by the Editorial Board
Former Secretary of State, former National Security Advisor, and notorious US imperialist butcher Henry Kissinger died at 100 years old this month. Kissinger was a major architect behind imperialist oppression around the world since World War II.
Kissinger directed the illegal large-scale bombing and landmine planting of Cambodia from 1969-1973. The mines are still killing people today. US imperialism carried out a coup in Cambodia, placing ultra-reactionary General Lon Nol in power. This was followed with the invasion of US troops by April of 1969. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) led armed guerrilla war against the US invaders and accomplishing national liberation and the establishment of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea and, acting on their duty as internationalists, assisting in defeating US imperialism in Vietnam.
When the Paris Peace Talks officially ended the US bombing of Vietnam, the imperialist aggression against the people of Kampuchea was increased. Over a quarter million tons of bombs were dropped on the small country in just over four months, with most of the national territory of Kampuchea becoming a free fire zone. The CPK righteously beat back the imperialists and refused to capitulate to the ceasefire promoted by Lon Nol. The US imperialist aggression, led by Kissinger, was bloodthirsty and desperate, and its all-out attack rallied the masses in great numbers to the side of the heroic efforts of the CPK who would overthrow the US imperialist–backed government of Lon Nol and conquer power for the workers and peasants by taking down Phnom Penh, Kampuchea’s largest city.
The victory of the masses led by the Communist Party proved to the world that imperialism is weak against the organized people, even if it looks invincible. In 1975, the revolutionary journalists of China remarked that “To win the independence and liberation of their motherland, the Cambodian people courageously took up arms and waged a protracted war against U.S. imperialism and its lackey, the Lon Nol traitorous clique. In five years and one month of arduous fighting, they totally annihilated the enemy forces, scoring a historic victory. An independent, peaceful, neutral and flourishing new Cambodia has arisen.”
Kissinger played an instrumental role in orchestrating the fascist coup of 1973 in Chile against the populist government of Salvador Allende. Pinochet indiscriminately rounded up democrats, progressives, leftists, artists, intellectuals and revolutionaries, many of whom perished in fascist torture camps. With full knowledge of such brutal anti-people crimes, Kissinger told Pinochet in 1976 that “We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”
Chile lacked a well-organized and disciplined Communist Party like the one in Kampuchea. The result of the coup was exactly what Kissinger desired—a more durable puppet government that could serve US imperialism.
In the context of national liberation and anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Kissinger again played the most reactionary role. It was Kissinger who orchestrated the South African apartheid regime’s invasion of Angola in 1975. This decision caused some controversy among the US imperialist ruling class—they did not see Angola as strategic to US imperialist interests and considered that Kissinger was just trying to save face there from the humiliating defeats at the hands of the Kampuchean and Vietnamese people. Nonetheless, Kissinger led the apartheid regime to invade and begin its butchery of the African nation. Kissinger’s plan was thwarted to his embarrassment when the Cubans intervened in Angola on behalf of Soviet social-imperialism. The CIA agents deployed by Kissinger in Angola came home in caskets. After these humiliations, the US imperialists were forced to publicly distance themselves from yet another Kissinger blunder by denouncing the very invasion they orchestrated.
US imperialism orchestrated an anti-Communist coup in Indonesia in 1966. The bloody fascist Suharto regime instituted by US imperialism was directed by Kissinger in 1975 to invade East Timor. Kissinger reassured Suharto of US support and arms, directing the Indonesian fascist regime to attack and occupy East Timor under the guise of “anti-colonialism.” For Kissinger, it was enough to cite revolutionary China’s support for East Timor’s independence as evidence that the ruling party in East Timor posed a communist threat. The war of aggression by the fascists of Indonesia lasted decades and the right to self-determination is still denied to the people of East Timor.
In Argentina, US imperialism assisted a coup in 1975 installing a further right-wing military junta based on the National Security Doctrine established by Kissinger. Kissinger encouraged the top brass of the coup government to act quickly and brutally in exterminating leftists before the people in the US could respond in protest to human rights violations. What resulted has been considered genocide even by the imperialist international courts. The crimes of the Junta included the wholesale massacre of those who showed dissent or opposition to the military regime, the abduction of pregnant women who were killed after giving birth and whose children were awarded to military families, the disappearance and imprisonment of students, trade unionists, and more, all coupled with wide-scale torture. Kissinger step-by-step protected and armed the regime. Kissinger understood that the Perón regime was ineffective at completely eradicating the armed struggle of the Argentine people, and sought a more brutal lackey. Perón and his wife who replaced him were themselves fascist puppets of US imperialism, but they were disposed of when they proved incapable of serving this role as well as a military dictatorship could.
As the US imperialist ruling class celebrates the life and legacy of the tyrant Kissinger, the masses all over the world celebrate his death. His death was cheered by protesters in New York City who had gathered in solidarity with Palestine as soon as the news broke. The righteous hatred of the masses is well earned, yet there is no escaping the fact that this imperialist butcher, who lived to 100, escaped the end that he deserved. As the national liberation wars and New Democratic People’s Wars rage on, the most fitting end to Kissinger’s miserable existence is that he failed in suffocating the people’s struggles, and in the end, all of the reactionary violence he directed will blow back on the class he served as US imperialism is marched into its final grave.
