Friday, February 12, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger

The New York Times has a piece on Hillary Clinton's praise of Henry Kissinger. It is not easy to find anything to positive to say about Kissinger's impact on Latin America. Maybe his support for the Panama Canal. But he was an important enabler of atrocious human rights abuses in places like Argentina, where a murderous regime gratefully accepted his green light to proceed with their attacks on "subversives."

Nonetheless, I wonder how many other people know, or care.


The friendship came back to haunt her in the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday night, when Senator Bernie Sanders pointedly questioned Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy judgment, saying President Richard M. Nixon’s secretary of state had enabled genocide in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
 “I’m proud to say Henry Kissinger is not my friend,” Mr. Sanders said.


I just don't see this haunting her. How many people will vote in the primaries based on Nixon/Ford foreign policy?  Being a BFF of Henry Kissinger is indeed nothing to be proud of, but neither is it a salient political issue these days.

I also wonder the following: how many Americans know who Pol Pot is? I am pretty darn sure they don't know who Jorge Rafael Videla is.

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