Henry Kissinger dies at 100
Henry Alfred Kissinger who was United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford has died. A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938, he became National Security Advisor in 1969 and U.S. Secretary of State in 1973. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.
Two members of the committee resigned in protest. Kissinger later sought, unsuccessfully, to return the prize after the ceasefire failed.
He began the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People’s Republic of 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, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Kissinger is regarded as a controversial figure in American politics, and has been condemned as a war criminal by journalists, political activists, and human rights lawyers.
How many of his eulogists will grapple with his full record in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, Argentina, East Timor, Cyprus, and elsewhere?
Category: International Affairs, Politics
By.
Rest in Pieces. And you have just helped reduce the world’s population…again. Gotta wonder what he and his buddy Xi talked about this past year.
Worse than George Soros and didn’t even spend his own money in the process.
I wonder how many flights he had on Epstein’s sex plane.
He was also an enlisted soldier at the Battle of the Bulge.
His diplomatic track record is not perfect, but enough of the wrong people hate him – he’s got my respect.
Same here.
And, yes, same here!
Didn’t always agree with him, but always thought he was worth listening to. Unlike today’s “heavyweight” diplomats/politicians.
The old fool was one of the only ones looking for peace in the Ukraine.
Then, he “changed” his mind fairly quickly.
He could never leave the US.
I’ll put it this way, he lived a full life. From fleeing the Nazis as a teenager to fighting against them a handful of years later, to becoming one of the most influential people in American politics, he made a mark. It’s up to each of us to determine how positive or negative his legacy is, but you can’t deny that he did make an impact.
He’s the guy who brought you OPEC. That’s his legacy.
OPEC was established in 1960 following efforts dating more than a decade prior, long before Kissinger was doing anything directly influential on national foreign policy (until 1968, the closest he came was advising Rockefeller during his failed presidential campaigns – long after Standard Oil’s monopoly).
This article was from American about Henry Kissengers Military servicehe American Legion Magazine recently spoke with Kissinger, whose family fled Nazi Germany in 1938.
Describe your entry into U.S. military service and early impression of it.
Kissinger: I worked in a shaving-brush factory, and I went to city college at night, which was substantially free. I came to the United States and lived largely in a refugee environment. When I was drafted into the Army, after many different movements, I wound up in the 84th Infantry Division as a rifleman. The 84th Infantry Division came from northern Illinois and southern
Wisconsin. So, I was surrounded there by what I would consider to be fundamental Americans and readily learned day-to-day living with Americans.
Kissinger: In the military, you are who you are. It doesn’t matter what you were before, or after. In my life, one of the interesting things was that I had – and still have, obviously – an accent. Some think it’s a trademark. But I was very self-conscious about it. When I entered the Army, nobody ever asked me about my accent in the three-and-a-half years I served. It wasn’t until I got back to Harvard that people started reminding me that I was foreign-born. So, the Army was a great Americanizing experience for me.
Chuck Yeager had a similar problem with trying to speak English that Americans not from Appalachia could understand! There are many dialects in America but that part of West Virginia/Eastern Kentucky is replete with curiosities.
Kissinger was right about his experience in the military of that era. Everyone was part of the system, the operation, the “war effort”.
On the downtick, the Constitution was violated, hideously so, and Comrade FDR managed to inflict himself against America for a 4th term and died in the bed on a bed of harlotry.
The 22nd Amendment was passed in 1947, two years after FDR expired.
Alas, I prefer reading Hermann Wouk’s version of that period over the narrative that the media foisted to an innocent public.
Coming from an Eastern Shore family that first got here in 1623, I’m hardly understood by many. Here’s an example of some familiar language for me growing up: https://youtu.be/AIZgw09CG9E?si=pJ-nw_QTmmC6jjCS
I had hearing loss as a toddler, so I developed my own accent. It was always amusing…as a kid some people thought I was British, while as an adult people up North think I’m from the Deep South, while people down here think I from New England.
One of Kissinger’s memorable remarks was when he was asked how he managed to date so many attractive women, and he replied: ‘Power…is the ultimate aphrodisiac’.
For good, bad, and ugly – he made one hell of an impact in American & world history. Extraordinarily smart, brilliant, and charismatic, and yeah a very imperfect guy. RIP.
Democrats (given a few days to collect their thoughts) have few nice things and a lots of partisan crap to say:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pretty-horrific-mistakes-democrats-few-232623358.html
I’ll bet he slept with Diane Sawer and Leslie Stahl at the same time.
Hillary hates him for being “left” out.