{"id":78155,"date":"2016-08-22T12:01:25","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T11:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=78155"},"modified":"2016-08-22T10:47:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T09:47:48","slug":"does-henry-kissinger-have-a-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/does-henry-kissinger-have-a-conscience\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Henry Kissinger Have a Conscience?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jon<\/a>20 Aug 2016 – <\/em>Last March, when President Obama travelled to Argentina to meet with the country\u2019s new President, Mauricio Macri, his public appearances were dogged by protesters who noisily demanded explanations, and apologies, for U.S. policies, past and present. There are few countries in the West where anti-Americanism is as vociferously expressed as in Argentina, where a highly politicized culture of grievance has evolved in which many of the country\u2019s problems are blamed on the United States. On the left, especially, there is lingering resentment over the support extended by the U.S. government to Argentina\u2019s right-wing military, which seized power in March of 1976 and launched a \u201cDirty War\u201d against leftists that took thousands of lives over the following seven years.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s visit<\/a>\u00a0coincided with the fortieth anniversary of the coup. He pointedly paid homage to the Dirty War\u2019s victims by visiting a shrine built in their honor on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In an address he gave at the shrine, Obama acknowledged what he characterized as American sins of omission, but he stopped short of issuing an outright apology. \u201cDemocracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don\u2019t live up to the ideals that we stand for,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve been slow to speak out for human rights, and that was the case here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Newly<\/a>

Newly released documents have revealed more about Henry Kissinger\u2019s role in Argentina\u2019s Dirty War.
Photograph by Steche \/ ullstein bild via Getty<\/p><\/div>\n

In the run-up to Obama\u2019s trip, Susan Rice, the President\u2019s national-security adviser, had announced the Administration\u2019s intention to declassify thousands of U.S. military and intelligence documents pertaining to that tumultuous period in Argentina. It was a good-will gesture aimed at signalling Obama\u2019s ongoing effort to change the dynamic of U.S. relations with Latin America\u2014\u201cto bury the last remnant of the Cold War,\u201d as\u00a0he said in Havana<\/a>, during that same trip.<\/p>\n

Last week, the first tranche of those declassified documents<\/a> was released. The documents revealed that White House and U.S. State Department officials were intimately aware of the Argentine military\u2019s bloody nature, and that some were horrified by what they knew. Others, most notably Henry Kissinger, were not. In a 1978 cable, the U.S. Ambassador, Ra\u00fal Castro, wrote about a visit by Kissinger to Buenos Aires, where he was a guest of the dictator, Jorge Rafael Videla, while the country hosted the World Cup. \u201cMy only concern is that Kissinger\u2019s repeated high praise for Argentina\u2019s action in wiping out terrorism may have gone to some considerable extent to his hosts\u2019 heads,\u201d Castro\u00a0wrote<\/a>. The Ambassador went on to write, fretfully, \u201cThere is some danger that Argentines may use Kissinger\u2019s laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights stance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest revelations compound a portrait of Kissinger as the ruthless cheerleader, if not the active co-conspirator, of Latin American military regimes engaged in war crimes. In evidence that emerged from previous declassifications of documents during the Clinton Administration, Kissinger was shown not only to have been aware of what the military was doing but to have actively encouraged it. Two days after the Argentine coup, Kissinger was briefed by his Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, William Rogers, who warned him, \u201cI think also we\u2019ve got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long. I think they\u2019re going to have to come down very hard not only on the terrorists but on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties.\u201d Kissinger replied, \u201cWhatever chance they have, they will need a little encouragement\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. because I do want to encourage them. I don\u2019t want to give the sense that they\u2019re harassed by the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Kissinger\u2019s direction, they certainly were not harassed. Right after the coup, Kissinger sent his encouragement to the generals and reinforced that message by expediting a package of U.S. security assistance. In a meeting with the Argentine foreign minister two months later, Kissinger advised him winkingly, according to a\u00a0memo<\/a> written about the conversation, \u201cWe are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/a>

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. (photo: AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

Argentina\u2019s military forces had launched their coup in order to expand and institutionalize a war that was already under way against leftist guerrillas and their sympathizers. They called their campaign the Process of National Reorganization, or, simply, \u201cel proceso<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0During the Dirty War<\/a>, as it became known, as many as thirty thousand people were secretly abducted, tortured, and executed by the security forces. Hundreds of suspects were buried in anonymous mass graves, while thousands more were stripped naked, drugged, loaded onto military aircraft, and hurled into the sea from the air while they were still alive. The term \u201clos desaparecidos<\/em>\u201d\u2014\u201cthe disappeared\u201d\u2014became one of Argentina\u2019s contributions to the global lexicon.<\/p>\n

At the time of the coup, Gerald Ford was the caretaker U.S. President, and Henry Kissinger was serving as both Secretary of State and national-security adviser, as he had done under Nixon. Immediately after the Argentine coup, on Kissinger\u2019s recommendations, the U.S. Congress approved a request for fifty million dollars in security assistance to the junta; this was topped off by another thirty million before the end of the year. Military-training programs and aircraft sales worth hundreds of millions of dollars were also approved. In 1978, a year into Jimmy Carter\u2019s Presidency, mounting concerns about human-rights violations brought an end to U.S. aid. Thereafter, the new Administration sought to cut the junta off from international financial assistance. In early 1981, with Reagan coming into the White House, however, the restrictions were lifted.<\/p>\n

There have, in fact, been no legal consequences whatsoever to Kissinger for his actions in Chile, where three thousand people were murdered by Pinochet\u2019s thugs, or for those in Vietnam and Cambodia, where he ordered large-scale aerial bombardments that cost the lives of countless civilians. One of his foremost critics was the late\u00a0Christopher Hitchens<\/a>, who in 2001 wrote a book-length indictment entitled \u201cThe Trial of Henry Kissinger.\u201d Hitchens called for Kissinger\u2019s prosecution \u201cfor war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Argentina\u2019s Dirty War was taking place, of course, its generals habitually denied that anything untoward was occurring. Questioned about los desaparecidos<\/em>, the coup leader, General Videla, explained with chilling vagueness, \u201cThe disappeared are just that: disappeared. They are neither alive nor dead. They are disappeared.\u201d Other officers suggested that missing people were probably in hiding, carrying out terrorist actions against the fatherland. In fact, the vast majority were being brutalized in secret prisons by government-salaried employees, and then, more often than not, executed. As happened in Germany during the Holocaust, most Argentines understood what was really going on, but kept silent out of a spirit of complicity, or fear. A see-no-evil national refrain was adopted by those Argentines who witnessed neighbors being dragged from their homes by plainclothes men, never to return: \u201cAlgo habr\u00e1n hecho<\/em>\u201d\u2014\u201cthey must have done something.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have repeatedly reviewed evidence of Kissinger\u2019s callousness. Some of it is as inexplicable as it is shocking. There is a macho swagger in some of Kissinger\u2019s remarks. It could, perhaps, be explained away if he had never wielded power, like\u2014thus far\u2014the gratuitously offensive Presidential candidate Donald Trump. And one has an awareness that Kissinger, the longest-lasting and most iconic pariah figure in modern American history, is but one of a line of men held in fear and contempt for the immorality of their services rendered and yet protected by the political establishment in recognition of those same services. William Tecumseh Sherman, Curtis LeMay, Robert McNamara, and, more recently, Donald Rumsfeld all come to mind.<\/p>\n

In Errol Morris\u2019s remarkable 2003 documentary \u201cThe Fog of War,\u201d we saw that McNamara, who was an octogenarian at the time, was a tormented man who was attempting to come to terms, unsuccessfully, with the immense moral burden of his actions as the U.S. defense secretary during Vietnam. McNamara had recently written a memoir in which he attempted to grapple with his legacy. Around that time, a journalist named Stephen Talbot interviewed McNamara, and then also secured an interview with Kissinger. As he later wrote about his initial meeting with Kissinger, \u201cI told him I had just interviewed Robert McNamara in Washington. That got his attention. He stopped badgering me, and then he did an extraordinary thing. He began to cry. But no, not real tears. Before my eyes, Henry Kissinger was acting. \u2018Boohoo, boohoo,\u2019 Kissinger said, pretending to cry and rub his eyes. \u2018He\u2019s still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty.\u2019 He spoke in a mocking, singsong voice and patted his heart for emphasis.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNamara died in 2009, at the same age Kissinger is today\u2014ninety-three\u2014but his belated public struggle with his conscience helped leaven his clouded reputation. Now that he is nearing the end of his life, Kissinger must wonder what his own legacy is to be. He can rest assured that, at the very least, his steadfast support for the American superpower project, no matter what the cost in lives, will be a major part of that legacy. Unlike McNamara, however, whose attempt to find a moral reckoning Kissinger held in such scorn, Kissinger has shown little in the way of a conscience. And because of that, it seems highly likely, history will not easily absolve him.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to <\/em>The New Yorker<\/em> in 1998. Since then, he has covered numerous conflicts for the magazine, including those in Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, and Liberia. He has also reported frequently from Latin America and the Caribbean, writing about Rio de Janeiro\u2019s gangs, the Panama Canal, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and a Caracas slum, among other subjects, and has written Profiles of Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, and Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez. He is the author of several books, including \u201cThe Lion\u2019s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan,\u201d \u201cChe Guevara: A Revolutionary Life,\u201d \u201cGuerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World,\u201d and \u201cThe Fall of Baghdad.\u201d He is the co-author, with Scott Anderson, of \u201cWar Zones: Voices from the World\u2019s Killing Grounds\u201d and \u201cInside the League.\u201d He has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, and in 2013 he was honored with a Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. He began his career in 1979, reporting for an English-language weekly in Lima, Peru, and now regularly teaches workshops for Latin-American reporters.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 newyorker.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Latest revelations show Kissinger as the ruthless, active co-conspirator of Latin American military regimes engaged in war crimes [Operation Condor]. In evidence that emerged from previous declassifications of documents, Kissinger was shown not only to have been aware of what the military was doing but to have actively encouraged it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}