Henry Kissinger was a cave man

The establishment media was Hitler's Leni Riefenstahl

Hi George Will,

Your portrait of Henry Kissinger (The Washington Post, November 30, 2023, “Kissinger schooled America in realism—for good and ill”) would have profited by following Oliver Cromwell’s instruction to his portrait painter Sir Peter Lely, “I desire you would use all your skill to paint your picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.”

Mr. Kissinger’s warts, which you airbrushed out of your portraint, were considerable.

He griped to President Gerald Ford in 1975, “[I]t is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from assassination.” A Godfather in the White House was Kissinger’s dream. 

He celebrated military dictator Augusto Pinochet’s terrorist state in Chile (including terrorism at DuPont Circle killing Ronnie Moffit and Orlando Letelier) over elected President Salvador Allende, explaining, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.”

He supported Argentina’s anti-communist junta in 1976 earmarked by industrial scale murders and kidnappings of Argentine civilians soaring past 30,000.

He championed Pakistan’s genocide in Bangladesh in 1971.

He was a drum major for Indonesia’s war of aggression against East Timor in 1975 killing up to 200,000 led by dictator Suharto who had earlier in 1965-1966 ordered the mass murder of millions of suspected communists—a crime against humanity.

He orchestrated the unconstitutional secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 that killed 150,000 civilians, and the unconstitutional warrantless surveillance of suspected leakers of the illegality to New York Times reporter William Beecher.  Kissinger famously insisted that the wiretapping of suspects continue despite the absence of incriminating evidence with the Orwellian argument that they should be permitted to “establish a pattern of innocence.”  Unexploded ordnance dropped at the direction of Kissinger in Cambodia continue to maim and kill children to this very day.

James Madison, father of the Constitution, explained that “justice” is the end of civil society, the end of government.  Kissinger, in contrast, would choose order over justice, i.e., convicting 100 innocent men so that one guilty man does not go free.  Due process and individual liberty be damned.

Kissinger championed the unconstitutional war in Vietnam even after the repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1971.  He believed, like President Nixon, that if the President does it, that means it is not illegal.  He never distanced himself from the serial crimes of Watergate.

He advocated appeasement of the Soviet Union by denying Alexander Solzhenitsyn a meeting with President Ford and opposing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to encourage the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate to Israel. Indeed, he callously told President Nixon, “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.”  He refrained from rebuking South African apartheid.

He warmly embraced Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong responsible for a staggering 80 million Chinese deaths including 2 million in the Cultural Revolution. 

It is fair do deduce that Kissinger would have had no scruples praising Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympics featuring his snub to Jesse Owens.

Hitler had his Leni Riefenstahl.

Kissinger has his establishment media to conceal his volumes of constitutional, moral, and ethical warts.  I would suggest you consider a sequel portrait Kissinger more faithful to Cromwell’s instruction to Sir Peter Lely.

Kind regards,

Bruce