The 2016 US Presidential race has prompted a comparison of past US Secretaries of State, Hilary Clinton and Henry Kissinger. Gary MacLennan wrote:
Take a look at this sentence.
‘Hillary Clinton courts Henry Kissinger’s endorsement even after meeting his victims.’
What is wrong with it?
The answer is in the word “even”. This is the wrong word in that it creates false meanings. It disguises Clinton’s motivations and leads one to miss the truth of her. To understand Hilary Clinton one needs to rewrite the sentence as:
‘Hilary Clinton courts Henry Kissinger’s endorsement especially after meeting his victims.’
I have done my own brief investigation of past US Secretaries of State. They were all bad with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson (1790-1793).
Anyway, John Foster Dulles comes to mind.
Dulles organised US support for the setting up of Israel thus paving the way for the Palestinian Al Nakba (Catastrophe) and subsequent Israeli apartheid in Palestine. This former isolationist, prominent in the religious peace movement, advocated support for French imperialism in Vietnam in the 1950s and then refused to accept the treaty in Paris between the French and the Viet Minh preferring a US version of war in Indochina.
“It was in this complex and rapidly changing context that Dulles backed by Eisenhower, began resetting American policy already championed by Kennedy and Goldwater. In April 1954, the secretary of state issued instructions stressing the importance of getting the French to sign a treaty according full independence to the Associated State of Vietnam before negotiations on Indochina began. If the French could not do it, then the Americans would have ‘to take an active part’ in the conflict, but only if they could collaborate with ‘an authentic Vietnamese nationalist government’. This was precisely what (Ngo Dinh) Diem seemed to offer. And why the needs of the Eisenhower administration and those Ngo brothers finally converged at Geneva in mid-1954, and not before. As the French signed the ceasefire documents and a declaration to hold elections in two years with their Democratic Republic of Vietnam counterparts, backed by Moscow and Beijing, Prime Minister Diem’s government refused to do so, and was fully supported by Washington.” – Penguin History of Modern Vietnam by Christopher Gosca (2016)
Dulles built up a pretty impressive list of savagery and genocide for a person who strongly opposed the US atomic attacks on Japan!
Back to Gary MacLennan’s analysis of the sentence:
Hilary Clinton courts Henry Kissinger’s endorsement especially after meeting his victims. The second sentence lays bare the causality of the meeting. Clinton seeks out Kissinger precisely because of his record of using power as exploitation, oppression and domination. Seeing the victims motivates Clinton to go and kneel at the altar of power as imperialism and to worship at the feet of one of its high priests. Kissinger, himself, has long worshiped at the ‘slaughter bench of history’ as Hegel called it. And our Hilary is an acolyte ever eager to learn from the master.
To talk of “even” suggests a mystery, a puzzle. How could she want to see Kissinger? But there there is no mystery in her seeking out Kissinger. There is no mystery, only a scandal.
Kissinger was US Secretary of State from 1973 till 1977 serving during the Vietnam war under Nixon and Ford. Like Barak Obama, Kissinger won the Nobel Peace prize. The Nobel committee (with two dissenting) awarded the peace prize to Kissinger and the leader of Vietnamese independence movement, Lê Đức Thọ. Tho refused the award. The photo above depicts victims of US policy in Indochina.
“For Hilary the victims are like sign posts showing her where to go and what to do.” – Gary MacLennan
If Clinton wins, I dread a war with China.
The caption to the photo of the napalmed children published by the Daily Mail (Australia) in an article Napalm girl’ photo from Vietnam War turns 40 on read:
“In this June 8, 1972 file photo, crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam .
‘A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm’ on the children and the ‘South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk(ing) behind them after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places’
From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim’s cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting.” (AP Photo/Nick Ut).
The Daily Mail has a long history of invention and propaganda:
On 25 October 1924 the Daily Mail published a forged Zinoviev letter, which claimed that British Communists were planning violent revolution. This may have been significant in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days after the forged letter was published in the Mail.
The Mail’s Lord Rothermere supported fascism.
Rothmere predicted that “The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany”.
Journalist John Simpson, in a book on journalism, suggested that what Rothermere meant by ‘immense benefits’ was the extermination of Jews and Communists by the Nazis.
Ian Curr
7 Sept 2016