The former US diplomat\u2019s actions caused, among others, 150,000 Cambodian civilians to die, an outlet investigation has claimed<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy eminence grise who has advised half a dozen US presidents, has caused the deaths of over 3 million people, according to an Intercept report published Tuesday to mark the realpolitik strategist\u2019s 100th birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While critics of the Nixon-era secretary of state and national security adviser often describe him as a war criminal for his pivotal role in numerous US-backed genocides and coups, the report argues Kissinger’s body count has been widely underestimated, particularly regarding the secretive, highly illegal expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between the genocides he sponsored in East Timor and Bangladesh, continent-wide terrorism, coups and death squads in Latin America (known as Operation Condor), the fomenting of civil wars in Southern Africa, and the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos under the guise of chasing the Vietnamese, Kissinger is believed to be responsible for over 3 million civilian deaths \u2013 more if one counts the casualties that have resulted from advice he gave the private sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kissinger has ‘only’ acknowledged that his actions caused the deaths of 50,000 Cambodians and blames the Vietnamese, the supposed targets of the US bombing campaign (the coordinates of which were logged incorrectly so as to be recorded as legal strikes within Vietnam).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Intercept reporter Nick Truse argues the number is closer to 150,000, pointing to numerous documented examples of egregious and deliberate undercounting of civilian casualties. The figure represents over six times more civilians than the US has killed in airstrikes since 9\/11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Transcripts from the Intercept’s \u201cexclusive archive\u201d of declassified US military documents from a secret Pentagon war crimes task force reveal it was Kissinger\u2019s decision to relay then-president Richard Nixon\u2019s often drunk, belligerent trash talk about Cambodia into coherent instructions to the Pentagon to begin a \u201cmassive bombing campaign\u201d in the country in 1970.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kissinger\u2019s now-infamous directive to shoot \u201canything that flies on anything that moves\u201d exploded the secret war, tripling the number of bombings by the end of the year. He allegedly approved all 3,875 individual bombings of the war, and the bombers dropped over 257,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia in 1973 alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Intercept\u2019s archive also revealed numerous brutal ground raids on Cambodian villages that have since been all but memory-holed; Truse confirmed via interviews with survivors that the raids were far deadlier than reported. While the airstrikes were frequently hushed up as \u201cpilot error\u201d \u2013 \u201cerrors\u201d that were nevertheless repeated thousands of times \u2013 the US Army, in an internal investigation, actually blamed its press corps when ground troops were caught looting a village they had just raided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kissinger’s carpet-bombing of Cambodia paved the way for the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal dictatorship that killed 2 million Cambodians \u2013 20% of the country\u2019s population \u2013 which he privately (and approvingly) referred to as \u201cmurderous thugs\u201d while helping them secure regional allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kissinger has never been prosecuted \u2013 or even officially charged \u2013 with war crimes, nor has the US military made any systemic efforts to hold accountable the troops who actually did the killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n