HENRY KISSINGER QUOTES

“World population needs to be decreased by 50%”

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself. - Henry Kissinger

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. - Henry Kissinger New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973

Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”. Henry Kissinger

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” and “The elderly are useless eaters” - Henry Kissinger

"Military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy."- Henry Kissinger

This quote just above was reported in "The Final Days", Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

It was said by Kissinger in front of Alexander Haig, newly appointed White House chief of staff, in Haig new office in 1973

Quote:
....
In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. Kissinger often took up a post outside the doorway to Haig's office and dressed him down in front of the secretaries for alleged acts of incompetence with which Haig was not even remotely involved. Once when the Air Force was authorized to resume bombing of North Vietnam, the planes did not fly on certain days because of bad weather. Kissinger assailed Haig. He complained bitterly that the generals had been screamin for the limits to be taken off but that now their pilots were afraid to go up in a little fog. The country needed generals who could win battles, Kissinger said, not good briefers like Haig.
.........
[paragraph]
On another occasion, when Haig was leaving for a trip to Cambodia to meet with Premier Lon Nol, Kissinger escorted him to a staff car, where reporters and a retinue of aides waited. As Haig bent to get into the automobile, Kissinger stopped him and began polishing the single star on his shoulder. "Al, if you're a good boy, I'll get you another one," he said.

end of quote
Source(s):
Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
The Final Days
second Touchstone paperback edition (1994)
Chapter 14, pp. 194-195

Could it Be that Henry Kissinger Just Lacks All Human Empathy?

Related subjects: Eva Scherson, Opinion, Rights & Freedoms, U.S. History, U.S. Politics, U.S. news Comments

30 December 2010 : Eva Scherson

There is much controversy over attempts to defend Henry Kissinger in the wake of revelations that he said the use of gas chambers to exterminate Jews was not “an American concern”. He was not just making a statement about past atrocities, and the ethical underpinnings of what should motivate diplomatic or military action; he was in fact suggesting to Pres. Nixon that if the Soviet Union, from which Jews were emigrating in large numbers, were to commence a new genocide, it would be of no concern to the US.

Specifically, Kissinger said “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” adding, incredibly: “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” The ideas behind this sentiment are so outrageous, on so many levels, I think it’s worth exploring why no one, anywhere, should just write them off as some kind of poor choice of words.

Henry Kissinger was advising the president of the United States at the time on matters of national security and crucial Cold War diplomacy. The very first suggestion that emerges from his remark is that it would literally be of no interest to the United States whether its arch rival were to carry out a mass killing of an ethnic group the United States had fought a very long and destructive war to save from such extermination, with that arch rival as its ally.

This is an outrageous oversimplification, of the kind that only bigots and executioners are capable, and a wholesale dismissal of the most basic moral values of any democratic society. One wonders what, if anything, Kissinger might think would be of significant enough outrage to concern the American security establishment. Is the distinction between “American” and “humanitarian” some kind of suggestion that the United States does not support humanitarian interests? It might be, given the record of one Henry Kissinger.

Christopher Hitchens has taken on Kissinger’s record at Slate.com, stating the problem as follows:

So our culture has once again suffered a degradation by the need to explain away the career of this disgusting individual. And what if we did, indeed, accept the invitation to “remember the context of his entire life”? Here’s what we would find: the secret and illegal bombing of Indochina, explicitly timed and prolonged to suit the career prospects of Nixon and Kissinger. The pair’s open support for the Pakistani army’s 1971 genocide in Bangladesh, of the architect of which, Gen. Yahya Khan, Kissinger was able to say: “Yahya hasn’t had so much fun since the last Hindu massacre.”

Once again, the inflammatory and ridiculous defense of such remarks tends to be that these were guys talking the way guys talk, with a dark humor about dark things and that their intense disapproval of those dark things doesn’t come through, because the audience is not nuanced enough to understand that these were great humanitarians. But… Secretary Kissinger distinguishes between “American concern” (his job) and “humanitarian concern” (apparently, the job of his critics).

Are we to believe that any sane person would want the American people to view the thought processes of such a disastrously misspoken individual as some sort of behind-the-scenes comedy routine necessary to framing an eloquent defense of the values of American democracy? Are we to believe that Kissinger is uniquely allowed to make jokes about genocide, because in 1938 the Kissinger family fled Nazi persecution to come to the United States?

These are open questions, and anyone serious about honoring the tragedy that occurred under the Nazis, or the grave humanitarian disasters of other genocides, in Bangladesh, in East Timor, in Bosnia, or Rwanda or the DR Congo, has to honestly treat them as such. It is baffling and disturbing that someone like Henry Kissinger would adopt a posture so flip and so callous toward the most evil of all possible crimes, and it cannot be of little psychological significance.

Hitchens goes on to detail Kissinger’s sordid past:

Kissinger’s long and warm personal relationship with the managers of other human abattoirs in Chile and Argentina, as well as his role in bringing them to power by the covert use of violence. The support and permission for the mass murder in East Timor, again personally guaranteed by Kissinger to his Indonesian clients. His public endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party’s sanguinary decision to clear Tiananmen Square in 1989. His advice to President Gerald Ford to refuse Alexander Solzhenitsyn an invitation to the White House (another favor, as with spitting on Soviet Jewry, to his friend Leonid Brezhnev). His decision to allow Saddam Hussein to slaughter the Kurds after promising them American support. His backing for a fascist coup in Cyprus in 1974 and then his defense of the brutal Turkish invasion of the island. His advice to the Israelis, at the beginning of the first intifada, to throw the press out of the West Bank and go for all-out repression. His view that ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia was something about which nothing could be done. Forget the criminal aspect here (or forget it if you can). All those policies were also political and diplomatic disasters.

In fact, for a diplomat, the number of very bloody atrocities for which he has expressed something like approval or indifference is shocking. He is not, we might remember, a diplomat brokering deals between medieval warlords; he is a diplomat working in the UN age, with the specific purpose of preventing atrocity and war. He is a diplomat who is supposed to have, as part of his pedigree of Holocaust escapee and American statesman, a profound interest in “humanitarian concern”, but who seems, consistently, to have none.

To offer a little context, for the sake of fairness: Henry Kissinger was doing very difficult work at one of the thorniest times in world history, when a wrong move could have, in theory, led to worldwide nuclear war. Some would say that any of the political leaders and diplomats who served at this time, on either side, served admirably, if only because that war never happened. But we know from incidents like the Cuban missile crisis that sometimes the only reason conflict is averted is because one or two top decision-makers steadfastly refuse to start a war.

Was the often brutal “realpolitik” of Henry Kissinger the only possible way to achieve détente with the Soviet Union? Maybe. Certainly, Kissinger and his defenders will always make this claim. Was the tacit approval of or even support for atrocities the only way light could prevail over total darkness in the conflict between liberty and totalitarianism? Again, Kissinger and his defenders will say yes, of course; that’s what he meant all along.

The truth is: there is no way for any serious diplomat or political leader, with an ounce of basic human decency, to approve of genocide, to turn a blind eye to cruel atrocities, or to support fascist paramilitaries and the slaughter of dissenters. Henry Kissinger has, at least by his words, done all of these things. Again, if we turn to Hitchens, the pull-no-punches analyst points out, “We possess a remarkably complete record of all this, in and out of office, most of it based solidly on U.S. government documents.”

Hitchens really is as unforgiving as he can be, probably because he feels there is a moral imperative to be this way with someone with Kissinger’s record, observing “how often the cables and minutes show him displaying a definite relish for the business of murder and dictatorship”. Is Henry Kissinger guilty of all these crimes, both of conscience and of actual participation? It seems history will eventually let slip the truth, in one or another cable or recording to emerge from the Classified: Top Secret vault of Cold War dealings, but for now, it remains a matter of conscience. How far can one man go and still hold a dignified place in public life?

It is instructive to note, as one often does with young children whose sense of moral convention is not yet fully formed, how Kissinger has said his feelings are hurt by the way his remarks are received, and not by the fact that he actually made these appalling statements. As if to say, I’m sorry you are distressed by my argument that the mass slaughter of innocents is not against our nation’s values, and that I said this in your name, he seems to argue that because he hit on the perfect excuse —”realpolitik”—, he had carte blanche to make that argument and that it amounts to honorable service.

I do not accept this. And I don’t think that anyone who cares about preventing genocide, rolling back the historical influence of prejudice and hatred, or reducing the power of fascists and hate-mongers, could accept it either. Where realpolitik serves to justify atrocities, it is not politics at all, but a way of giving cover to evil. Consider that whether Kissinger were a genius or not, the premise that adopting a posture of realpolitik allows him some sort of privileged view of world affairs already smacks of flippancy and moral bankruptcy: realism operates on the assumption that one can know all facts without error and accurately predict future outcomes.

Henry Kissinger is just as guilty as any other self-appointed “realist” of refusing to confess to his own intellectual limitations and boldly and unjustifiably making claims on future knowledge he cannot in fact have. This is the fallacy of realism, and the sinister deviation that underlies the kind of dismissal of genocide we have heard from Mr. Kissinger. The false pretense commonly referred to as realism allows people with sinister views to cloak those views in a veil of clarity.

But the truth is no less clouded for that charade. I propose we ask ourselves, seriously, and with the proper amount of human empathy: is Henry Kissinger’s problem a pathological absence of empathy of any kind, perhaps so extreme that he could fail to see how remarks such as these defame and threaten even his own relatives, his parents who rescued him from evil, and his own Earthly self? It must be within the realm of possibility, because so many far more absurd defenses have been put forward as to why we should accept his disgusting suggestion that genocide be of no concern to the United States.

There are a lot of things Henry Kissinger needs to apologize to the American people for, but for now, those of us who care what values our nation was built on, and what it is our loved ones fight for and defend, must tolerate a media climate where Henry Kissinger’s embrace of mass atrocity is written off as just a footnote to a crazy time. One wonders: will this man ever have the fortitude to stand in front of the American people, and the world, and apologize for the many ways in which he has defamed and degraded our “humanitarian concern” or condoned or supported acts of atrocity, in service to his pretense to “realism”?

Kissinger Associates

Kissinger Associates, Inc., founded in 1982, is a New York City-based international consulting firm, founded and run by Henry Kissinger. The firm assists its clients in identifying strategic partners and investment opportunities, and advises clients on government relations throughout the world.

History

The firm was founded in 1982 by Henry Kissinger.
In 1999, Mack McLarty joined Kissinger to open Kissinger McLarty Associates, the firm’s office on Eighteenth and Pennsylvania streets in Washington, D.C. McLarty was White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton. Kissinger McLarty is a corporate member of the Council of the Americas, the New York-based business organization established by David Rockefeller in 1965. As of January 2008, the two firms have separated and McLarty Associates, headed by Mack McLarty, is an independent firm based in Washington.
Kissinger Associates is located in River House on Park Avenue at Fifty-first Street, in a building also occupied by Peter Peterson’s Blackstone Group. It was established in July, 1982 after loans had been secured from Goldman Sachs and a consortium of three other banks. These loans were paid out in two years; by 1987 annual revenues had reached $5 million. Associated organizations and individuals
Kissinger Associates has strategic alliances with several firms, including:
* APCO Worldwide, formed October 12, 2004
* The Blackstone Group, an investment and advisory firm
* Hakluyt & Company, a corporate investigation firm
* Covington & Burling, the international law firm, since 2003.
Prominent staff have included:
* Timothy Geithner, current US Secretary of the Treasury, in the Obama administration.
* L. Paul Bremer, former managing director. Former Iraq Director of Reconstruction.
* Nelson Cunningham, managing partner at Kissinger McLarty
* Lawrence Eagleburger, former partner
* Richard W. Fisher – President, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
* Timothy F. Geithner – United States Secretary of Treasury
* Bill Richardson, former Senior managing director. Former U.S diplomat and current Governor of New Mexico.
* J. Stapleton Roy, vice-chairman. Senior U.S. diplomat.
* Brent Scowcroft, former vice-chairman. Former United States National Security Advisor.
Directors have included:
* Lord Carrington, from 1982. Secretary-General of NATO
* Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, from 1982. Chairman, Volvo
* William D. Rogers, from 1982. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs under Nixon
* Eric Roll, from 1984. Chairman S. G. Warburg & Co
* William E. Simon, from 1984. Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon
* Saburo Okita[11], former Japanese Foreign Minister
* Étienne Davignon[12] Former European Commissioner.
* Gary Falle, Falle Strategies

Client base


Kissinger Associates does not disclose its list of corporate clients, and reportedly bars clients from acknowledging the relationship. However, over time details from proxy statements and the tendency of senior businessmen to talk about their relationship with Kissinger have leaked out and a number of major corporate clients have been identified.
The secrecy of their corporate client list has caused problems where Kissinger or a member of his staff were called to public service. In 1989, George H.W. Bush nominated Lawrence Eagleburger as his Deputy Secretary of State. Congress required that Eagleburger disclose the names of 16 clients, some of which were his through his Kissinger Associates affiliation. Later, Kissinger himself was appointed chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by George W. Bush. Congressional Democrats insisted that Kissinger disclose the names of clients. Kissinger and President Bush claimed that such disclosures were not necessary, but Kissinger ultimately stepped down, citing conflicts of interest.