For the week of August 29 - September 4, 2001

The truth gains on Henry Kissinger

Commentary by DICK DORWORTH

---

When the Spanish government forced England to put the tyrannical Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, under house arrest a few years ago, the fledgling concept of international justice took a small, if significant, step forward.

Powerful people all over the world blanched and began to attack the concept that justice has no boundaries. England shamefully reneged on its commitment to that concept and, after a year of pampered detention, let the thug slink home to spend his last years in uneasy disrepute. The second step was not taken. Not yet. Not in England. (Nor in Chile.)

Not for Pinochet, whose bloody reign included the murder and "disappearance" of thousands of innocent Chileans and dozens of men and women from other nations, including Spain, Argentina, Switzerland, France and the United States.

While truth and justice have a way of walking together, justice is usually the slower of the two. Those who believe in the higher justice of an afterlife have faith that Pinochet will eventually get his, but most people believe that justice is best served in the immediate, physical world in which we all live. No matter what one believes, in this life, justice has been hamstrung and only the truth seems to have caught up to Pinochet.

And it is quickly catching up with Henry Kissinger, Pinochet’s partner, mentor and supporter in politics and crimes against humanity. Kissinger, more than any other person, except, perhaps, Richard Nixon, is responsible for Pinochet’s regime in Chile and, of course, its consequences.

Kissinger was one of the first to lose color and feel his cold heart beat faster when Pinochet was arrested. If truth takes a thousand steps to justice’s one, it is enough to make the former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser wary, even 30 years after the murders began. True justice can have no boundaries in space or time, and it is somehow gratifying to know that the truth (and fear of the slow walk of justice) can make Kissinger’s heart feel anything besides unenlightened self-interest.

In his latest book, "Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21^st Century," Kissinger presents his argument against international justice. He calls it "The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction," and it is a masterpiece of pompous verbosity, self-serving obfuscation and sleazy intellectual double-speak, each word and convoluted thought a pitfall to the steady walk of truth. Henry Kissinger is running scared because he knows the truth about his career as a government servant is catching up.

Justice is a bit behind, but it, too, is gaining. A judge in Chile wants to question the man with the uncanny physical and psychic resemblance to Dr. Strangelove about an American who was murdered by one of Pinochet’s goon squads. (The film "Missing" tells the story of this American victim of an American spawned aggression.) It is unlikely Kissinger will testify because the current administration of the United States is against both the concept and practice of universal justice. But most of the rest of the world is embracing the concept, and that alone will make those with guilty consciences (or at least an amoral fear of justice) choose their travel itineraries with caution and care.

Those of us who are familiar with and care about Chile and its people and history have long known about Kissinger’s malevolent impact on that lovely country. It was documented years ago by Seymour Hersh in his book "Price of Power," a recommended read, like much of Hersh’s work.

Even better is Christopher Hitchens new book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," which was condensed in the February and March 2001 "Harper’s Magazine." In this remarkable piece of journalism, Hitchens declares himself concerned with only those Kissinger offenses open to legal prosecution. He says that numerous incidences of mere "callous indifference to human life and human rights," however depraved, have been left out.

In addition to the murders in Chile, he indicts Kissinger for prolonging the war in Vietnam by helping the Nixon campaign subvert the peace process in 1968 and for planning the attacks on neutral Laos and Cambodia. He calls it "bombing for votes." Four years later, the Nixon administration tried to conclude the war in Vietnam on the same terms that had been on the table in 1968. He refers to it as an "open secret" in political circles of Washington, D.C. Hitchens writes: "The reason for the dead silence that still surrounds the question is that in those intervening years some 20,000 Americans and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives. Lost them, that is to say, even more pointlessly than had those slain up to that point. The impact of those four years on Indochinese society, and on American democracy, is beyond computation. The chief beneficiary of the covert action, and of the subsequent slaughter, was Henry Kissinger.

"I can already hear the guardians of consensus, scraping their blunted quills to dismiss this as a ‘conspiracy theory.’ I happily accept the challenge."

He does, in spades, he amply documents what he terms Kissinger’s "crimes" not only in Chile and Indochina, but as well in Cyprus, Greece, Bangladesh and East Timor. "They are crimes for which Henry Kissinger is, and should be held, responsible," he writes, "and they vividly insist on an accounting."

With "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," Hitchens has performed a great service to truth, universal justice and, of course, humanity, all of which are gaining on Henry Kissinger.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.