One of the most manipulative and dangerous men to live in modern times. I think he will not be missed?

I'm not going to waste time on the videos, but I will say that the the overall view on him is much more nuanced than than that of the simpletons that call him a genocidal killer, which is an absurd allegation. Try reading Diplomacy which is a fantastic book of history.

Shagga said:

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I'm not going to waste time on the videos, but I will say that the the overall view on him is much more nuanced than than that of the simpletons that call him a genocidal killer, which is an absurd allegation. Try reading Diplomacy which is a fantastic book of history.

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While I agree in general with your statement, there is nothing nuanced about what Pinocet did in Argentina. Kissinger told Pinochet "whatever you think you need to do, do it quickly."

What Pinocet did was kidnap, rape, torture, and murder young people who were speaking out against him. Nothing less than what Hamas just did. There is nothing nuanced about that, nor about Kissingers advice to Pinocet.

The second video above is a song by U2 about the situation entitled "Mothers of the Disappeared."

Before you blast me let it be known that I was a fan of K, for the most part. But, he was human and erred. In the case or Pinocet, he really f'd up.

Pinochet was the leader of Chile, not Argentina.

You make a good point.

OldArmy71 said:

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Pinochet was the leader of Chile, not Argentina.

You make a good point.

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Pont well taken. I should proof read.

We all know what we think we "know" by comparison and that means our life experiences. Sometimes we learn valuable lessons, sometimes we learn some not so valuable lessons or the wrong lessons.

With Kissinger, mixture of the last two. His embrace of globalism stemmed from a childhood observations of Germany pre WWII and that the rest of the world did not act to stop it. He wanted to opem up China to trade because he reasoned that if they had financial skin in the game, they would be more reticent in engaging in proxy wars with the US such as Korea and South Vietnam.

But like all slippery slopes, economic ties can cut both ways as we saw with cartel theory and then decline of the European Common Market into the governmental EU, no longer a trade deal.

I am not in the Kissinger was evil group. I am more in the Kissinger learned the wrong lessons group.

But I am still open to the "he was raging globalist" group as well.

aggiehawg said:

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We all know what we think we "know" by comparison and that means our life experiences. Sometimes we learn valuable lessons, sometimes we learn some not so valuable lessons or the wrong lessons.

With Kissinger, mixture of the last two. His embrace of globalism stemmed from a childhood observations of Germany pre WWII and that the rest of the world did not act to stop it. He wanted to opem up China to trade because he reasoned that if they had financial skin in the game, they would be more reticent in engaging in proxy wars with the US such as Korea and South Vietnam.

But like all slippery slopes, economic ties can cut both ways as we saw with cartel theory and then decline of the European Common Market into the governmental EU, no longer a trade deal.

I am not in the Kissinger was evil group. I am more in the Kissinger learned the wrong lessons group.

But I am still open to the "he was raging globalist" group as well.

---

Very good points, Mrs. Hawg. At the time China was not seen as an economic threat as they were pi** poor. However, and has always seemed to happen throughout history, you open a can of worms and..... We are now paying the price. Although, there is a lot of commentary out there that China is much worse off thant the US financially, and, may crater. Guess it depends on how much FJB helps them.

Sharpshooter said:

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aggiehawg said:

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We all know what we think we "know" by comparison and that means our life experiences. Sometimes we learn valuable lessons, sometimes we learn some not so valuable lessons or the wrong lessons.

With Kissinger, mixture of the last two. His embrace of globalism stemmed from a childhood observations of Germany pre WWII and that the rest of the world did not act to stop it. He wanted to opem up China to trade because he reasoned that if they had financial skin in the game, they would be more reticent in engaging in proxy wars with the US such as Korea and South Vietnam.

But like all slippery slopes, economic ties can cut both ways as we saw with cartel theory and then decline of the European Common Market into the governmental EU, no longer a trade deal.

I am not in the Kissinger was evil group. I am more in the Kissinger learned the wrong lessons group.

But I am still open to the "he was raging globalist" group as well.

---

Very good points, Mrs. Hawg. At the time China was not seen as an economic threat as they were pi** poor. However, and has always seemed to happen throughout history, you open a can of worms and..... We are now paying the price. Although, there is a lot of commentary out there that China is much worse off thant the US financially, and, may crater. Guess it depends on how much FJB helps them.

---

I fully acknowledge I am not a big brain international economist but how does BRICs actually help China if they too are not partially acknowledging Kissinger's "skin in the game" argument?

No need to have "skin in the game" when you manipulate world markets, steal technology, and have a slave labor force. Who is going to abstain from working with you?

Although, Xi did visit FJB and my opinion is he did so because he sees the probable collapse of his economy if he does not call in some chips from the stuff he has on FJB.

PS: I am no world economist either. I am just a retired Ag who watches the markets daily. Thank goodness for the last month.

Sharpshooter said:

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No need to have "skin in the game" when you manipulate world markets, steal technology, and have a slave labor force. Who is going to abstain from working with you?

Although, Xi did visit FJB and my opinion is he did so because he sees the probable collapse of his economy if he does not call in some chips from the stuff he has on FJB.

PS: I am no world economist either. I am just a retired Ag who watches the markets daily. Thank goodness for the last month.

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Slave labor point makes me ask about China not using AI in BRICs countries.

Pinochet: I'm hungry and want to go get something to eat.

Kissinger: Go do what you have to do.

Pinochet: [Drives 100mph, runs red lights and mowes down pedestrians on the way to the drive through. ]

Public: Kissinger is evil for authorizing Pinochet to do that.

Sharpshooter said:

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Shagga said:

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I'm not going to waste time on the videos, but I will say that the the overall view on him is much more nuanced than than that of the simpletons that call him a genocidal killer, which is an absurd allegation. Try reading Diplomacy which is a fantastic book of history.

---

While I agree in general with your statement, there is nothing nuanced about what Pinocet did in Argentina. Kissinger told Pinochet "whatever you think you need to do, do it quickly."

What Pinocet did was kidnap, rape, torture, and murder young people who were speaking out against him. Nothing less than what Hamas just did. There is nothing nuanced about that, nor about Kissingers advice to Pinocet.

The second video above is a song by U2 about the situation entitled "Mothers of the Disappeared."

Before you blast me let it be known that I was a fan of K, for the most part. But, he was human and erred. In the case or Pinocet, he really f'd up.

---

He was an interventionist. You don't have to visit Cambodia, Laos, or anywhere else Kissinger left a bloody footprint to see with your own eyes the type of destruction he instigated. He was the driving force behind virtually every administration regarding foreign policy. We became a "nation builder " behind his influence, and his control of the media when it should have been called for what it really was, a colonial power. He was a key figure in the WEF, CFL, etc. I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

SportsagentAg92 said:

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Sharpshooter said:

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Shagga said:

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I'm not going to waste time on the videos, but I will say that the the overall view on him is much more nuanced than than that of the simpletons that call him a genocidal killer, which is an absurd allegation. Try reading Diplomacy which is a fantastic book of history.

---

While I agree in general with your statement, there is nothing nuanced about what Pinocet did in Argentina. Kissinger told Pinochet "whatever you think you need to do, do it quickly."

What Pinocet did was kidnap, rape, torture, and murder young people who were speaking out against him. Nothing less than what Hamas just did. There is nothing nuanced about that, nor about Kissingers advice to Pinocet.

The second video above is a song by U2 about the situation entitled "Mothers of the Disappeared."

Before you blast me let it be known that I was a fan of K, for the most part. But, he was human and erred. In the case or Pinocet, he really f'd up.

---

He was an interventionist. You don't have to visit Cambodia, Laos, or anywhere else Kissinger left a bloody footprint to see with your own eyes the type of destruction he instigated. He was the driving force behind virtually every administration regarding foreign policy. We became a "nation builder " behind his influence, and his control of the media when it should have been called for what it really was, a colonial power. He was a key figure in the WEF, CFL, etc. I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

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OMG.

"I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

You're not serious are you? Do just a minimal amount of research please

MAROON said:

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"I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

You're not serious are you? Do just a minimal amount of research please

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Check out his Colonial Power comment. It's all you need to know.

SportsagentAg92 said:

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Sharpshooter said:

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Shagga said:

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He was an interventionist. You don't have to visit Cambodia, Laos, or anywhere else Kissinger left a bloody footprint to see with your own eyes the type of destruction he instigated. He was the driving force behind virtually every administration regarding foreign policy. We became a "nation builder " behind his influence, and his control of the media when it should have been called for what it really was, a colonial power. He was a key figure in the WEF, CFL, etc. I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

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The references to Cambodia and Laos just wrong. The enemy, the Vietnamese, controlled that territory with the cooperation of that territory's government. It was action by congressional Democrats which directly led to the Killing Fields. Rich Lowry wrote about this today:

Quote:

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The Nixon administration's secret bombing of Cambodia and a brief invasion notoriously known as the "incursion" are often called war crimes. They supposedly destabilized Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge mad otherwise, we are assured, Cambodia would have escaped the chaos that engulfed the region in a decades-long military conflict, and the Khmer Rouge would have been moderate reformers.

Much is made, in the anti-Kissinger case, of Cambodian neutrality. But the country's neutral status had already been flagrantly violated by North Vietnam which ran fighters and matriel through Cambodia on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Michael Lind writes in his book, Vietnam: The Necessary War, "By 1970, North Vietnam had in effect annexed eastern Cambodia, to the extent of restricting the access of Cambodian officials and taxing and drafting Cambodian peasants."

Why should the North have been allowed to use Cambodia's territory to launch attacks into South Vietnam and against U.S. forces with impunity? It's not illegal under international law, let alone a war crime, to attack belligerents across a border.

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Quote:

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Although they eventually had a break, the Khmer Rouge was a North Vietnamese project. Pol Pot's biographer David Chandler writes, "Until the end of 1972, his troops were armed, trained, and often led by the Vietnamese. The defeats suffered by Lon Nol in 1970-1971 had been at the hands of Vietnamese regular forces."

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Quote:

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The U.S. held off the Khmer Rouge with a further bombing campaign in 1973, but Congress cut off support, and the group swept to power.

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Quote:

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The former secretary of state [Kissinger] has a complicated legacy, understandably for someone so influential for so long, but he's not responsible for the unspeakable enormities of fanatics he fought to keep out of power.

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MAROON said:

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"I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

You're not serious are you? Do just a minimal amount of research please

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Lol. Come on bro I was clearly being facetious.

Sabotaging the Johnson administration's peace talks with Vietnam
In the fall of 1968, Kissinger, then a key adviser to President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam peace talks, informed candidate Richard Nixon that a truce between the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government and communist North Vietnam was near. Afraid that a breakthrough in the talks would harm Nixon's political prospects against Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, Nixon's campaign had Anna Chennault, a Nixon liaison to South Vietnam, advise South Vietnam's government that it would get better terms if it waited on a deal until Nixon was elected. The South Vietnam government obediently backed away from the talks. Nixon was elected soon thereafter and the war continued for four more years.
When the FBI notified Johnson that Chennault had contacted the South Vietnamese, he was furious and called it an act of "treason." In 1973, Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire between the U.S. and North Vietnam, despite having torpedoed the peace talks years earlier.
The secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War
As National Security Advisor to Nixon, Kissinger spearheaded the United States' covert aerial bombing of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, a country with which the U.S. was not officially at war. In a campaign aimed at cutting off North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply lines, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the allies dropped in total during World War II. The bombings killed between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians. Cambodia's bombing was kept secret; Congress ended the program in 1973, several years after the public became aware of it.
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Worse still, the bombing is believed to have empowered the Khmer Rouge, which used civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. to recruit new members. The Khmer Rouge's ranks grew from 10,000 in 1969 to 500,000 in 1973. The Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 and killed some 2 million people before its ouster in 1979.
Kissinger has stood by the bombing of Cambodia and the management of the Vietnam War more broadly. He even suggested in a September 2014 interview with NPR that President Barack Obama's drone strikes in the Middle East killed more civilians, a statement debunked by Politifact, which found that between 2004 and 2014, CIA drones strikes have killed at least 1,089 civilians -- a fraction of the number the U.S. killed in Cambodia.


Complicated indeed. The spin machine is working overtime on his behalf. It's whatever though, that's why I was asking opinions. I didn't think anyone would take it seriously re Klaus Schwab being a bast*** that was just a bit of humor at the end. This is from Huffington Post.

Sharpshooter said:

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MAROON said:

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"I thought it was public knowledge that Klaus Schwab was his son out of wedlock?

You're not serious are you? Do just a minimal amount of research please

---

Check out his Colonial Power comment. It's all you need to know.

---

Sabotaging the Johnson administration's peace talks with Vietnam
In the fall of 1968, Kissinger, then a key adviser to President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam peace talks, informed candidate Richard Nixon that a truce between the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government and communist North Vietnam was near. Afraid that a breakthrough in the talks would harm Nixon's political prospects against Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, Nixon's campaign had Anna Chennault, a Nixon liaison to South Vietnam, advise South Vietnam's government that it would get better terms if it waited on a deal until Nixon was elected. The South Vietnam government obediently backed away from the talks. Nixon was elected soon thereafter and the war continued for four more years.
When the FBI notified Johnson that Chennault had contacted the South Vietnamese, he was furious and called it an act of "treason." In 1973, Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire between the U.S. and North Vietnam, despite having torpedoed the peace talks years earlier.
The secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War
As National Security Advisor to Nixon, Kissinger spearheaded the United States' covert aerial bombing of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, a country with which the U.S. was not officially at war. In a campaign aimed at cutting off North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply lines, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the allies dropped in total during World War II. The bombings killed between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians. Cambodia's bombing was kept secret; Congress ended the program in 1973, several years after the public became aware of it.
ADVERTISEMENT

Worse still, the bombing is believed to have empowered the Khmer Rouge, which used civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. to recruit new members. The Khmer Rouge's ranks grew from 10,000 in 1969 to 500,000 in 1973. The Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 and killed some 2 million people before its ouster in 1979.
Kissinger has stood by the bombing of Cambodia and the management of the Vietnam War more broadly. He even suggested in a September 2014 interview with NPR that President Barack Obama's drone strikes in the Middle East killed more civilians, a statement debunked by Politifact, which found that between 2004 and 2014, CIA drones strikes have killed at least 1,089 civilians -- a fraction of the number the U.S. killed in Cambodia.

I didn't think anyone would take it seriously re Klaus Schwab being a bast*** that was just a bit of humor at the end. This is from Huffington Post.

aggiehawg said:

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We all know what we think we "know" by comparison and that means our life experiences. Sometimes we learn valuable lessons, sometimes we learn some not so valuable lessons or the wrong lessons.

With Kissinger, mixture of the last two. His embrace of globalism stemmed from a childhood observations of Germany pre WWII and that the rest of the world did not act to stop it. He wanted to opem up China to trade because he reasoned that if they had financial skin in the game, they would be more reticent in engaging in proxy wars with the US such as Korea and South Vietnam.

But like all slippery slopes, economic ties can cut both ways as we saw with cartel theory and then decline of the European Common Market into the governmental EU, no longer a trade deal.

I am not in the Kissinger was evil group. I am more in the Kissinger learned the wrong lessons group.

But I am still open to the "he was raging globalist" group as well.

---

Germany thought they could keep Russia in check by partnering to buy their energy. Didn't work for them either.

As bad as Pinochet was to his enemies, socialists have always been far worse. Pinochet killed between 1200-3200 people. Venezuela has killed 18,000 and probably a lot more. If somebody had couped Hugo Chavez and only killed 3200 people, then that person would have actually saved lives.

Socialism is ALWAYS bad. Even when voted for by an ignorant populace.

Kissinger was a pioneer on selling out America to the Chinese.

Kissinger was often dealing with threading needles and backing the least bad of many bad options from the perspective of advancing or protecting American interests in a volatile time. You can argue he made the wrong choice sometimes but I don't think he was out to be nefarious.

back in the 70's....the U.S. was going to support any foreign government (or coup) that was non-communist or anti-communist, etc..,

regardless of how bad they were

including Indonesia in East Timor

He started the petrodollar. The UAE announced this week the end of pricing the oil in US dollar. Saudi to follow. The end of the dollar is close. HalleluYah!

Sid Farkas said:

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Kissinger was a pioneer on selling out America to the Chinese.

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bingo. him being responsible for firebombing some 3rd world regions doesn't move the needle much with me.
its being one of the original architects of the global society we are about to endure is why the middle class of america is better off without scum like him, david rockefeller, and Z Big.

Statesman my ass, hes more revered in china than over here for good reason.

How did he sell out America to the Chinese exactly?

I don't believe that for one moment. Nixon's administration was doing the work of using China's need for growth to introduce capitalism, eventually democracy, and a better form of government. I think most would agree that's not an easy thing to accomplish and a great gamble they took. It has kept the two countries from blowing up the world so far.

Kissinger was a piece of ***** I'm glad he's gone.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Kissinger was often dealing with threading needles and backing the least bad of many bad options from the perspective of advancing or protecting American interests in a volatile time. You can argue he made the wrong choice sometimes but I don't think he was out to be nefarious.

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Quite right. If anyone could do it, then Hillary and Blinken could do it.

Kissinger was considered a top notch diplomat for a good reason.

Kissinger was one of the most dominant figures in US history but I really did not know much about him, even though the America I lived in was profoundly shaped by him.

Niall Ferguson is working on the second volume of Kissinger's biography and wrote a fascinating appreciation of the man.

Quote:

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Born in southern Germany in 1923, as the Weimar hyperinflation reached its crescendo, and not yet 10 years old when Adolf Hitler came to power in Berlin, Kissinger was a refugee at 15, when his family fled Germany for New York...He fought as a rifleman at the Battle of the Bulge. He witnessed the liberation of the Ahlem concentration camp outside Hanover. He interrogated Nazis as a counterintelligence officer.

It was in occupied Germany that he learned of the deaths of more than a dozen of his relatives in the Holocaust. Is it plausible that such a man would be as callously indifferent to the victims of other wars and genocides as his critics have asserted?

Kissinger himself insisted that foreign policy was nearly always about making choices between evils...Not all Kissinger's choices look optimal today, with the benefit of hindsight....

A letter to his parents dated July 28, 1948: "To me there is not only right or wrong but many shades in between. … The real tragedies in life are not in choices between right and wrong. Only the most callous of persons choose what they know to be wrong."

And I remember thinking to myself: Now that doesn't sound much like the high priest of Realpolitik.

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