Yep. He was an absolute monster. This quote by Anthony Bourdain always comes to mind when he gets brought up:
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
Everyone I know who is my age knows about it. If you have heard of “Manufacturing Consent” that’s one of the things Noam Chomsky writes about in that book.
The carpet bombing of Laos and covert support of Pol Pot is also one of the many reasons we all celebrated when Henry Kissinger died.
I think Americans probably know less about it than people outside the US. The US does a lot of awful stuff. We do care, it’s just the US is so powerful there’s nothing the rest of us can do about any of it.
One of the most outrageous things I learned was that when the communist Vietnamese government learned of what the Khmer Rouge has been doing, they swept in and deposed them from power over Cambodia. The Carter administration was one of I think like two governments that insisted on recognizing the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia at the UN after the Vietnamese kicked them out. IIRC, we were fully aware of what had been happening in Cambodia by that point.
IIRC, the CIA convinced the Hmong to fight for them against the communists in southeast Asia, and promised to take care of them if it all went south. Well, we all know how the Vietnam war went, and while a government that was very unhappy with the Hmong for siding with the CIA was taking over, the CIA basically threw deuces and vanished on them. So shocking and uncharacteristic of the US to betray an ally, I know. So, the Hmong fled to Thailand and begged the US for aid. I’m sure we’ll get the duality of tankie responses (nobody was treating them badly but if they were they deserved it), but the gist is that they were seeking refuge. A few years later, the US granted it. Now, bear in mind, originally they’d been told they were going to be able to have their own farms and fuck off to nowhere and mind their own business. Uncle Sam basically dumped them in Merced, California, patted himself on the back, and walked away. There was a lot of drama about it for a while, because the locals got real upset that this entire population just showed up basically overnight and seemed to resist integration, and the Hmong were upset because they just wanted to fuck off and mind their own farms. Fifty years later, though, the Hmong are a pretty big deal (in a good way) in the community, so that’s cool.
Care to elaborate? We weren’t (explicitly, anyway) bombing the Hmong when that fuckhead Kissinger decided to pave Laos. The Hmong were recruited to our side by the CIA. We certainly weren’t bombing them after we pulled out of Vietnam.
Oof, what we did in Vietnam to the Vietnamese people was already unbelievably evil and unforgivable, but we even betrayed people that risked everything to help us? Wow.
My heart breaks for all the people who died in that terrible war: the innocent Vietnamese who merely wanted to be free to self determine and also the young boys that the US sent to their death for absolutely no good reason.
I’m far from an expert and only know what I know from a short story.
But the Hmong people are from Laos but many of them fled to Thailand as refugees I think it was from some military action.
I’m not sure, but it might have been the US military. I read somewhere that Laos had the most bombs dropped on it or something.
Again, this info could be off, so please double check if you want to learn more, but this might get you started.
America secretly carpet bombed Laos when Laos wasn’t even at war.
They dropped 2 MILLION tons of bombs onto it and somehow kept it a secret from the American people for multiple years. One of Henry Kissingers ideas.
Yep. He was an absolute monster. This quote by Anthony Bourdain always comes to mind when he gets brought up:
Instead he got given a Nobel Peace Prize and went on to help more people commit genocides in other countries. An incredibly evil person.
The fact that Bourdain died young and Kissinger lived to be 100 proves that the world is not a just place.
That’s so crazy, the US did all this dark stuff and no one knows or really cares.
I don’t blame people for not caring as there is so much, “US is the shining beacon of freedom and justice in the world” propaganda.
But it’s just crazy how these things happen and a few years later the world acts like it didn’t.
Everyone I know who is my age knows about it. If you have heard of “Manufacturing Consent” that’s one of the things Noam Chomsky writes about in that book.
The carpet bombing of Laos and covert support of Pol Pot is also one of the many reasons we all celebrated when Henry Kissinger died.
I think Americans probably know less about it than people outside the US. The US does a lot of awful stuff. We do care, it’s just the US is so powerful there’s nothing the rest of us can do about any of it.
One of the most outrageous things I learned was that when the communist Vietnamese government learned of what the Khmer Rouge has been doing, they swept in and deposed them from power over Cambodia. The Carter administration was one of I think like two governments that insisted on recognizing the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia at the UN after the Vietnamese kicked them out. IIRC, we were fully aware of what had been happening in Cambodia by that point.
IIRC, the CIA convinced the Hmong to fight for them against the communists in southeast Asia, and promised to take care of them if it all went south. Well, we all know how the Vietnam war went, and while a government that was very unhappy with the Hmong for siding with the CIA was taking over, the CIA basically threw deuces and vanished on them. So shocking and uncharacteristic of the US to betray an ally, I know. So, the Hmong fled to Thailand and begged the US for aid. I’m sure we’ll get the duality of tankie responses (nobody was treating them badly but if they were they deserved it), but the gist is that they were seeking refuge. A few years later, the US granted it. Now, bear in mind, originally they’d been told they were going to be able to have their own farms and fuck off to nowhere and mind their own business. Uncle Sam basically dumped them in Merced, California, patted himself on the back, and walked away. There was a lot of drama about it for a while, because the locals got real upset that this entire population just showed up basically overnight and seemed to resist integration, and the Hmong were upset because they just wanted to fuck off and mind their own farms. Fifty years later, though, the Hmong are a pretty big deal (in a good way) in the community, so that’s cool.
You missed the carpet bombing part.
Care to elaborate? We weren’t (explicitly, anyway) bombing the Hmong when that fuckhead Kissinger decided to pave Laos. The Hmong were recruited to our side by the CIA. We certainly weren’t bombing them after we pulled out of Vietnam.
Oof, what we did in Vietnam to the Vietnamese people was already unbelievably evil and unforgivable, but we even betrayed people that risked everything to help us? Wow.
My heart breaks for all the people who died in that terrible war: the innocent Vietnamese who merely wanted to be free to self determine and also the young boys that the US sent to their death for absolutely no good reason.
It’s a testament to Kurdish military prowess that the same story with different details didn’t happen to them
*Kurdish military prowess and the sheer military incompetence of Middle Eastern dictatorships.