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Henry Kissinger Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#391

Post by standardUser »

AYBABTME wrote: post #388
standardUser wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rhetoric can be used to craft any message, no matter how absurd. Eloquent defenses exist for all of the most heinous actions by men. We have to assess the viewpoint before we grant it legitimacy, not absorb it simply because it exists.

"We have to decide if we're going to have our prior beliefs and preferences reinforced before we grant it access to our ears and eyes."

"The logical fallacy you're committing is called the Straw Man Fallacy. This fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents or distorts an opponent's argument or position, creating a weaker or exaggerated version of it."

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#392

Post by defrost »

AYBABTME wrote: post #386
kelnos wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't only his opponents who hated him, it's the countless families and friends of the innocent bystanders who got caught in Kissinger's crossfire.

The victims "were on the receiving end of his work", like I said. The man served the US and the US first and wasn't shy about sacrificing left and right for his perceived greater good. In the trolley problem, he was clear eyed. You may disagree with his trolley problem solution, but then would you have one, or would you stall and do nothing in the face of this problem?

> You may disagree with his trolley problem solution

Many more correctly disagree with his championing of a specific Trolley Problem framing that likely didn't exist outside a hobgoblin of tiny minds frightened of reds under the bed.

Kissenger loved that Domino Theory: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/27/archives/skepticism-on-do...

    That judgment, however, is not shared by Administration foreign policy specialists, the American intelligence community or many foreign diplomats.
The U.S. put much effort into suppressing "people’s movements" in Chile, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Laos, Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc.

    “The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, 'Why not us?'”
~ Chomsky on the “threat of a good example".

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#393

Post by warbaker »

Kissinger gets a lot of flak for the bombings in Cambodia and Vietnam, but... I mean, it was awful when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, and it was also awful when the Viet Cong took over Vietnam.

The Khmer Rouge murdered 25% of the country! 2 million people!! https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/cambodian-genocide

The Viet Cong were also horrible (excepting, of course, their intervention in Cambodia against the Khmer Rouge!) and devastated Vietnam, and the CPV rules it with an iron fist to this day.

Communism really is and was extremely, horribly bad.

In South Korea, the seemingly insane plan of the US (install a pro-Western dictator as a bulwark against Communism, and eventually transition to a liberal democracy) eventually worked. The Korean War pre-dates Kissinger's rise to power, but his overall principle of oppose-Communism-no-matter-what seems kind of reasonable, even in hindsight.

Anti-communist dictatorships and militias were often terrible, too, but it is really hard to be worse than Communists.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#394

Post by AYBABTME »

estebank wrote: post #382
imgabe wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Maybe the alternatives available at the time were believed to result in something 10x worse than the Khmer Rouge. Would he still be a bastard then? Or someone who had to make a hard choice among terrible options? I don't know, for the record. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't sound like a reasoned consideration of the evidence taking into account the historical context. It sounds like someone who thought "…

He supported and enabled dictatorships in Latin America. Do tell us how that was defensible. This is very much part of public record, thanks to diplomatic cables declassified in 2016.

His point of view was that communism had to be stopped everywhere and that's what he went with. Clearly he knew that it meant aligning with bad folks in some cases. Hence why he's known as the "real politik" guy. You can disagree with his conclusions but it's not like it's helpful to assume that this man had zero moral compass and was pure evil. He might have been wrong (I'm not saying he was or wasn't), many of us are in our attempts at doing what seems necessary for the greater good.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#395

Post by leobg »

Gud wrote: post #370

I am reminded of Hunter S Thompsons euology for Nixon. Good Riddance! Should have died in jail. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-...

Wow. What a refreshing directness:

> He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

How come they could publish this without getting sued into oblivion?

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#396

Post by philjohn »

ivanb wrote: post #318

On a practical side of things, how did he manage to make it to 100? Did he maintain a nutrition plan, was he physically active? Fun fact: Henry Kissinger was elected an international member of Russian Academy of Sciences in 2016.

Some people just live longer.

My grandmother made it to 98, she rode horses when she was a younger woman (in Australia during the war, she was able to follow my grandfather who was an RAF mechanic out there on the last passenger ship through the Suez).

She used to enjoy a tipple, never smoked though, but in her later years never really exercised.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#397

Post by AYBABTME »

standardUser wrote: post #391
AYBABTME wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have to decide if we're going to have our prior beliefs and preferences reinforced before we grant it access to our ears and eyes."

"The logical fallacy you're committing is called the Straw Man Fallacy. This fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents or distorts an opponent's argument or position, creating a weaker or exaggerated version of it."

My analogy is your straw man falacy.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#398

Post by sdiq »

chirau wrote: post #132

As a person from the third world and more specifically Africa, I cannot find myself to mourn his death or say any good thing about Kissinger. Good riddance actually. I would have loved to see him get his day in court when he was still alive. What he masterminded in Angola and several other African countries that ended up in civil wars because of him are some of the greatest atrocities to people of the third world. I…

I think many people from the Global South would agree with you and not just Africans. That was also exactly my thought when i read the headline, even though he did nothing against my native Kenya. Also, the phrase "Third World" isn't the most appropriate one to describe a good chunk of the world.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#399

Post by fatbird »

wordpad25 wrote: post #343
wkat4242 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those wars in Cambodia and Vietnam didn't further the interests of the US at all. They just wasted tons of lives for nothing. Same as with the recent Afghanistan campaign. At least the military industrial complex got even richer of it. That's the only reason.

> Those wars in Cambodia and Vietnam didn't further the interests of the US at all. It's easy to judge history in hindsight. USA bombed the crap out of Japan during WW2, and Japan had amazing recovery. Not to say that Cambodia was at all justified (or Japan for that matter), but that it's more complicated. It's a lot easier to judge a person on objective things, like how effective they were at executing their policy.

America had total control of Japan following their surrender, and the time/power/resources to rebuild Japan as they saw fit (which was to become an eastern bulwark of capitalist freedom, against China and Russia).

Bombing Cambodia had the much more cynical purpose of convincing Ho Chi Min that Nixon was an unrestrained madman whose demands in peace talks had to be surrendered to, to avoid further mindless devastation for all involved. Yes, it was more complicated in the details, but pretty damn clear in the larger picture.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#400

Post by [deleted] »

freetanga wrote: post #374

A shadowy character. For all his public appearances brokering Peace Deals, he engineered military coups all over Latin America in the 70s (Allendes government for one) and helped set up “School of the Americas” in Panama, where the US trained military juntas how to fight leftist “insurgency”(or civilian opposition, depending who you ask). A lot of the torturing and dirty wars that crippled Latam for 15 years is his d…

[deleted]
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