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https://www.avclub.com/tom-lehrer-1798208112
Excellent! Thank you! Right from the man himself: "I've said that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize." So his objection is not to the quote itself, but rather the implication that he would have retired as a form of protest in relation to said quote.
He wrote a fair amount of books for the interested
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Good question. I have heard it referenced multiple times, but that does not make it true. Wikiquote cites The Sydney Morning Herald [1], but that is probably not a great source. I did a bit of digging online and also found The Guardian mentioning it too around the same time [2] (some twenty or so years ago). But I do not have a source that I would be willing to bet my life on. [1]: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainmen…
https://www.avclub.com/tom-lehrer-1798208112
Probably as good a time as any to re-link the Mother Jones piece "Daniel Ellsberg on the Limits of Knowledge": https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsbe... Linked on HN numerous times but largely only discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296691
A lot of sensitive diplomatic and military records from even the 60s are yet to be declassified, so the final verdict of future historians will likely rest on much different information then we can access today.
If you really want to understand the Kissenger era, the best raw source IMO is this: > "The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East is a 2011 book by Andrew Scott Cooper" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oil_Kings > "The book discusses Henry Kissinger, the 1970s oil embargo, and the Iranian Revolution. Cooper had stated that the story on how the U.S. became dep…
I don't think think we can read 1 book and understood modern politics lol. It's also very funny to say that book to would be the prince.
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YouTube seems to have made it unplayable (for now). You get a vague error when you try to play it.
Works for me.
Video unavailable
This video is unavailable
Only after clicking it. The initial screen loads up as if it's going to play normally. Usually if there are geographical limits or whatever, it mentions that. But this error says the video simply isn't there.
The pro-Kissinger side will obviously have plenty of defense. Here's a good unrolling of the "piss on his grave" perspective for those who are confused (or angry but concerned they may not be showing enough consideration to a different perspective): https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-ki... Anthony Bourdain on Kissinger [0]: “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry…
> Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon — and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion — died because of Henry Kissinger.
I don't know how to take such a claim seriously. AFAICT the evidence for this claim is that Kissenger fed some info about the peace negotiations to the Nixon camp during the 1968 election campaign. That's it.
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> assume he was smarter than the people without clearance Idk, it's actually wild how HN is almost entirely "Kissinger is a war criminal" meme-ing with little actual specific policy substance behind it. Meanwhile, if you read any Kissinger, you'd realize he understood history and the international relations better than 99% of these comments. Truly, word-for-word basis you will undoubtedly learn far more about history…
> meme-ing with little actual specific policy substance behind it. This is a good point. Can we really say for certain that “bombing noncombatant countries both during a war and after a treaty was signed” is a war crime, and even if it were would “coming up with the whole idea” even count as contributing to something like that? It is confusing stuff like this that has led to no person ever being convicted for war cri…
I can understand why people despise Kissinger, but he’s a pretty interesting figure on the whole. Not the best diplomat or Secretary of State we’ve had, but certainly a seminal figure in American foreign policy.
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You may be surprised to learn it's been in shambles for a while longer than that.
Yeah, but it was meaningfully stabilizing before we fucked it again.
Israel was at war with all of its neighbors 5 years before Kissinger. The clerics were poised to take power in Iran since the 60s. same thing with the baaths in Iraq.