Four Decades On, Kissinger Still Feels the Heat

As the Occupy Wall Street protests continue to rage in downtown New York for its sixth straight week, word has recently come out that some civil society groups in the area are planning to turn their attention to the Waldorf Astoria hotel in midtown next week. That is because on November 7th, the New York Historical Society plans to honor former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with the 2011 History Makers Award at a dinner and ceremony there.

Ever since his time as a member in the cabinet of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (first as National Security Advisor for the former and later as Secretary of State for both), Kissinger has felt heat from scores of progressive critics who blame him for some of America’s most nefarious policies implemented during the Cold War.

In Southeast Asia, there are several examples of covert United States military action, which Kissinger oversaw and which lend credence to his critics’ accusations. Between March 1969 and May 1970, the U.S. engaged in aerial bombing campaigns in both Cambodia and Laos. Codenamed “Operation Menu,” the bombings were originally rationalized as an extension of hostilities against Northern Vietnamese troops operating along the borders with these two countries. However, the mission included bombing raids which were indiscriminate by nature, and thousands of civilians lost their lives.

On December 9, 1970, US President Richard Nixon telephoned his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to discuss the ongoing bombing of Cambodia. This sideshow to the war in Vietnam, begun in 1965 under the Johnson administration, had already seen 475,515 tons of ordnance dropped on Cambodia, which had been a neutral kingdom until nine months before the phone call, when pro-US General Lon Nol seized power. The first intense series of bombings, the Menu campaign on targets in Cambodia’s border areas — labelled Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Dinner, Dessert, and Snack by American commanders — had concluded in May, shortly after the coup.

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Nixon was facing growing congressional opposition to his Indochina policy. A joint US–South Vietnam ground invasion of Cambodia in May and June of 1970 had failed to root out Vietnamese Communists, and Nixon now wanted to covertly escalate the air attacks, which were aimed at destroying the mobile headquarters of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (vc/nva) in the Cambodian jungle. After telling Kissinger that the US Air Force was being unimaginative, Nixon demanded more bombing, deeper into the country: “They have got to go in there and I mean really go in…I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?”

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Five minutes after his conversation with Nixon ended, Kissinger called General Alexander Haig to relay the new orders from the president: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?” The response from Haig, barely audible on tape, sounds like laughter.

U.S. support of Suharto, Indonesia’s long-ruling dictator is well-chronicled. After the overthrow of Sukarno, the country’s previous autocrat, Suharto went on a rampage against his political opponents from across the spectrum – but especially communists. The resulting bloodbath rivals Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the Soviet purges under Stalin in terms of sheer brutality. In December 1975, Indonesia invaded and occupied East Timor causing untold misery and close to 100,000 deaths over the course of the following quarter century.

In both instances in Indonesia, the U.S., under Kissinger’s supervision, financially supported and armed the Indonesian government and military, which allowed it to commit such heinous actions. Humiliated after the war in Vietnam, and still fearful of communism’s encroachment throughout the developing world, Kissinger justified Washington’s support for Suharto’s crimes by pontificating on the need for American allies in the world, irrespective of their human rights record.

Progressive political action groups, such as the East Timor Action Network and CodePink, have hounded Kissinger for years by protesting outside of venues where he has given lectures while calling for his arrest for war crimes. At least half a dozen groups are planning to demonstrate outside of this latest appearance. There are segments of American civil society that will attempt to hold its leaders accountable, even when their actions took place decades ago in places in the world more likely to be forgotten than remembered. Victims of the dissolute actions the U.S. undertook under Kissinger’s direction can at least take solace in that.