Kissinger Kaput: A Gaslit Nation Celebration [TEASER]

Gaslit Nation

News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.7 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Putin lost a longtime friend and confidant, the only American statesman he respected and admired. Why might these two have hit if off? War criminal Henry Kissinger, like Putin, was responsible for millions of deaths and backing some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The foreign policy establishment here in the U.S. and in Europe have blood on their hands for normalizing Kissinger, like Putin, for far too long.

For a refresher on Kissinger’s legacy, which was revealed to be even worse than previously known, listen to the Gaslit Nation spring 2023 interview with investigative journalist Nick Turse on his reporting for The Intercept into the generational trauma of Kissinger in Cambodia. Not content to prolong the Vietnam war, Kissinger spread the conflict to formally neutral Cambodia, helping bring to power the repressive Khmer Rouge. Add to that his enabling of genocides in East Timor and Bangladesh, as well as backing dictators and murder squads in Latin America. It’s obvious why he was also a fan of Trump. All this is to say, where were you when you first heard the news that Kissinger will no longer be advising other war criminals, and how did you celebrate?

Andrea shares a story of spotting Kissinger at a party while holding a throwable glass of wine in her hand, and why it’s important to celebrate the demise of war criminals–that’s how you build a culture to prevent future war criminals. The Patreon-only portion of this week’s bonus episode features comments and questions from our listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher. Topics range from turning our current rollercoaster of living history into the next Nineteen Eighty-Four, celebrating our acts of civil resistance, books to read to find your voice in the world, and more! To join the conversation, sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit.

Show Notes:

Henry Kissinger, responsible for millions of deaths, dies at 100 https://theintercept.com/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-death/

Henry Kissinger: ‘If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic.’ https://forward.com/culture/470300/kissinger-at-100-if-it-were-not-for-the-accident-of-my-birth-i-would-be/

Alex Gibney Documentary: The Trials of Henry Kissinger https://www.amazon.com/Trials-Henry-Kissinger-Eugene-Jarecki/dp/B00A9IFSBY

Kissinger on the Nixon tapes https://youtu.be/OKoqIqQ0E08?si=vV7uM8nNwyPiHoMI

Kissinger, a longtime Putin confidant, sidles up to Trump https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-kissinger-russia-putin-232925

Andrea’s celebratory tweet: What is the first thing Satan said to Kissinger? https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa/status/1730055040985874722?t=UftX3tgzsaT9HQzlkzYbMw&s=19

Monty Python song “Henry Kissinger”: https://youtu.be/ABeGhyAD_DM?si=3t1FR3jsar78sqKv

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ck0.uBQX.Rdb-cCaQzu18&hpgrp=k-abar&smid=url-share

Transcript

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0:00.0	Estimates run the gamut from Kissinger's own admission that the war killed 50,000 Cambodian civilians
0:07.5	to estimates of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
0:11.5	But I talked to a man named Ben Kiernan. He was the
0:14.7	former director of genocide studies at Yale University and one of the
0:19.4	foremost authorities on the US air campaign in Cambodia.
0:23.0	And he offered an estimate of as many as 150,000 Cambodian
0:27.0	civilians.
0:28.1	I think it's a reasonable figure and perhaps a conservative one, but it's still a mammoth figure for a tiny country like Cambodia.
0:38.0	And to put it in perspective, it's six times the number of non-combatants that are thought to have died in U.S.
0:44.3	airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the 20-plus years the war on terror.
0:54.3	And this number is according to Air Wars, the UK-based
0:58.8	Air Strike Monitoring Group.
1:00.1	So in Cambodia alone, say 150,000 civilians also helped usher in the Khmer Rouge to power in Cambodia.
1:10.0	They were a fringe group when the American War began, just a couple thousand people, but they had a tremendous recruiting tool, which was the American bombing.
1:21.0	They went around to villages and told people that the only way to stop it was to join their movement. In a couple short years, they had a army of 200,000 Cambodians. They took over the country. They instituted a campaign of overwork and torture,
1:38.3	murder that killed about 20% of the population, 2 million people.
1:43.1	So while the Khmer Rouge is responsible, culpable for that,
1:47.9	Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon,
1:50.4	they also bear a responsibility for it.
1:53.2	And beyond Cambodia, I talked to Greg Grandin,
1:58.0	who's one of the Kissinger's, I think best biographers.
2:02.2	And I asked him just how much blood he thought Henry Kissinger
	...

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