Image: The Baffler

Dave Denison,
June 25

Here’s the story of the night I found myself dining with Henry Kissinger.

"But in this case, none of us in the restaurant registered any dissent or displeasure. The evening proceeded in civilized decorum. It was a celebrity sighting, of the sort that is not uncommon in an upper-crust restaurant. Everyone knows how to behave. And so, as we were lingering over our desserts an hour or so later, we were able to observe the old man and his entourage make their way quietly back into the Cambridge night. It was an evening in late May of last year, four days before Kissinger (b. May 27, 1923) would turn ninety-five."

"Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia—the fruits of his genius for statesmanship—and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."

"I have not been to Cambodia, and, like most Americans, I have the capacity for forgetting. I’d put the gruesome details of that era, and the specifics of Kissinger’s crimes, almost out of mind. But Bourdain’s fury jolted me. I felt a sudden obligation to review the sordid record of what Kissinger did, which means also confronting the question of why he is still so well treated by “the power-lunch crowd.”

"That Kissinger, along with Nixon, presided over the bombing of Cambodia, and had done so since March of 1969, is now well known. Less so is that the worst of his bombing started in February of 1973, a month after Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon signed the Paris Peace Accords. In 1972, the United States dropped, in total, 53,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia. Between February 8 and August 15, 1973, that number increased nearly fivefold and targeted not just Vietnamese “sanctuaries” in the country’s east but most of the entire country."

"“The bombing of Cambodia,” Grandin writes, “is distinct from Kissinger’s other transgressions, and not just because of the magnitude of cruelty or its body count.” It was the direct opposite of shrewd, realistic thinking because it achieved worse than nothing: it paved the way to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the genocide that followed."

Full https://thebaffler.com/civilifications/ ... al-denison

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.

I've been to Cambodia a fair bit and have never wanted to beat anyone to death. Besides that, while it may have been a bit excessive, they were trying to prevent the communist takeover of Cambodia, which turned out to be quite a bit more destructive than the bombing ever was.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:15 am I've been to Cambodia a fair bit and have never wanted to beat anyone to death.

Tell that to the stinky, beg-packing hipster you chased after with a chunky length of rebar.

Pray tell more??

Brody wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:02 pm

John Bingham wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:15 am I've been to Cambodia a fair bit and have never wanted to beat anyone to death.

Tell that to the stinky, beg-packing hipster you chased after with a chunky length of rebar.

Wait!!!!!! What?????

Well just to clear that up, it wasn't a stinky whatever, it was a fairly well dressed but uncouth tourist and his friend. And it wasn't a piece of rebar, it was one of those handles used to wind awnings in and out. Also I wasn't planning to beat him to death, I thought about knee-capping him briefly but decided it wasn't really worth the fuss as they had decided to move along.

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2019 3:07 am Also I wasn't planning to beat him to death, I thought about knee-capping him briefly but decided it wasn't really worth the fuss as they had decided to move along.

Glad we got that straight.

So I was incorrect, JB will not beat someone to death.

But if you say something he doesn't like, after he's had a few tipples, he may just reach for the nearest blunt object and seriously contemplate committing grievous bodily harm on you.

newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2019 5:51 am The author of the article is something of a snowflake with an axe to grind. Let the snowflake live in his utopian world where all the evils of the universe are entirely because of America. Then he can illegally cross the border into North Korea and let Kim shower him with flowers, kisses, and praise.

I don't follow your "logic".