Unfortunately, the American education system just kinda gives up teaching history after 1945. Otherwise, you might be more familiar with the US State Department sponsored coups and subsequent genocides in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific Rim over the subsequent 40 years.
Kissinger absolutely was administering mass arrests and executions in US client states, from the overthrow of democracies in Iran and Egypt to the massacres of dissidents in Jakarta and Rio de Janeiro and Santiago to the arming of the Khmer Rouge and subsequent bombings in Laos and Cambodia. Say what you will about Himmler, but he only really had the reigns of a mid-sized European industrial power for a decade. Kissinger was instrumental in steering truly nightmarish foreign policies on an international scale for four times as long.
And when you look at how folks like Kerry and Clinton and Blinken consistently turn to the Kissinger playbook to advance US foreign policy in the modern day, he’s got even more blood on his hands by proxy than that.
I don’t know of anyone who thinks we can or should stop every genocide. Kissinger didn’t lead these things you’re talking about, or at least the things I I think you’re talking about. And he wasn’t unique in his views. Kissinger is not comparable to Himmler, this is a ridiculous post, shallow. .
I think Kissinger and everyone in the foreign service and executive branch who helped execute American foreign policy thought was that if two violent factions were going to kill each other, America might as well back the one it thinks it can work with to advance it’s foreign policy goals. Kissinger wasn’t a wizard. He couldn’t make the north and south Vietnamese stop killing each other. You don’t have to like it to pick a strategic interest and choose a side.
It’s called realpolitik.
