Henry Kissinger, the architect of some of the U.S.’s most gruesome and reprehensible foreign policy, died at 100 years old on Wednesday, Nov. 29.
In his early life, Kissinger, most prominently known for his role as secretary of state under Richard Nixon’s administration, had somewhat of an inspiring backstory.
Kissinger, a Jew, was born and raised in Germany and later fled to the U.S. in 1938 as a refugee. In 1943, Kissinger began his service in the U.S. Army, battling the Nazis he had fled from just a few years earlier.
Shortly after his service, Kissinger entered Harvard University and graduated summa cum laude in 1950. He spent the next decade ratcheting up efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy. He worked as a foreign policy advisor on the 1960, 1964 and 1968 campaigns of then-Governor of N.Y. Nelson Rockefeller.
In 1968, despite calling then-GOP nominee Richard Nixon “the most dangerous of all the men running to have as president,” Kissinger later called one of Nixon’s aides to say he would be willing to help him win the general election. He was appointed as a national security adviser following Nixon’s win.
Amid an ongoing war in Vietnam, Nixon had to grapple with how to end the conflict that had claimed over 76,000 Vietnamese casualties and over 7,700 U.S. casualties in 1968 alone, according to findings from a U.S. Senate report.
Though Kissinger favored a negotiating strategy with Vietnam, he was reportedly worried none of America’s allies would trust them if they were to let South Vietnam fall so quickly.
As Cambodian raids into South Vietnam began, Kissinger initially opposed bombing the country, a position that Nixon had supported. As the bombing campaign began under the guise of stopping the raids and focusing on Khmer Rouge targets, the civilian death toll rapidly rose under Operation Freedom Deal.
A 1973 Pentagon report detailed that Kissinger personally approved 3,875 bombing raids in Cambodia. According to declassified transcripts dating to 1970, he said of the bombings to a deputy, “It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, or anything that moves. You got that?”
According to a Dec. 2 BBC article, estimates of casualties due to the bombing campaign range from 50,000 to upwards of 150,000.
A May 23, 2023 article from The Intercept detailed the extent of Kissinger’s involvement in Cambodia, referring to it as “Kissinger’s secret war in Cambodia.”
In the article, a Cambodian survivor of the bombing campaign, 84-year-old Phok Horm, said, “People would panic. They would run. Sometimes they made it. Sometimes they would be killed. There was so much suffering.”
The initial campaign, codenamed Operation Menu, was carried out from Mar. 18, 1969 to May 26, 1970. A survivor of the Operation Menu bombings, 78-year-old Vuth Than said in the article, “I lost my mother, father, sisters, brothers, everyone. It was so terrible. Everything was completely destroyed.”
This is all to say that Kissinger represented some of the worst that America had to offer when it came to foreign policy. To simply call him a “diplomat,” does not tell half the story. It makes my stomach turn to know that for the rest of his long life, he was celebrated by so many people in power. He was routinely invited to speaking engagements at universities and institutes and he was invited to The White House by every president after Nixon except for Joe Biden, funnily enough.
Kissinger’s views are those of someone who was always foremost concerned about exerting U.S. influence globally, no matter the cost or moral bankruptcy that came from it. Everything Kissinger did was in furtherance of this destructive worldview.
It is difficult for me to feel sympathy for Kissinger’s death knowing the extent of his actions and that tens of thousands of lives were lost due to actions directly approved by him. He had the privilege of dying peacefully in his multi-million dollar compound in Connecticut, while the civilian victims of his bombing campaigns died young, with no chance of living out their dreams or aspirations.
He was an admittedly smart person, which makes it all the more frustrating that he weaponized his academic prowess to help justify such heinous actions. If Kissinger had taken his Harvard education and military service record and dedicated the rest of his life to working at a think tank or continuing his teaching at Harvard, this article would be very different, or perhaps not even exist. But he could not help himself from thirsting over the prospect of having control over foreign policy, and so here we are.
While his death will surely not signal the end of the U.S.’s disregard for civilian life abroad in military action, it still feels like the end of an era in some ways.
Nobody said it better than the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in his 2001 memoir, “A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines.”
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands,” Bourdain wrote.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
