our] goal in our lifetime our children will continue the struggle … We have been subjected to tens of millions of bombs and shells. The equal of … 600 atomic bombs. …
“The simple truth is that we will not submit and reconcile ourselves to being slaves. So your threats and broken promises, we say, that is not a really serious way to carry on negotiations.”
It was because of these nuclear threats and the U.S. killing of millions that Lê Đức Thọ refused the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to himself and Kissinger.
All the power of the Pentagon couldn’t prevent a Vietnamese tank from smashing through the gate of the former U.S. embassy in what became Hồ Chí Minh City on April 30, 1975. Vietnam’s victory continues to inspire oppressed people from Palestine to the Philippines.
Chile’s 9-11 and Operation Condor
Vietnam wasn’t the only place where Kissinger’s bloody imprint was felt. U.S. copper companies and the ITT conglomerate couldn’t tolerate the election of the socialist Salvador Allende as Chile’s president in 1970.
Even before Allende was elected, Kissinger was plotting to overthrow him. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people,” said Kissinger. So much for democracy and self-determination.
More people were killed when General Pinochet and the CIA overthrew Chile’s government on 9-11-73 than were killed on 9-11-01 in Manhattan. President Allende was among the victims. Santiago’s football stadium was filled with prisoners awaiting execution, including the folk singer Victor Jara who was tortured to death.
Secretary of State Kissinger approved of these atrocities. “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet when they met in Chile on June 8, 1976. “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”
Three months later, former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an aide, Ronni Moffitt, were murdered in a Washington, D.C., car bombing on Sept. 21, 1976. Their assassination by Pinochet’s secret police agents was part of Operation Condor, a joint effort by six South American dictatorships to exterminate leftists.
Operation Condor’s lynchpin was Argentina dictator Jorge Videla. Kissinger told Videla’s foreign minister, César Guzzetti, on June 10, 1976, that he “hoped the Argentine government could get the terrorist problem under control as quickly as possible.”
By “terrorists,” Kissinger meant any opponents of the bloody military regime that murdered as many as 30,000 political prisoners. Hundreds were thrown out of helicopters into the Atlantic Ocean.
Kissinger vs. African liberation
Kissinger’s Eurocentric arrogance and contempt toward all oppressed countries was evident in his exchange with Chilean Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdés in June 1969. (Valdés was a member of the Christian Democratic government that preceded Allende’s.)
Kissinger told Valdés, “You come here speaking of Latin America, but this is not important. Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South.”
In 1972, Kissinger described Bangladesh as a “basket case,” a terrible, bigoted term for a country looted by British colonialism for 190 years. The year before, the U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise was sent to the Bay of Bengal to try to intimidate India, which was supporting the independence struggle in Bangladesh.
Pakistan’s military, using the codename “Operation Searchlight,” carried out massacres against Bengali people with Nixon’s and Kissinger’s consent.
When Nixon and Kissinger arrived in Washington in 1969, Nelson Mandela had been in jail for over six years. U.S. imperialism was determined to keep him there. The CIA helped the apartheid secret police arrest the African National Congress leader in 1962.
The fascist government in Portugal ― a founding member of NATO ― was dropping U.S.-supplied napalm bombs on African liberation fighters in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.
Ian Smith declared “Rhodesia” (occupied Zimbabwe) independent and said that he didn’t “believe in Black majority rule ever in Rhodesia — not in a thousand years.”
White settlers occupied Namibia, a former German colony, where they celebrated Hitler’s birthday.
Change was coming, however. The armed struggle of Africans led to the overthrow of the fascist regime in Lisbon on April 25, 1974.
Fighting for their liberation, Africans also brought some freedom to Portuguese working people. The Portuguese Communist Party played a key role in the Portuguese Revolution while extending aid to their comrades in Africa.
Africa called, Cuba answered, Kissinger threatened
After tremendous sacrifice, all of Portugal’s African colonies won their freedom. The People’s Republic of Angola was born on Nov. 11, 1975.
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, along with his employees, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House occupant Gerald Ford, sought to kill it. They had the Nazi armies of then-apartheid South Africa invade the African country.
Africa needed help. Over 2,000 Cuban soldiers died fighting alongside their African comrades in defeating the apartheid forces.
As Elombe Brath ― the late Pan-African educator and organizer who was a founder of the December 12th Movement ― declared, “When Africa called, Cuba answered!”
The White House and the entire U.S. ruling class were furious. Kissinger wanted to invade Cuba.
“I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford on March 24, 1976. Ford said, “I agree.”
Kissinger told a meeting that included Gen. George Brown of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “If we decide to use military power, it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures.”
A Black shield stopped Kissinger. Because of the “economic draft,” poor people are driven to enlist in the military. At the time, one out-of-four GIs were Black.
Even the generals had to take this into account. For the same reason, Trump was stopped from declaring martial law on June 1, 2020, against the Black Lives Matter movement.
It was the courage of the Cuban people led by Comrade Fidel Castro, the Black community in the United States, and the existence of the Soviet Union that prevented an attack on Cuba.
The dramatic throwing back of the apartheid forces at the gates of Luanda, Angola’s capital, sent shock waves through Africa. Less than a year later, Black youth in Soweto rebelled on June 16, 1976.
At least 700 Africans were murdered by apartheid forces, often armed with Israeli-made weapons. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz acknowledges that “South Africa under apartheid was the Israeli defense industry’s biggest customer.”
David Rockefeller ― the real “Dr. Evil” who was Nelson’s brother ― came to apartheid’s rescue. As CEO of the Chase Manhattan bank, now JPMorgan Chase, with $3.7 trillion in assets, David loaned hundreds of millions to the apartheid regime.
David Rockefeller repeated the extension of hundreds of millions in loans after the March 21, 1960, Sharpeville massacre in which 69 Africans were murdered.
Despite these banksters propping up apartheid, the “Soweto generation” of African youth led the way to overthrow it.
Petrodollars and splitting the socialist countries
The Portuguese colony of East Timor in Southeast Asia also declared its freedom in 1975. However, Indonesian dictator Suharto ― who rose to power a decade before by killing a million communists, workers, and peasants ― couldn’t tolerate a neighboring free state.
President Gerald Ford and Kissinger gave the green light to Suharto to crush East Timor when they visited him in early December 1975. Suharto respectfully delayed his invasion of East Timor until Dec. 7, 1975, one day after Ford and Kissinger had departed.
At least 200,000 people in East Timor, one-third of its population, were slaughtered.
Key to Wall Street’s wealth and power is plundering the oil-producing countries in Western Asia. The Pentagon’s biggest weapon in making this happen is the Israeli apartheid regime that occupies Palestine.
That’s why the U.S. has given more than $158 billion to the Zionist regime.
General Alexander the Haig ― as Gil Scott-Heron called him ― described Israel as “America’s largest aircraft carrier which never could be sunk.” Haig had been an aide to Kissinger before becoming National Security Adviser and later Reagan’s first Secretary of State.
The billions of dollars of weapons shipped by the Pentagon to Israel during the Ramadan war (also called the Yom Kippur war) in October 1973 enraged Arab people. An oil embargo began.
As a result of this strike, Big Oil had to, at least temporarily, jack up what it was paying for petroleum. Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” aimed to claw this money back in this period.
The petrodollar was born. The oil-producing countries had to put their reserves in U.S. banks.
It was Nixon going off the gold standard in 1971 and the petrodollar that allowed the United States to roll up huge foreign trade deficits. The U.S. dollar has become world money, a mighty weapon for Wall Street to use against its European and Japanese imperialist rivals.
Even after Kissinger left office, he was a power player for Big Oil. It was David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger that demanded the bloody Shah be admitted to the U.S. after the Iranian people overthrew him.
Just as poisonous as his other crimes were Kissinger’s efforts to further the split in the socialist camp between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. All of Kissinger’s trips to Beijing and Moscow were for this purpose.
When Kissinger croaks, he will be remembered as a nightmare.
