So, have you heard? Rest assured, we can all finally
sleep knowing that the atrocities committed on Sept. 11, 2001 will be
thoroughly investigated and of course, disseminated to the public at large.
No!
On the eve of our national holiday for “giving thanks,” President
Bush anointed none other than Henry Kissinger to head a commission looking
into the events on and surrounding that unforgettable day.
“Who better to investigate an unwarranted attack on America than
the man who used to instigate America’s unwarranted attacks?”
wrote Maureen Dowd in The New York Times.
The former secretary of state and national security advisor has a war
crime rap sheet in close competition with his counterparts. Joseph Goebbels,
Slobodan Milosovic and Augusto Pinochet are the first that come to mind.
As more war criminals are brought to justice, the victims of Kissinger’s
policies are demanding that he meet the same fate. After all, he was instrumental
in the death of hundreds of thousands in the war in Indochina.
When the Johnson administration was trying to broker a peace agreement
near the end of his term in 1968, Kissinger was privately assuring South
Vietnamese military leaders that the incoming Nixon administration would
be able to offer a sweeter deal. He was successful in convincing them
and the peace talks subsequently failed.
During those next four years of the war, an undetermined amount of civilians
were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and more than 20,000 Americans
were killed. The war with Nixon and Kissinger at the helm was at its most
gruesome. Kissinger had initiated an expansion of the American involvement
by advising Nixon and the military to heavily bomb Cambodia and Laos in
secret.
In Paris, the location of the ill-fated peace talks seven years prior,
the settlement was precisely what had been presented before; only 20,000
more American youth were sent home in body bags and countless children
and innocents were slaughtered before it was finally signed.
In Santiago, Chile on Sept. 11, 1973, (note the irony) Kissinger engineered
a coup which overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende and
placed Pinochet in control of the government. For the next 17 years, Pinochet
would be responsible for thousands of disappeared, tortured and murdered
Chileans within Chile’s borders and abroad.
Kissinger was also in power under President Ford after it became quite
clear that Nixon and his cabinet, including himself, had been concealing
the truth from the public for years.
He and Ford met with General Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia, to offer
significant U.S. financial and military aid to the regime shortly before
Indonesia’s invasion and subsequent genocide of 200,000 in East
Timor.
My father once described the government during those years as being controlled
by a select elite of white men smoking cigars in secret meetings where
the lives of millions were decided, where government policies would be
decided without the consent or even knowledge of the American public.
The message of his recollections was to remind me of the changes in government
since those dark years in our country’s past and to be thankful
for those changes. He is right. There is now a more open and direct source
to the decisions being made by politicians and leaders.
Albeit we still don’t have the opportunity to oppose or consent
to most of the government’s decisions, we at least know about them.
For instance, it is widely understood that Attorney General John Ashcroft
is hell-bent on stripping us of our civil rights. It may not be as widely
known (but still available) that in the first minutes of the horror on
Sept. 11, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was on the phone
with aides demanding a broad sweep for placing blame, searching for the
desired Iraqi connection.
We even know what President Clinton was doing with cigars in the Oval
Office!
But with Kissinger on board, we may only come to know less. He has mastered
the art of public deception and built his reputation on a relentless use
of machines of war.
This is a man who now finds himself reserved to traveling only to choice
nations that can guarantee his immunity from prosecution for international
war crimes.
He has already been summoned to appear by numerous courts regarding his
involvement in covert operations, which are becoming all the more overt.
Everyone deserves to know the truths behind Sept. 11, 2001. We must know
why the U.S. government approved the evacuation of bin Laden family members
from the United States while all planes nationwide were still under orders
to be grounded.
Will it again be up to one brave individual within ranks to bring us the
truth, as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers?
I have little hope that this commission under Kissinger’s command
will bring us anything but self-fulfilling propaganda. After all, it’s
what we’ve come to expect from the man.
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For the time being, it appears the form of government my father told me
to fear has returned to the scene in American politics. Little has changed,
only now I’m not so sure if Kissinger is smoking stogies.
I digress in the lyrics of “Self-Appointed Leader,” a song
by gob: “I can forgive, but I can’t forget. I won’t
be hurt by you again.”
Matt Kapko is the opinion editor and will have no reason for pride
if he finds himself, years from now, telling the same story his father
told him about the fat cats in government ruining the lives of billions.
History should not repeat itself so soon.
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