Here's
why I consider Henry Kissinger a war criminal.
As you may have heard, security guards recently tossed me and my
fellow activists out of a Senate hearing where former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger was about to testify. It became a hot story when Senator John
McCain denounced us as “low-life scum.”
Why was McCain so mad?
Probably because we were holding signs that said “Arrest
Kissinger for War Crimes” while dangling handcuffs.
For this, the Arizona Republican called us “disgraceful,
outrageous, and despicable.” He even accused us of “physically intimidating”
the 91-year-old Kissinger.
After Kissinger facilitated the 1973 coup that brought the
ruthless Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, soldiers herded Jara and 5,000
other prisoners into Chile’s National Stadium. Sadistic thugs smashed Jara’s
hands and tore off his nails. Then they ordered him to play his guitar.
The popular singer’s corpse was later found dumped on the
street, his dead body riddled with gunshot wounds and signs of torture.
As Pinochet’s military government tortured, killed, and
“disappeared” thousands of Chileans, Kissinger told the dictator that
he had done “a great service to the West” by overthrowing the democratically
elected government that preceded him.
McCain also called us “despicable.” What about Kissinger’s role
in the brutal 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor?
It was Kissinger who gave the Indonesian strongman Suharto a
green light — and plenty of weapons — for an invasion that led to a 25-year
occupation in which over 100,000 people were murdered or starved to death. A UN
truth commission later observed that U.S.
“political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and
occupation.”
I wish McCain would read the report by the UN Commission on
Human Rights describing the horrific consequences. It includes the gang
rape of female Timorese detainees and prolonged sexual torture of a vile and
disgusting nature.
Talk about physical intimidation.
You might also think that McCain, who endured torture as a
prisoner of war in Vietnam, would be more sensitive to Kissinger’s role in
prolonging that conflict.
From 1969 through 1973, Kissinger, along with President Richard
Nixon, oversaw the expansion of the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. About 1
million people died in the bloodshed. I hope McCain has heard the recording of
Kissinger ordering a “massive bombing campaign in Cambodia” against “anything that
moves.”
Given this shameful record, it’s no wonder that Kissinger is
used to being called a war criminal.
In 2001, French Judge Roger Le Loire issued a warrant to have
Kissinger appear before his court. When the French served Kissinger with
his summons at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, Kissinger fled the country.
More indictments followed in Spain, Argentina, and
Uruguay. In 2001 the family of General René Schneider, the
assassinated commander in chief of the Chilean army, even filed a civil suit
against him in Washington.
“Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent
person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded,” the late writer
Christopher Hitchens once fumed. Rather than doting on the man, Hitchens
suggested, “why don’t you arrest him?”
Kissinger probably won’t ever be tried for war crimes, at least
not in the United States. But we can show — with words and banners — that some
people remember his crimes.
McCain called us “disgraceful.” You know what’s really
disgraceful? A bunch of senators hearing a war criminal drone on about “Global
Challenges and the U.S. National Security Strategy.”
Following over a decade of failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
it’s time for elected officials like John McCain to bring in fresh faces and
fresh ideas.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and
the human rights organization Global Exchange. She is the author of Drone
Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Codepink.org.
Distributed via OtherWords.org