As the title says, who is Henry Kissinger?

I read this from Wikipedia:

“Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated an opening of relations with China, engaged in what became known as shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. He has also been associated with controversial policies, such as the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, U.S. involvement in the 1973 Chilean military coup, a “green light” to Argentina’s military junta for their Dirty War, and U.S. support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War despite a genocide being perpetrated by Pakistan.”

It sounds like he was a bad guy, but I know there’s more to the story than that with the collective hate I see for him here on Lemmy.

  • Xariphon@kbin.social
    5·
    11 months ago

    He was involved in…

    … Sabotaging peace talks that extended the Vietnam War by years. (This was literally treason and he knew it.) He did this to help Nixon win election.

    … Carpet-bombing Cambodia (who weren’t even involved) which gave rise to the Khmer Rouge (who killed a fucking lot of people).

    … Using the Kurds as part of a proxy war and throwing them under the bus the instant he didn’t need them any more (leaving them vulnerable to another genocide).

    … Fucking Watergate. As in, he was in that shit deeper than Nixon himself and got off basically clean.

    … Training and equipping the Mujahideen (as part of yet another proxy war with Russia) back when we liked Afghanistan (because they hated Russia too). They later became the Taliban. Lots of people say Bush did 9/11, and, while he isn’t blameless, in a very real way Nixon and Kissinger did 9/11.

    … Botching a kidnapping attempt (that was itself an attempt to prevent a progressive candidate from being elected in Chile) which ended up getting a famous general assassinated instead.

    That’s just what I remember off the top of my head.

    It goes deeper.

    Maybe as deep as his ass is in hell now.