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Mr. Kissinger, Have You No Shame?
Slate ^ | Dec. 27, 2010 | Christopher Hitchens

Posted on 12/30/2010 12:58:11 PM PST by americanophile

Ignore the recent excuses. Henry Kissinger's entire career was a series of massacres and outrages. Until the most recent release of the Nixon/Kissinger tapes, what were the permitted justifications for saying in advance that the slaughter of Jews in gas chambers by a hostile foreign dictatorship would not be "an American concern"? Let's agree that we do not know. It didn't seem all that probable that the question would come up. Or, at least, not all that likely that the statement would turn out to have been made, and calmly received, in the Oval Office. I was present at Madison Square Garden in 1985 when Louis Farrakhan warned the Jews to remember that "when [God] puts you in the ovens, you're there forever," but condemnation was swift and universal, and, in any case, Farrakhan's tenure in the demented fringe was already a given.

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: gaschambers; jews; kissinger; nixon
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Blistering. Agree with him or not, Hitchens is always provocative.
1 posted on 12/30/2010 12:58:14 PM PST by americanophile
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To: americanophile

Kissinger actually used the words “gas chambers”. What a creep!


2 posted on 12/30/2010 1:02:25 PM PST by juliej
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To: americanophile

God doesn’t put anyone in the furnace. It is an individual decision by those who reject the Father’s free gift of salvation through faith and trust in His Son Jesus Christ.


3 posted on 12/30/2010 1:03:15 PM PST by thethirddegree
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To: americanophile

My dearly departed Father use to call him Kiss-ass-inger


4 posted on 12/30/2010 1:04:52 PM PST by MtnMan101 (THE PROBLEM WITH SOCIALISUM IS THAT YOU EVENTUALLY RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY)
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To: americanophile

Farrakhan hopes for the massacre of Jews. Does anyone really believe Kissinger does as well?


5 posted on 12/30/2010 1:05:14 PM PST by TheThinker (Communists: taking over the world one kooky doomsday scenario at a time.)
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To: americanophile

Presidents since Nixon have been fortunate there was no taping system and unwise, off the cuff comments were not recorded.


6 posted on 12/30/2010 1:10:40 PM PST by colorado tanker
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To: colorado tanker

True.


7 posted on 12/30/2010 1:22:23 PM PST by americanophile
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To: TheThinker

Israel had no better ally than Nixon. This was adult private talk motivated by a piece of legislation which Kissinger/Nixon thought would harm Soviet Jews, and Kissinger claims it did just that. Further, did we do jack squat when commies murdered millions in Cambodia, China, Ukraine.... ? Half of Freepers want to let the chicoms slaughter our democratic capitalist ally, Taiwan.

And why Nixon taped his day to day conversations, that’s the incredible part.


8 posted on 12/30/2010 1:25:22 PM PST by Williams (It's the policies, stupid.)
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To: TheThinker

Israel had no better ally than Nixon. This was adult private talk motivated by a piece of legislation which Kissinger/Nixon thought would harm Soviet Jews, and Kissinger claims it did just that. Further, did we do jack squat when commies murdered millions in Cambodia, China, Ukraine.... ? Half of Freepers want to let the chicoms slaughter our democratic capitalist ally, Taiwan.

And why Nixon taped his day to day conversations, that’s the incredible part.


9 posted on 12/30/2010 1:26:23 PM PST by Williams (It's the policies, stupid.)
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To: TheThinker

Israel had no better ally than Nixon. This was adult private talk motivated by a piece of legislation which Kissinger/Nixon thought would harm Soviet Jews, and Kissinger claims it did just that. Further, did we do jack squat when commies murdered millions in Cambodia, China, Ukraine.... ? Half of Freepers want to let the chicoms slaughter our democratic capitalist ally, Taiwan.

And why Nixon taped his day to day conversations, that’s the incredible part.


10 posted on 12/30/2010 1:26:35 PM PST by Williams (It's the policies, stupid.)
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To: TheThinker

Israel had no better ally than Nixon. This was adult private talk motivated by a piece of legislation which Kissinger/Nixon thought would harm Soviet Jews, and Kissinger claims it did just that. Further, did we do jack squat when commies murdered millions in Cambodia, China, Ukraine.... ? Half of Freepers want to let the chicoms slaughter our democratic capitalist ally, Taiwan.

And why Nixon taped his day to day conversations, that’s the incredible part.


11 posted on 12/30/2010 1:26:40 PM PST by Williams (It's the policies, stupid.)
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To: Williams

Forgive the multiples my smart phone made an idiot of me again.


12 posted on 12/30/2010 1:27:47 PM PST by Williams (It's the policies, stupid.)
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To: americanophile
Hitchins is on the periphery of the issue.

You really need to read Gerson's article at WaPo and Kissinger's rebuttal.

It was actually NeoCon Gerson's attack on Realist Kissinger(Beyond Kissinger's Realism) and realize it was done to undermine support for the passage of the START treaty in the Senate.

13 posted on 12/30/2010 1:32:06 PM PST by Ben Ficklin
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To: americanophile

From 1943 to 1946 Dr. Kissinger served in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps and from 1946 to 1949 was a captain in the Military Intelligence Reserve.

I will assume the Hitchens believes the support to Israel in 1973 was considered a massacre.
Or the ending of the VietNam War (not winning) was reprehensible.
Trying to destroy a man’s career on what is purported ( I prefer to hear the tape and context myself) to be an anti-semetic statement is interesting.

I wonder if Soros is paying Hitch to run this smear,based on his dislike of having HIS anti-semitism exposed. Where is THAT outrage.


14 posted on 12/30/2010 1:34:18 PM PST by Marty62 (Marty 60)
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To: americanophile

Henry Kissinger was a war criminal before the left decided it was chic and posh to be a war criminal.


15 posted on 12/30/2010 1:34:25 PM PST by MrBambaLaMamba (Decriminalize crime! Empty the prisons! Anything less is racist genocide!)
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To: americanophile

Yes...and this nation would have been far better off without Kissinger and his realpolitik.


16 posted on 12/30/2010 1:36:11 PM PST by eleni121 (Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield)
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To: americanophile

I Put Henry,with Jane and John.


17 posted on 12/30/2010 1:36:43 PM PST by easternsky
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To: americanophile

I would like to take issue with Hitchens repeated statements that Nixon was an anti-Semite. As an important distinction, Nixon did not despise Jews for being Jewish.

Those Jews he did despise, he despised because they were disloyal to America, supportive of the Soviet Union, deeply supportive of communism and the Democrat party, and did everything in their power to undermine the war effort in SE Asia and his presidency.

Those Jews who *were* patriotic, who worked in support of democratic values, opposed communism and the Soviet Union, and backed the war effort, Nixon was not only quick to appreciate, but he rewarded them for their efforts when he could.

And, I will mention, that those Jews in the latter group, are still, to this day, hated and reviled by the left, who are bitter and unabashed in their hatred, to the point of Antisemitism.

Even Hitchens should note what he should call a profound paradox.

If Nixon was indeed an anti-Semite, why was he such a profound supporter of Israel?

As many leftists today say that “they are *not* anti-Semites, they are anti-Zionists who oppose the Israeli government”, does Hitchens mean to suggest that Nixon was a Zionist, who also hated Jews?

How ridiculous.

And other things that Hitchens cites as well, as horrific, were in fact good ideas.

Not the bombing of “Indochina”, Mr. Hitchens. It was called “North Vietnam” and “Cambodia”, and it worked so well that it almost broke the back of the North Vietnamese, by their own admission.

As far as the Pakistani-Bangladesh civil war, Pakistan was a bulwark against the Soviet Union, which had just signed a treaty with India, and East Pakistan/Bangladesh was being dominated by a pro-Soviet socialist political party as well. Nixon feared that India would intervene in Bangladesh, insuring that it would split from Pakistan as a Soviet ally.

And, the pro-Soviet Bangladesh party killed about as many of its own people, those who supported West Pakistan politically, as did the Pakistani leader.

Unfortunately, the Pakistanis pushed too far, India pushed back, and Bangladesh was lost to a pro-Soviet tyrant in the process, who killed far more of his own people than the Pakistanis did.

Still, no fault to Nixon for trying to stand up to the Soviets and their socialist allies.

I’m surprised that Hitchens only gave a passing mention to Nixon’s efforts against communist South American leaders. Which worked, by the way.


18 posted on 12/30/2010 1:38:33 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: americanophile
"Mr. Kissinger, Have You No Shame?"

Someone has to ask?

19 posted on 12/30/2010 1:39:04 PM PST by TPOOH (I wish I could have been Jerry Reed.)
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To: TPOOH

Read, The Price of Power. Kissinger was a political whore.


20 posted on 12/30/2010 1:43:25 PM PST by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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