2009 Freedom Awards: Conversation with Henry Kissinger -- 10/08/2009

[XKUNXEntertainment]

FUCK THE NEW WORLD ORDER

BURN IT TO THE GOD DAMN GROUND

RON PAUL 2012 OR WORLD WIDE REVOLUTION NOVEMBER 5 , 2012

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@DrCruel Kissinger has had ample opportunity to relate his story and has done so through fawning interviews and his own books. The man has never allowed himself to be seriously challenged on a public platform. You don't need to be an ancient Greek (or Michael Moore for that matter) to appreciate honest inquiry.

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@DrCruel Thank goodness for a "embarrassingly deferential" interview? How can a deferential interview, embarrassing or otherwise, contribute to relevant historical testimony? Ferguson will be embarrassed when he reflects on this interview in later years.

[DrCruel]

@samplecode Deference to a historical figure allows them to tell their story. Those that view it later can make up their own minds, without having a combatitive pundit try to force his views on them.

For the same reason, I value the historical narrative of Thucydides over that of Michael Moore.

[KrhkoJeZnanje1]

Recently i read ''Sinking Globalization'' of N. Ferguson and just can tell that he made terribly wrong conclusions on Serbia in period of WW I. Pure amaterism and need to make widely based conclusions to impress readers... Not far from CNN propaganda.

Not related with this but i had need to give this remark...

I appologise on poor english :)

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Embarrassingly deferential.

[DrCruel]

@samplecode Thank goodness for it. I want to hear the historical testimony, not have someone trying to score cheap political points. I likewise can go happily through the rest of my life without hearing any more hypocritical Left wing complaints about this great man.

[Bastiat90]

Great man? How can you justify that statement? He has more blood on his hands than perhaps Pinochet

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 Ho Chi Minh had even more blood on his hands, with far less justification. Ought he to be vilified?

I am not as strong a supporter of socialist fascism in Indochina as are so many of Kissinger's critics. What the Left enabled to happen to the Indochinese people is obscene. Kissinger is perceived to have caused a delay in the ultimate conquest of that region by Marxists. Their inconvenience does not as negatively influence my judgement as much as it does his most fanatic foes.

[Bastiat90]

Any statist ought to be vilified for using the instruments of government to repress the will of a population.  Kissinger supported murderers like Suharto, Pinochet and Pol Pot. He has refused to answer questions from the Chilean courts as they seek to put to rest the ghosts of the past.

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 You forget - when the US administration tried to confront dictators, they were vilified if those dictators were favored by Marxists. Kissinger is being blamed for using detente and negotiation to deal with an autocratic and violent global environment that Leftists created virtually single handedly.

Kissinger was the most significant architect of world peace in the latter part of the 20th century. He deserves to be lauded for it, not insulted by those who struggled to thwart peace.

[Bastiat90]

I think it was Albert Camus (I'll verify this) who wrote that responsibility towards history absolves one of responsibility towards human beings. If you believe history is on your side you can justify a whole range of terrorist atrocities, but despite the justification, they remain terrorist atrocities. Feuds between governments of differing political persuasions have sent far too many innocents to an early grave. Kissinger was one who held the trigger and should be punished accordingly.

[Bastiat90]

Pray tell what peace? The Iranian establishment despises America since its installation of the Shah in 1953. Chalmers Johnson wrote about Blowback. Just imagine if America had used her considerable economic power to promote liberty, justice and freedom. Instead, the world was separated into pro communist and anticommunist. Oppression was excused, even justified, if it kept the Marxists out of power. Democracy means accepting that sometimes your opponents win.

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 What's this? The Marxists have "despised" the Shah's regime ever since Mossadegh's coup plot failed. Iran was most prosperous and most free under the constitutional monarchy - once their forcible attempt to take over the governemtn failed, tehy conspired with muslim fanatics to do the job. The present regime in Iran is as unpopular as the more traditional Marxist dictatorships were and are in Iraq and Syria.

It's the Marxists who separated the world into pro-Left and targets.

[Bastiat90]

Marxists do offer their own warped demarcations but they're never in a position of power. How many Marxist governments have bombed American soil?

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 Do you mean directly or through surrogates?

[Bastiat90]

Try both

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 ( ... as for the people who lived under Marxist governments in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, Syria, Laos, the PRC, North Korea, etc, I'd say the people who lived under the thumbs of Marxist despots might disagree with you.

Marxists had plenty of power. In fact, their traditional mode of rulership is as hypocritical aristocratic despots, but now I digress. Suffice to say, Kissinger had his work cut out for him...)

[Bastiat90]

If we are being honest about these things, orthodox Marxism has never been the theory of a communist state. I'm a Rothbardian libertarian, but look at these things with some honesty. Communism and fascism are brothers. But why is it wrong for Marxists to support or provide autocratic and dictatorial rule whereas it's called detente when Mr Kissinger does it? Why the relativistic double standards?

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 "Detente" isn't about supporting dictators. It's about dealing with the fact that the US is powerless to depose or ignore them, and therefore getting the best possible deal we can. In fact, detente rather than armed confrontation is what so-called "liberals" are advising in regards US relations with Iran.

[Bastiat90]

America has not just engaged in detente with dictators, it has actively supported them. If said dictator was anti-communist, the United States lavished them with funds and military support through advantageous arms contracts. Chile for example, or Cuba under Batista. It is double standards of the most egregious kind and Kissinger has his prints all over them. The problem with Iran today goes back to 1953 when the US deposed a democratically elected government. Blowback

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 Governments aren't "democratically elected" by way of coups. As in Vietnam and Korea, the US government supported the legitimate government over the one trying to overthrow it by force.

Leftists seem to be under the impression that all non-Marxist governments are "illegitimate" and that any and all means are justified when trying to seize power (including, in some cases, genocide). It's a bit rich for them to claim later that the attempted resistance of their victims was "immoral."

[Bastiat90]

A Marxist government is legitimate if elected by the people... dozens of governments have been removed at the behest of the US, with communism given as the reason: Syria and Greece in 1949, Guatemala in 1954, South Vietnam in 1955, Ecuador in 1960. In Kissinger's time Cambodia and Bolivia in 1970, El Salvador in 1972, Chile in 1973. Because America deemed these governments 'illegitimate' they were overthrown. When Ortega won in 1984, Reagan called it a sham even though everyone disagreed

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 In Syria, at this very moment, the Marxist Syrian regime is being fought against desperately by the Syrian people, practically without any outside help at all. If we intervene on their behalf, are we being "hypocrites"? When the US provided help to the El Salvadoran government, as the FMLN mined voting stations to prevent the people from voting overwhelmingly against them, were the Americans acting as "imperialists"?

[Bastiat90]

Yes, because America has supported the Al-Assad regime as long as it suited their interests i.e. oil prices and regional stability. The Syrian regime is not Marxist, it is a dictatorship. If you're going to smear a regime at least have the honesty to do it properly.

[Bastiat90]

US foreign policy has always been characterised by hypocrisy: they claim to support freedom and liberty but any cursory analysis of its agenda shows that it props up regimes in the name of 'strategic' interests.

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 Regimes that were "propped up" during the latter part of the 20th century were invariably under assault by some Marxist seditionist faction or other. Sometimes the faction would not win, in which case it was lauded by Marxists for being a lost "progressive" movement that had the support of the people. Sometimes it would win, and thousands if not millions would die. Then the argument was made that the faction had not "truly" been Marxist.

[DrCruel]

@Bastiat90 The defense of South Korea from the North, the defense of South Vietnam from the North, resistance to Marxist coups in Iran, Chile, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Grenada, even aid to Muslims resisting slaughter in Afghanistan - all were characterized as "imperialistic" efforst by the US "hypocrites". In all cases where Marxists succeeded in gaining power, mass killings would follow.

Kissinger is hated by Leftists for the same reasons that the police are hated by criminals.

[Bastiat90]

The North can barely feed its own people let alone send an army in to attack the South, whose technological and logistic superiority is clear for all to see.

Using your corrupt logic, why did America not have troops in the Soviet Union, or China, to protect the populations from Marxist governments? Why did America give Eastern Europe to Stalin on a plate instead of supporting rebel movements?

Marxists seldom succeed in power, thus negating your penultimate point.

[Bastiat90]

Was Pinochet better than Allende? I can point to over 30 coups sponsored and supported by the Americans... would you like me to send you a list? Can you honestly say all of these were in support of anti-Marxists? What about Henry Kissinger's role in several assassinations and murders? He called it a travesty that the President cannot authorise assassinations. I'm a rightist and despise Kissinger as much as any leftist.

[Bastiat90]

The Shah was a dictator installed by the United States after the 1953 Coup de'tat. Your justification for the Shah can be made for people like Saddam: you did well under Saddam provided you weren't Kurdish.