Henry Kissinger was the definition of elite impunity

For U.S. mass media, Henry Kissinger’s quip that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” rang as an obvious truism. Influential reporters and pundits often expressed their love for him. For decades, the media establishment swooned over one of the worst war criminals in modern history.

After news of his death broke on Wednesday night, prominent coverage echoed the kind that had followed him ever since his years with President Richard Nixon, while they teamed up to oversee vast carnage in Southeast Asia. The headline of a Washington Post news bulletin summed up: “Henry Kissinger Dies at 100. The Noted Statesman and Scholar Had Unparalleled Power Over Foreign Policy.”

But can a war criminal really be a “noted statesman”?

The New York Times’ top story began by describing Kissinger as a “scholar-turned-diplomat who engineered the United States’ opening to China, negotiated its exit from Vietnam, and used cunning, ambition and intellect to remake American power relationships with the Soviet Union at the time of the Cold War, sometimes trampling on democratic values to do so.”

And so, the Times spotlighted Kissinger’s role in the U.S. “exit from Vietnam” in 1973 — but not his role during the previous four years, overseeing merciless slaughter in the escalation of a war that took several million lives. …

https://www.salon.com/2023/11/30/henry-kissinger-was-the-definition-of-elite-impunity/

*********************************************************************

Biden Is the Latest President To Tout the Vietnam War as Proud History

‘Napalm Girl’ at 50: The story of the Vietnam War’s defining photo / “Because Our Fathers Lied”: Craig McNamara Reveals the Lies of His Father, Robert McNamara

How the trauma of the Vietnam War led to the age of “alternative facts”

Seymour Hersh on Witnessing American War Crimes in Vietnam

Vietnam: Epitaph of a soldier

‘I sent them a good boy and they made him a murderer’

70 Years ago, the CIA overthrew the government of Mosaddegh in Iran. Washington has been Complaining about Iran ever Since

Files reveal Nixon’s role in plot to block Allende from Chilean presidency

The joint CIA – MI-6 instigated coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up

Eve Ottenberg: Abolish the CIA