The Unvarnished Truth

want to do that? Because I think that it's very interesting to look at this man who lived to be one hundred years old, who had such an extraordinarily her terrific impact on American foreign policy, and yet has been revered, hailed as a genius, was protected from experiencing the trials that war criminals should be facing after they have contributed

to the deaths of millions of people. And yet I'm sure as you've been watching the news, you've seen you know, memoriams done that talk about his genius, that talk about his patriotism and say that, oh he had, you know, a controversial sentiments about him and around him, but all in all, he was a good American And isn't his story incredible? As family escaped Germany during the height of Hitler, they fled to the United States, and then he has this storied career as an academic at Harvard and then

moving on to be Nixon's top guy. Right, And I just I gotta tell you, history is a funny thing. And there's a piece that I'm going to read from that I think is important. And if you're a subscriber to the Rolling Stones, you are the Rolling Stone. You must and I always call it the Rolling Stones like the band. If you are a subscriber to Rolling Stone,

you should read it. If not, go on one of those sites that allows you to read subscription only pieces, because it is absolutely one thousand percent worthier time, and it's long, and it is brilliant in its description of who Henry Kissinger actually was. His absolutely just disgusting policies that would lay the groundwork for the way that the United States operated in Iraq, operated in Afghanistan, and the way that we have allowed right Israel to operate in

its current war. So here's the piece and the title of it at Rolling Stone is Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America's ruling class, finally dies. Just the title alone brings me in, Okay, And it's written by Spencer Akerman, and this is what he writes. Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut. His consulting firm said

in a statement, the notorious war criminal was one hundred. First, let me just pause there, because wow, I wish that we all had the access to the kind of healthcare that the federal government and our tax dollars go to provide, right to representatives, to presidents, to state officials, and what have you. I know that Henry Kissinger is a wealthy man, and once he left government work, probably you know, had

his own health care. But let us understand that what would America look like and what would our life expectancy rate be if, in fact, we all had access to the same kind of healthcare that our representatives do. Just a little food for thought, maybe it wouldn't be seventy three and declining, just putting it out there. He goes on to write, measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the

white supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh. On April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, McVeigh detonated a massive bomb at the Murah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing one hundred and sixty eight people, including nineteen children. The government killed McVeigh by lethal injection in June two thousand one. Whatever hesitation a state execution provokes, even over a man such as McVeigh, necessary questions about the legitimacy of killing even an unrepentant soldier of white supremacy.

His death provided a measure of closure to the mother of one of his victims. Quote. It's a period at the end of a sentence, said Kathleen Treynor, Who's four year old McVeigh killed. McVeigh, who was, in his own psychotic way, thought he was saving America. Wherever you heard those words before, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half

of the twentieth century. The Yale University historian Greg Grandon, author of the biography Kissinger's Shadow, estimates listen to this that Kissinger's actions folks from nineteen sixty nine through nineteen seventy six, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford's foreign policy as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State meant the end of between listen to this. I need to just say

this again. Eight brief years nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy six, when Kissinger was both Nixon and then after the resignation, would become Jered World Forwards foreign policy advisor as their National security Advisor and Secretary of State. He's the only person to have held both of those positions

simultaneously in the Nixon administration. He is responsible for the deaths of between three and four million people, not three and four hundred, not three and four thousand, Three and four million fucking people, not just numbers, mothers, fathers, uncles, sisters, brothers, children,

in eight years. Let me go on. That includes quote, crimes of commission, he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission like green lighting Indonesia's bloodshed in East timor Pakistan's bloodshed in Bangladesh, and the inauguration of an American

tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds. Quote. The Cubans say there is no evil that lasts one hundred years, and Kissinger is making a run to prove them wrong, Grandon told Rolling Stone not long before Kissinger died quote, there is no doubt he'll be hailed as a geopolitical grand strategist, even though he bungled most crises leading to escalation.

He'll get credit for opening China, which, by the way, he won a Nobel Peace Prize for ending somehow opening China and ending the war in Vietnam after bombing Cambodia, which was by the way, a neutral country at the time, but because as I learned in this article, the ho Chi mintrail went through Cambodia, he gave the green light to just bomb it to smitherees a country that had no involvement in the Vietnam War, but nonetheless killed one

hundred thousand of its seven hundred thousand people. I just want to pause here because as I was reading this article and I'm getting into it, something seemed eerily familiar as the author is explaining some of the actions that were taken, particularly in Cambodia and Chile. In Chile was to oust have the United States develop a coup to oust a democratic socialist who was bringing together the people

of Chile. And they didn't like that because now there was going to be tariffs placed on the copper that is abundant in Chile that was owned largely by American corporations. There was going to be taxes and penalties placed on it by the new leader of Chile in the nineteen seventies, and Kissinger came up with a planet said, ad, that doesn't sound great. You know, then we won't have control over the extraction that we're doing in that country. So

let's get rid of him, which would then usher him. Oh, I don't know, decades plus of a military occupation by a murderous general that would kill and torture tens of thousands of people at the behest of Kissinger who decided to oust the Democratic socialist who wanted reparations from the countries that were extracting their abundant natural resource of copper.

So just a little tidbit here, going now back to Cambodia, this neutral party, this neutral country that the Vietnamese were using, you know, and I use quotation marks as a trafficking thoroughfare for weapons. So Kissinger said, oh, well, we'll get a handle on this war by bombing this peaceful country because oh they're harboring, right, this trail that's being used

does has sound familiar? To you, because it does to me when being told most recently about Hamas you know, using hospitals and their underground areas for their tunneling systems to justify the bombings and decimation of hospitals which are filled with innocent wounded people, doctors, nurses, and administrators. But you know, necessary evils and crimes of commission. Okay, History repeats itself when we decide not to learn it the first time over, or you know there are no checks

and balances. We go on in this piece to talk about how kiss and over his decades long grip on American foreign policy, because it didn't end with the Ford administration, it would continue, and he would act as an advisor to many, a secretary of state to many of president Right, this article goes on, no infamy will find Kissinger on a day like today instead in a demonstration of why he was able to kill so many people and get

away with it. The day of his passage will be a solemn one in Congress, and shamefully, since Kissinger had reporters like CBS Marvin Kahb and The New York Times Hendrick Smith wiretapped news rooms. Kissinger a refugee from the Nazis who became a pedigreed member of the quote Eastern establishment Nixon hated, was a practitioner of a men American greatness, and so the press lionized him as the cold blooded genius who restored America's prestige from the agony of Vietnam.

Not once in a half century that followed Kissinger's departure from power did the millions the United States killed matter for his reputation, except to confirm a ruthlessness that pundits occasionally find thrilling. America, like every empire, champions its state murderers. The only time I was ever in the same room as Henry Kissinger was at a twenty fifteen national security

conference at West Point. He was surrounded by paining army officers and ex officials basking in the presence of a statesman. What's so unsettling about all of this is that this piece tells us the truth, the unvarnished truth, not the fairy tale of the immigrant who fled war and comes to the United States as a Jewish refugee to build a storied career in politics. That's the sanitized version, right

that you learn in school. What you don't hear about, however, is the actual real consequences of this war mongering sociopath that would justify the killing of millions of people. As you know, crimes of commission and omission, sometimes the ends have to, you know, justify the means. And I think about this, and I think about how the United States, because of the actions of Kissinger, have gone into bombing other nations that we never declared war with, like Libya, Somalia, Syria,

right as a preemptive measure. But we don't hear that story about America. We only hear the stories about American exceptionalism and the lengths that we go to around the world to protect democracy. When the moves that he was making Kissinger during his heydays had nothing to do with democracy. It had everything to do with capitalistic domination and ensuring that the United States, while creating laws around how other countries should move, would never actually be held to those

same laws and rules. It's the same way that America moves now. So when we're looking right at these horrific death tolls, for instance, that are happening in Israel and Palestine at fourteen thousand plus people, I think that probably in the Pentagon. These motherfuckers are like, oh, that's light work compared to the millions that this man decimated in an eight year period, because the reality is that they are not operating. America is not operating and has never

operated from a place of humanity. They've operated from a place of capitalistic greed, and they cover it up with the facade of holding on to quote unquote democracy. All of it is a lot, and this idea that somehow the ends justify the means, somehow we can continue to bomb our way to peace is also a lie, because all we do is create instability and chaos everywhere we

fucking go. The reason why we find ourselves so on edge now is because the world has been made smaller thanks to social media, right that we can actually see in real time what is happening. No one fucking knew really what was going on in Vietnam. No one knew about the secret bombing of Cambodia. There was no one sending up write any messages. And frankly, one of the things that Kissinger was good for was saying that media outlets in these areas should be blocked, should be barred

from sharing their content. Similarly, which is what Netanyahu has said in Israel and in Gaza, banning cameras so that the crimes that you are committing in dark will never come to light, not in real time, to have any real time consequences. This is the important, folks, of the moment that we are currently living in. When I say what is the purpose of journalism? The purpose of journalism is to be the eyes and ears for the people,

not for clicks and for advertising. The reason why people are outrage and you're seeing the tone and tenor of our current president change shift around the actions in Israel and Palestine is because of our outrage. Why are we outrage because we are fucking trauma scrolling every single day because there's not a way for them to bar us

and sanitize what it is that we are seeing. Sure, they put up one picture on mainstream corporate media, but your Twitter feed and your Instagram feed and your tiktoks are filled with the actual truth. I don't believe that if Kissinger was at his prime today that he would be hailed as a genius and a hero. I think that his feet would be held to the fucking fire in the way that it should have been, but was protected by the American infrastructure for him never to be

held accountable for his crimes. That's why it is important for us to bear witness to what is happening, dear friends, because we have an ability to force the hand of this administration. That's why democracy is important and attention is important. We have more power than we know. I encourage each and every one of you to head to Rolling Stone to check out this article written by Spencer Akerman Henry Kissinger,

war criminal beloved by America's ruling class finally dies. It is a mother fucking page turner, scroller and one of the brilliant pieces of writing that I have read lately. That is it for me today, dear friends on wokf as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.