Henry Kissinger: War Criminal?

[melon]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011206/ts/indonesia_usa_dc.html

There's that, and it's known that Kissinger if afraid of leaving the country, because he fears getting arrested like Pinochet, since it is known that the U.S. was involved in the 1973 coup that overthrew Chilean President Allende and installed Pinochet.

And so, I would like to pose a question: if he was arrested on war crimes, what would you think? Are the only war criminals those "damn foreigners"?

What's your opinion? I really don't know myself.

Melon

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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time

 

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by DoctorGonzo:
Kissinger should be extradited.
Bring Kissinger to justice and show that the War On Terrorism is a war on ALL terror, not just that perpotrated by our enemies.
[This message has been edited by DoctorGonzo (edited 12-07-2001).]

excellent dr. gonzo. unfortunately the dominant discourses that are so pervasive in the western society rule out any possibility of kissinger being exposed for his crimes. though everything you said is fact, the man is revered as an expert to this day, and such 'accusations' as yours would never make it to the forefront of mainstream media.
sad really.

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bottom line: U2 rules.

 

[sulawesigirl4]

Interesting article. Touchy issue. As someone who has lived in Indonesia, I would like to add that there is something to be said for the unpredictability of the Indonesian government, especially in that time period. If anyone is going to have the finger pointed at them and brought to justice for what happened in East Timor, I think the blame should go to President Suharto. Because ultimately, it was he and his regime that made the decision and continued to enforce their rule throughout the next decades, NOT Kissinger.

That said, I do think that if there is evidence linking him to crimes such as the ones DoctorGonzo speaks of in Argentina, I do not see why the rules should apply any differently to him than we would want them applied to "foreign" war criminals. As members of the world community, it would be hypocritical to assume a different standard applies to American actions.

-sula

 

[speedracer]

Yeah, but...

It's not like Kissinger was a rogue acting in his own interests, like Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are. He was acting in the interests of the executive branch of the US government, as misguided and wrong as they were.

So I'm not sure if he, or he and Nixon, or he and Nixon and the CIA, or the US government should bear responsibility.

[This message has been edited by speedracer (edited 12-07-2001).]

 

[DoctorGonzo]

It's not like Kissinger was a rogue acting in his own interests, like Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are. He was acting in the interests of the executive branch of the US government, as misguided and wrong as they were.

You give the orders, you take the responsibility.

This has been proven time and time again, most notably at the Nurmeburg trials where Nazis who did nothing but sign papers all day ended up facing the worst punishments.

The law makes no disctinction between issuing an illegal order and implementing an illegal order from above.

And there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that Kissinger did make many of the decsions himself.

 

[Matthew_Page2000]

Although I've disagreed with DoctorGonzo on a lot of things I'm in complete agreement with him here. Kissinger should be tried at the Hague. Like any human being he deserves a fair trial, but the evidence against him is awfully compelling.

MAP

 

[Anthony]

This is incredible. Until today, I didn't know of the US involvment with the overthrow of Allende to support Pinochet. Oh, I knew Margaret Thatcher did - that fascist cow (Pinochet and Thatcher do not deserve my diplomacy or courteousy)was best friends with Augusto Pinochet, but then again, they were both fascists so how could they NOT get along?

As for the topic of Pinochet, I have Spanish inheritance and have a personal connection with Pinochet, since, under his rule, lots of Spaniards went disappearing - having said that, I think the man is a criminal who has made a mockery of justice.

I have unlimited hatred for the man and all those who support him and helped him to power, this includes Kissinger, and yes - Kissinger should stand trial for the evil he helped and nurtured.

Ant.

 

[ocu2fan]

Wouldn't habeas corpus apply to Henry Kissinger? At least by the U.S. Constitution you can't try a man for actions he committed before there was a law, no matter how guilty he may be afterward.

 

[DoctorGonzo]

Kissinger should be extradited.

The U.S should be held to the same standards it holds the rest of the world, and this includes war criminials.

Kissinger planned and ordered the illegal removal of a sitting democratically elected president. Imagine what would happen if someone did that to us? Imagine the outrage! We would want whoever was responsible brought to justice! Especially if the engineered repelacement cheif executive was a genocial madman like Pinochet.

Even the CIA's own documents clearly state that Allende posed absolutely no risk to anyone and was simply not a threat, period. The U.S ambassador at the time agrees.

But we comitted an act of terrorism anyway.

We didn't care.

The American people heard little about it and they were told he was a "communist" - a label applied to anyone the government wasn't too fond of even if it was patently untrue.

Kissinger has made a lot of enemies in his years. Deliberate carpet-bombing civillian targets in Laos killed tens of thousands of people. He directed the operation (something the national security adviser isn't even supposed to be doing) and for that he should face charges, as well.

Failure to bring him to justice will just cement in the opinion of the rest of the world that we do not really care about terrorism if it serves our interests. That U.S policy, no matter how blatantly immoral and illegal, is not open for question and citizens of the United States are not subject to the same standards the U.S is attempting to impose by millitary might on the rest of the world.

If we refuse to hand him over the American public will buy it....mostly....the media doesn't really care that much and lack of information will insure neither do the American people. And many of them have a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do mentality with regard to foreign affairs.

Failure to hand him over will simply reenforce the negative views around the world among rational and peaceful populations and help to further solidify the resiviors of support fanatics receive and can freely call on, elsewhere.

Bring Kissinger to justice and show that the War On Terrorism is a war on ALL terror, not just that perpotrated by our enemies.

Hell, he should face charges here as well for deliberately sabotaging the 1968 peace talks. He engineered their collapse to hasten the fall of Johnson and bring Nixon into favor with the American people ahead of that year's election.

Years, and thousands upon thousands of lives later he helped broker a deal.....identical to the one he helped destroy.

[This message has been edited by DoctorGonzo (edited 12-07-2001).]

 

[radiodivision]

Great points DoctorGonzo...for those of you who are interested, there is a good book about this "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens. He is pretty good about documenting most of the stuff DoctorGonzo mentioned.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by ocu2fan:
Wouldn't habeas corpus apply to Henry Kissinger? At least by the U.S. Constitution you can't try a man for actions he committed before there was a law, no matter how guilty he may be afterward.

Well, considering that it has always been illegal to support fascist regimes, I don't know why this 'habeas corpus; of yours should apply. I don't think people have a good enough grasp of just how EVIL Pinochet's regime was, it was nearly on the level of Nazism, so how can you defend someone with such a notion if he upheld it?

Not good enough.

Ant.

 

[anitram]

From here:

Where does one begin with Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and serial killer extraordinaire? Let's list just a few of the things he did while in charge of U.S. foreign policy:

He ordered the Christmas bombing of Hanoi that killed over 2,000 civilians and flattened Bach Mai hospital.

He organized the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia that killed almost a million civilians, and resulted in the reign of Pol Pot, who killed another million.

He facilitated the Phoenix program which systematically murdered at least 70,000 civilians from June 1967 through 1970. In 1970, a U.S. Congressional study found that the program "appears to have violated the 1949 Geneva Convention for the protection of civilians."

He aided Operation Condor, where the military dictatorships of Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador assassinated, tortured and murdered political opponents throughout South America. Kissinger was chair of the Interagency Committee on Chile at the time when Condor operatives arrested and murdered American Charles Horman in Chile. State Department documents released in 1999 indicate that the U.S. fingered Horman.

He endorsed Indonesia's 1975 genocidal invasion of East Timor. The day before the attack, Kissinger, then Secretary of State, was in Jakarta telling the press that the "U.S. understands Indonesia's position on the question" of East Timor. The takeover killed 600,000 Timorese.

While a certain numbness creeps into your soul when you start totting up Kissinger's crimes, those abominations should hardly paralyze the wheel of law. Three countries are already after the man. In May, French magistrate Roger Le Loire subpoenaed Kissinger to testify about the murder of five French civilians by Operation Condor. Kissinger fled Paris the next day. Then in June, Argentine judge Rodolf Canacoba Corral issued Kissinger a summons to answer for the disappearance of its citizens. Chilean judge Juan Guzman Tapia is also seeking to question Kissinger concerning the murder of Charles Horman.

In a sense, the problem is deciding where to stop the list of potential war criminals. Kissinger certainly engaged in war crimes in Vietnam, but so did General William Westmoreland and a host of other commanders -- the "I was just following orders, and it was a complex war" gang -- who created free-fire zones, imprisoned civilians in strategic hamlets, and released troops to take part in Operation Phoenix. And what do we do about the civilian leaders who knew exactly what was going on in places like Thanh Phong, but saw it as a "necessity of war"?

This country has never acknowledged that Americans can commit war crimes. Indeed, while we may arrest Serbs and send them to The Hague, the U.S. does not recognize the jurisdiction of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal. Congress only passed a law against war crimes in l996.

However, we are still bound by the Geneva Convention, which recognizes no statute of limitations on war crimes and allows those so charged to be tried in other countries. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet dodged just such a trial in England by pleading ill health, and recently, several Catholic nuns were convicted in Belgium of crimes against humanity for their participation in the 1994 genocidal rampage against Tutsis and their Hutu allies in Rwanda.

The U.S. may never bring its rogues gallery to trial, but if I were Messrs. Clark, Kerrey, and Kissinger, I would be mighty careful which countries I traveled to in the coming years.

 

[DoctorGonzo]

The trial of Henry Kissinger would mean the end of U.S Foreign Policy as we know it.

No longer would leaders be able to act with impunity and the flurry of indictments would be unbelieveable. Officals from the Clinton to Nixon administrations would be sent to court to answer for their actions.

Conservatives - many of the ones who support unconstitutional millitary tribunals of foreign nationals - would lambast it as an "attack on our soverignity".

Put Kissinger on trial, along with anyone who worked in the killling fields of Central America during the 1980s.

 

[sv]

Kissinger is just one example - the evidence against him would be incredibly hard to refute in a fair court.

Osama Bin Laden is a guy who funds other lunatics to go murder civilians - therefore he is classified as a terrorist (correctly).

When U.S. corporations, the U.S. government, and their agents fund brutal dictators around to world who are willing to create a "favorable business climate" for us (i.e. no labor unions, no worker rights, horrendous occupational conditions, death squads and the like to discipline people who object), should that not be considered the same thing?

I bring that up because that's what's going on NOW. Putting Kissinger on trial would be OK - he is certainly deserving. But it's more important for people to focus their energy on what the U.S. (and other countries of course - we are not alone in these awful deeds) is doing NOW - because so many lives can still be saved, and to some degree (albeit diminshing rapidly) we do live in a country where organized nonviolent action can sometimes influence politicians to change their actions.

 

[Hans Moleman]

It may be another 5-10 years, considering I want to have my life settled before I even consider this, but I have considered very sincerely and seriously running for political office. I'd obviously start lower--township supervisor, or maybe even as high as state representative--and work my way up with experience.

Then, much of this stuff that has been woefully neglected due to lack of media attention--everything from this to our imbalanced tax structures--will be brought up by me. Of course, the reality will be that Kissinger will likely be dead and, thus, have gotten away with it. What is done is done, I guess, but what is really criminal is in our very apathetic Legislature, obsessed with fundraising and looking good, while never once taking a stand.

Perhaps my foray in politics will never last more than four years, due to the inherent loudness I tend to bring to issues, but it would be more useful than Strom Thurmond's decades of uselessness.

Whatever happened to our Legislature? Has apathy finally crossed over from the voters to the politicians as well?

~melon

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"Oh no...my brains."

 

[Judah]

Hey, doctorgonzo, i just left this link at another topic (re: "the traitor") in Free Your Mind, but it's more relevant here:
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/omissions.shtml

A good discussion of "war crimes" and whether the U.S. could possibly be charged for them re: the Afghan campaign.

Sorry for the duplication...