Kissinger is far more immoral than he portrayed Fonda as being. Yet, his apologies are few, mostly “damage-limitation” exercises, and never about the very worst of his conduct or to its attendant victims.
Kissinger
later said, “She knew precisely what she was doing. … What she did was totally
immoral.”
Two
years earlier, seeking to draw attention to atrocities committed in Vietnam in
the wake of revelations about the horrific My Lai massacre carried out by U.S.
troops, Fonda had been arrested for supposed suspicion of drug trafficking upon
returning from a speaking tour in Canada. The pills turned out to be vitamins,
but she was booked and her police “mug shot” conveniently leaked to the press.
Fonda recalled later that, despite informing the officers that they were food
supplements, she was handcuffed and advised that they were detaining her on
orders of the Nixon White House. “I think they hoped this ‘scandal’ would … ruin
my respectability.”
A recent
avalanche of oral histories and declassified documents show that Kissinger
helped Republican candidate Nixon sabotage peace talks with the North
Vietnamese right before the 1968 presidential elections. When President Johnson
became aware of Nixon’s conspiracy, he called Republican Senate Leader Everett
Dirksen to tell him, “very confidentially, because I think that we’re skirting
on dangerous ground … (The Nixon team) oughtn’t to be doing this. This is
treason.” To which Dirksen replied: “I know.” For his part, famed Washington
Post reporter Bob Woodward called it “one of the many drivers that put Nixon on
the road to Watergate,” the interlocking scandals that forced him to escape
impeachment only by being the only U.S. president to ever resign.
Once
elected Nixon sought to keep hidden his treacherous handiwork; an official
break-in of the not-for-profit Brookings Institution, less than a mile from the
White House, was even on the table as the president sought to confiscate any
possible documentary proof. “I want (the raid) implemented on a thievery
basis,” he ranted. “Goddamn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and
get it.” When another senior Nixon aide noted that Johnson’s bombing halt
negotiations tanked just a week before the November elections, Kissinger
bragged, “You remember, I used to give you information about (the peace talks)
at the time.” He was referring to his own role in the betrayal by dealing in
insider diplomatic information.
“A
politically ambitious … Kissinger 'was seeking high office in the next
administration no matter who won,” former New York Times correspondent Tim
Weiner later wrote. “He was dealing with both parties, trading in the hardest
political currency: secret information.”
History
teaches us that Kissinger’s role in the sabotage of the peace talks was
followed by more than 25,000 Americans dying in combat, together with the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of others and millions of refugees. It also
came after telling North Vietnam’s Maoist Chinese patrons in July 1971 (a month
after Kissinger regaled the president about his own role in the arguably
treasonous plot) that, according to The New York Times, the Nixon
administration was “determined to withdraw from Vietnam – even unilaterally,
and even if it led to the overthrow of the government of South Vietnam.” (In
Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s masterful work on Nixon’s extrication from the
White House debacle, The Final Days, in chapter 14 they quoted Kissinger as
referring pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be
used" as pawns for foreign policy. More than a quarter of a century later,
the National Defense University Foundation at the Pentagon’s National Defense
University seemed to endorse that view as it gave Kissinger its coveted
“American Patriot Award” for his “extraordinary excellence,” whose “leadership
and character … strengthened our nation’s strategic interests.”)
Nixon
doppelganger and self-styled foreign policy czar Kissinger went on to promote
and protect vicious dictators in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Peru,
Portugal, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua, Spain, South Korea, and Uruguay, as well
as Pakistan, at least. In 1989, following the Tianamen Square massacre, Kissinger
denounced the U.S. House and Senate for voting to impose economic sanctions on
China. Refusing to disclose the client list of Kissinger Associates, believed
to include some of the world’s most notorious human rights violators, meant
that private sector Kissinger was forced to withdraw as the head of the
presidential commission created to study the failures of September 11, 2001.
In 2015,
he was appointed to the board of advisors of Theranos, the now disgraced
blood-testing company whose founder was on November 18 sentenced to more than
11 years in prison for defrauding investors. In 2016, Politico ran a story,
“Kissinger, a longtime Putin confidant, sidles up to Trump.” In the wake of
this year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, the nonpartisan Atlantic Council
issued an “Alert” bluntly titled: “Memo to Henry Kissinger: Appeasing Putin
means enabling genocide.”
Just
last year, the multinational financial services company headquartered in
Frankfurt agreed to pay more than $130 million to resolve a U.S. criminal
investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and a
separate investigation into commodities fraud. “Deutsche Bank engaged in a
criminal scheme to conceal payments to so-called consultants worldwide who
served as conduits for bribes to foreign officials so that they could unfairly
obtain and retain lucrative business projects,” noted then Acting U.S. Attorney
Seth D. DuCharme of the Eastern District of New York.
Earlier
this year, following a law enforcement search of Deutsche headquarters on
additional suspicions of money laundering, CNBC noted that the U.S. Department
of Justice investigations over years; for example, over trades that authorities
said were used to launder $10 billion out of Russia, which has led to the
German bank being fined nearly $700 million. On November 1st, Germany’s scandal
ridden Deutsche Bank announced the launching of Global Advisory Board in which
Kissinger would help shape its response to a “rapidly changing world.”
The
daughter of Henry Fonda, one of Hollywood’s greatest stars (his 1957
performance in 12 Angry Men makes it perhaps the definitive—and socially searing—courtroom
drama on film), Jane Fonda has repeatedly apologized for her conduct during her
trip to North Vietnam, particularly to U.S. Vietnam veterans. She went on to
win two Academy awards, one for her sensitive role as the wife of a Vietnam War
soldier in Coming Home. She has worked tirelessly in the women’s rights
movement, in raising awareness on climate change, and continues to lend her
efforts to Native American causes, including protests against the Dakota Access
Pipeline in 2016 at Standing Rock and Line 3 in 2020. Fonda also told friends
about actually having met Kissinger on an elevator at Yankee Stadium, as the
home team played the Atlanta Braves owned by her then husband Ted Turner. “As
the doors closed on Ted, Jane, Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Fonda quipped, ‘Well,
I see we’re still on opposite sides.’”
Kissinger
is far more immoral than he portrayed Fonda as being. Yet, his apologies are
few, mostly “damage-limitation” exercises, and never about the very worst of
his conduct or to its attendant victims. The disgraced Nixon is central to
Kissinger’s newest book (on leadership, no less); this as the nonagenarian
brandishes his updated “Jane Fonda version of history,” warning about (in the
supple rendition of one next generation media outlet) “education wokeness as a
national security threat.”
Yet
Kissinger has never apologized to Fonda for his two grossly self-interested public
attacks. Given his propensity for the treasonous and his own particular
rendition on leadership, Kissinger could at least diplomatically admit: It
takes one to know one.
There is
still time.
***More:
https://www.laprogressive.com/.amp/war-and-peace/jane-fonda-henry-kissinger
fecha |
Título |
28/02/2023| |
|
11/11/2022| |
|
19/03/2022| |
|
23/09/2020| |
|
05/03/2020| |
|
17/01/2020| |
|
05/06/2018| |
|
27/03/2018| |
|
21/02/2018| |
|
22/04/2017| |
|
17/02/2017| |
|
17/12/2016| |
|
14/09/2016| |
|
07/08/2016| |
|
27/03/2016| |
|
22/03/2016| |
|
22/03/2016| |
|
11/03/2016| |
|
15/02/2016| |
|
20/09/2015| |
|
20/09/2015| |
|
07/09/2015| |
|
03/09/2015| |
|
18/02/2015| |
|
20/01/2015| |
|
18/12/2014| |
|
09/12/2014| |
|
18/11/2014| |
|
06/11/2014| |
|
01/10/2014| |
|
17/09/2014| |
|
06/09/2014| |
|
14/05/2014| |
|
12/03/2014| |
|
04/02/2014| |
|
19/12/2013| |
|
03/11/2013| |
|
25/10/2013| |
|
10/10/2013| |
|
29/08/2013| |
|
27/06/2013| |
|
19/05/2013| |
|
08/05/2013| |
|
08/05/2013| |
|
02/05/2013| |
|
20/03/2013| |
|
23/02/2013| |
|
23/02/2013| |
|
25/01/2013| |
|
15/06/2012| |
|
26/05/2012| |
|
04/05/2012| |
|
28/04/2012| |
|
17/04/2012| |
|
01/11/2011| |
|
04/07/2011| |
|
04/07/2011| |
|
11/04/2011| |
|
07/02/2011| |
|
24/01/2011| |
|
14/12/2010| |
|
21/11/2010| |
|
15/09/2010| |
|
09/08/2010| |
|
18/07/2010| |
|
01/07/2010| |
|
11/06/2010| |
|
06/06/2010| |
|
13/01/2010| |
|
29/10/2009| |
|
24/09/2009| |
|
03/09/2009| |
|
02/09/2009| |
|
29/08/2009| |
|
25/07/2009| |
|
25/07/2009| |
|
25/07/2009| |
|
25/07/2009| |
|
01/04/2009| |
|
12/03/2009| |
|
12/03/2009| |
|
16/11/2008| |
|
16/11/2008| |
|
14/11/2008| |
|
14/11/2008| |
|
18/09/2008| |
|
18/09/2008| |
|
13/08/2008| |
|
13/08/2008| |
|
28/01/2008| |
|
17/01/2008| |
|
30/12/2007| |
|
16/12/2007| |
|
02/12/2007| |
|
01/12/2007| |
|
06/10/2007| |
|
12/09/2007| |
|
17/06/2007| |
|
17/06/2007| |
|
17/06/2007| |
|
17/06/2007| |
|
17/06/2007| |
|
17/06/2007| |
|
21/05/2007| |
|
21/05/2007| |
|
06/04/2007| |
|
28/03/2007| |
|
12/01/2007| |
|
12/01/2007| |
|
18/12/2006| |
|
18/12/2006| |
|
22/09/2006| |
|
22/09/2006| |
|
03/08/2006| |
|
01/08/2006| |
|
23/02/2006| |
|
08/10/2005| |
|
18/08/2005| |
|
22/07/2005| |
|
15/07/2005| |
|
12/07/2005| |
|
23/06/2005| |
|
14/06/2005| |
|
25/05/2005| |
|
26/04/2005| |
|
26/04/2005| |
|
29/03/2005| |
|
29/03/2005| |
|
19/02/2005| |
|
19/02/2005| |
|
16/02/2005| |
|
16/02/2005| |
|
15/02/2005| |
|
15/02/2005| |
|
11/02/2005| |
|
11/02/2005| |
|
09/02/2005| |
|
09/02/2005| |
|
09/02/2005| |
|
09/02/2005| |
|
06/02/2005| |
|
06/02/2005| |
|
04/02/2005| |
|
04/02/2005| |
|
04/02/2005| |
|
02/02/2005| |
|
02/02/2005| |
|
02/02/2005| |
|
31/01/2005| |
|
31/01/2005| |
|
28/01/2005| |
|
28/01/2005| |
|
25/01/2005| |
|
25/01/2005| |
|
25/01/2005| |
|
25/01/2005| |
|
24/01/2005| |
|
24/01/2005| |
|
18/01/2005| |
|
18/01/2005| |
|
14/01/2005| |
|
14/01/2005| |
|
13/01/2005| |
|
13/01/2005| |
|
11/01/2005| |
|
11/01/2005| |
|
11/01/2005| |
|
11/01/2005| |
|
11/01/2005| |
|
11/01/2005| |
|
06/01/2005| |
|
06/01/2005| |
|
04/01/2005| |
|
04/01/2005| |
|
24/12/2004| |
|
24/12/2004| |
|
22/12/2004| |
|
22/12/2004| |
|
22/12/2004| |
|
22/12/2004| |
|
14/12/2004| |
|
14/12/2004| |
|
06/12/2004| |
|
06/12/2004| |
|
02/12/2004| |
|
02/12/2004| |
|
30/11/2004| |
|
30/11/2004| |
|
23/11/2004| |
|
23/11/2004| |
|
20/11/2004| |
|
20/11/2004| |
|
12/10/2004| |
|
12/10/2004| |
|
24/09/2004| |
|
24/09/2004| |
|
27/06/2003| |
|
27/06/2003| |
|
20/06/2003| |
|
20/06/2003| |
|
03/06/2003| |
|
03/06/2003| |
|
07/05/2003| |
|
07/05/2003| |
|
06/05/2003| |
|
06/05/2003| |
|
24/04/2003| |
|
24/04/2003| |
|
16/04/2003| |
|
16/04/2003| |
|
16/04/2003| |
|
16/04/2003| |
|
10/04/2003| |
|
10/04/2003| |
|
09/04/2003| |
|
09/04/2003| |
|
02/04/2003| |
|
02/04/2003| |
|
27/03/2003| |
|
27/03/2003| |
|
21/03/2003| |
|
21/03/2003| |
|
20/03/2003| |
|
20/03/2003| |
|
17/03/2003| |
|
17/03/2003| |
|
15/03/2003| |
|
15/03/2003| |
|
03/03/2003| |
|
03/03/2003| |
|
22/02/2003| |
|
22/02/2003| |
|
17/02/2003| |
|
17/02/2003| |
|
07/02/2003| |
|
07/02/2003| |
|
04/02/2003| |
|
04/02/2003| |
|
01/02/2003| |
|
01/02/2003| |
|
30/01/2003| |
|
30/01/2003| |
|
28/01/2003| |
|
28/01/2003| |
|
22/01/2003| |
|
22/01/2003| |
|
15/01/2003| |
|
15/01/2003| |
|
26/12/2002| |
|
26/12/2002| |
|
24/12/2002| |
|
24/12/2002| |
|
22/12/2002| |
|
22/12/2002| |
|
13/12/2002| |
|
13/12/2002| |
|
13/12/2002| |
|
13/12/2002| |
|
01/12/2002| |
|
01/12/2002| |
|
06/10/2002| |
|
06/10/2002| |
|
04/10/2002| |
|
04/10/2002| |
|
28/09/2002| |
|
28/09/2002| |
|