What is most important about his mass murder, however, was not only that his order to Alexander Haig to undertake "a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves" was clear evidence of criminal intent to avoid the laws of war protecting civilians, and that he would have been executed had the Nuremberg Judgment been applied to his blanket bombing of civilian targets.
It was that he conducted a new form of automated, secret and amoral warfare previously only imagined by George Orwell in 1984 when he described war as fought by machines waged by "very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists (waging war) on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at." When Richard Nixon decided, and Henry Kissinger executed, a plan to withdraw U.S. ground troops but seek to win by escalating war from the air, they brought into being a new age of automated war that inevitably, and cold-bloodedly, wound up killing large numbers of civilians.
Previous war-makers fomented hatred against the "Jewish scum", "gooks", or "Huns" they massacred. But neither Mr. Kissinger nor his subordinates had anything against the countless Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese civilians they slaughtered. They simply did not regard them as human beings. They had no more significance for them than cockroaches or ants. It was not immorality but amorality, the murder of countless "non-people" whose existence as human beings was simply ignored. Though the people of the Plain of Jars wanted nothing from America except to be left alone, even this simple wish was denied them, as they were extinguished like flies out of indifference not malice.
An August, 1945 editorial in the London Observer eerily foreshadowed what Mr. Kissinger represented, and what such successors as David Petraeus and John Brennan embody today: "Albert Speer symbolizes a type which is becoming increasingly important in all belligerent countries: the pure technician, the classless, bright young man, without background, with no other original aim than to make his way in the world, and no other means than his technical and managerial ability. It is the lack of psychological and spiritual ballast and the ease with which he handles the terrifying technical and organizational machinery of our age which makes this slight type go extremely far nowadays. This is their age. The Hitlers and Himmlers we may get rid of, but the Speers, whatever happens to this particular special man, will long be with us."
Although Mr. Kissinger failed so miserably in Indochina, he did indeed display great ability in handling the "organizational machinery" of the U.S. Executive Branch -- so much ability in fact that his actions have become the template for most U.S. war-making today. This war-making is:
-- Undemocratic: Mr. Kissinger not only failed to obtain permission from Congress to bomb Laos and Cambodia, he did not even inform it he was doing so. The incredible fact is that a handful of U.S. leaders unilaterally dropped 3.7 million tons of bombs on Indochina entirely on their own initiative - as have U.S. officials today assassinated thousands of unarmed suspects throughout the Muslim world.
-- Unconstitutional: The very foundation of the Constitution is the principle that leaders may only legitimately rule with the "informed consent" of the people. But Mr. Kissinger not only failed to inform the American people or Congress about his bombing of Indochina. He has lied about it from the day he took office until today. Between January 1969 and March 1970, as he leveled the Plain of Jars, Mr. Kissinger's State Department denied it was even bombing Laos. And when reports from refugees made it impossible to deny the bombing, Mr. Kissinger's and his representatives continued to lie, denying that they bombed civilian targets. William Sullivan, close Kissinger ally and the former U.S. Ambassador to Laos, testified to Senator Edward Kennedy on April 22, 1971 "the policy of the U.S. is deliberately to avoid hitting inhabited villages."
-- Illegal: By failing to even notify Congress of his massive bombing, Mr. Kissinger broke domestic law. By systematically bombing civilian targets and refusing to observe laws seeking to protect civilians during wartime, he violated international law. Both conditions are true for U.S. drone and ground assassinations today.
-- Secret: The bombing of Laos and Cambodia, like that in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia today, was conducted in secret. Even as U.S. officials first denied they were doing any bombing at all, and then that they were only bombing legitimate military targets, they refused to allow journalists to go out on bombing runs. The information about the bombing of civilian targets was classified and kept out of the hands of Congress, the media, and the American people.
-- Amoral: Like Mr. Kissinger, President Obama lied when he recently described his drone assassination program as "a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American facilities, American bases, and so on ". In fact, U.S. officials have admitted that most of their victims are unarmed suspects killed in "signature strikes" against people who names are not known. And the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented that hundreds of those killed by U.S. drone strikes are civilians. The victims of drone strikes are simply labeled "militants", denied their humanity as well as their lives.
What is most troubling to anyone with a conscience about Mr. Kissinger's new form of warfare is that, from a bureaucratic perspective, it worked. By keeping the human consequences of their war-making secret from Congress and the American people, the Kissingers, Petraeuses and Brennans have had a free hand to kill, torture, imprison and maim anyone they wish. They not only need not fear punishment for their illegal acts. Like Mr. Kissinger, who has grown wealthy on the blood of the innocents of Indochina, they can even look forward to being rewarded for them. We are taught as children that crime does not pay. Mr. Kissinger, who has earned tens of millions since the war ended on the blood of innocent Indochinese, is living proof that this is untrue.
The big question for Americans today is the degree to which this "Executive Mentality" will be directed against American citizens in the future. The prospects are not promising.
The U.S. Executive today has not only obtained permission from Congress to kill or imprison any American citizens they wish without due process. They have done so - murdering not only Anwar al-Awlaki but his 16 year son, also a U.S. citizen, while sitting in a caf????. The Executive under President Obama has undertaken unprecedented prosecution of U.S. whistle-blowers and journalists alike for revealing information officials have arbitrarily classified. Never before has the U.S. had an Executive Branch "Department of Homeland Security", which routinely spies on millions of Americans, and is working to paramilitarize police departments around the nation.
On a human level it is possible, even appropriate, to sympathize with Henry Kissinger. German Jew Heinz Alfred Kissinger was only 9 when Hitler took office, and only escaped at age 16 shortly before Kristallnacht, One can only guess at the multiple traumas and psychological damage he suffered. It is entirely understandable that he would develop a cynical view of the world and devote himself solely to gaining and holding power devoid of moral or ethical concerns.
But Mr. Kissinger is more than an individual. He is also a political and historical figure.
Future historians, public intellectuals and journalists who have nothing to gain by flattering Mr. Kissinger and ignoring his crimes against humanity will likely have a very different view of his legacy than today's opinion-makers.
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