The late author and TV host Anthony Bourdain's searing takedown of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger went viral after his death on Wednesday as experts resurfaced the most damning aspects of the longtime diplomat's legacy.
Kissinger's death was announced by his consulting firm Wednesday evening, and no cause of death was immediately provided.
The former secretary of state and national security advisor "oversaw, overlooked and at times actively perpetrated some of the most grotesque war crimes the United States and its allies have ever committed," HuffPost reporters Travis Waldron and George Zornick wrote in a scathing obituary of Kissinger, calling him "America's most notorious war criminal."
His positions allowed him to direct the Vietnam War and Cold War with the Soviet Union, while carrying out a foreign policy approach that valued U.S. interests and domestic political achievements over any potential for atrocity that could occur as a result.
"The former led to perhaps the most infamous crime Kissinger committed: a secret four-year bombing campaign in Cambodia that killed an untold number of civilians, despite the fact that it was a neutral nation with which the United States was not at war," they write.
The campaign killed between 150,000 and a half-million Cambodian civilians, per various estimates, and, according to a Pentagon report released late, Kissinger personally "approved each of the 3,875 Cambodia bombing raids” that occurred between 1969 and 1970.
While in charge of U.S. foreign policy, Kissinger also directed illegal arms sales to Pakistan as it executed a brutal suppression of Bengalis, killing at least 500,000 people in present-day Bangladesh in 1971. He also backed a 1973 military coup overthrowing a democratically elected socialist government in Chile, granted Indonesia permission to carry out its 1975 invasion of East Timor, and supported Argentina's military dictatorship as it launched its "dirty war" against dissenters and leftists in 1976. During the Ford administration, Kissinger's policies also inflamed civil wars in Africa, most notably in Angola.
"Even the most generous calculations suggest that the murderous regimes Kissinger supported and the conflicts they waged were responsible for millions of deaths and millions of other human rights abuses, during and after the eight years he served in the American government," Waldron and Zornick write, noting that Kissinger never expressed any remorse for his actions or was held to any account for carrying them out.
Kissinger approached criticism of his human rights abuses with a mocking tone and remained in good standing in Washington's political elite until the time of his death.
"The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war. It's a perfect expression of American militarism's unbroken circle," historian Greg Grandin, author of "Kissinger's Shadow," told The Intercept earlier this year. According to Common Dreams, the historian has estimated that Kissinger was responsible for at least 3 million deaths.
"What is undeniable, on the occasion of his death, is that millions of Argentinians, Bangladeshis, Cambodians, Chileans, East Timorese and others cannot offer their opinion on Henry Kissinger’s legacy or the world he helped create, because they died at the hands of the tyrants Kissinger enabled," Waldron and Zornick wrote.
Other reporters further lamented Kissinger's approach to policy and the notorious legacy it left throughout the nation — and the world — across social media and in articles about his death.
In an obituary of Kissinger for Rolling Stone, journalist Spencer Ackerman compared Kissinger to "white supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh," who Ackerman described as "the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States."
"McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century," Ackerman continued. "Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon—and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion—died because of Henry Kissinger."
"We will never know what might have been, the question Kissinger's apologists, and those in the U.S. foreign policy elite who imagine themselves standing in Kissinger's shoes, insist upon when explaining away his crimes," Ackerman added. "We can only know what actually happened. What actually happened was that Kissinger materially sabotaged the only chance for an end to the war in 1968 as a hedged bet to ensure he would achieve power in Nixon's administration or Humphrey's. A true tally will probably never be known of everyone who died so Kissinger could be national security adviser."
The Intercept's D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim noted that "Henry Kissinger killed so many people that we uncovered new atrocities he directed JUST THIS YEAR" in a post to X/Twitter, linking to an article the outlet published titled, "Survivors of Kissinger's Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings."
Henry Kissinger killed so many people that we uncovered new atrocities he directed JUST THIS YEAR. From @nickturse
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 30, 2023
Survivors of Kissinger’s Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings https://t.co/tCyhpl2VjT
Journalist Conor Powell highlighted former President George W. Bush's opening statement on Kissinger's death — "America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs with the passing of Henry Kissinger" — as an indication of "just how problematic #Kissinger's legacy is."
"These words are not a ringing endorsement of Kissinger," Powell tweeted. "And yet George W Bush as president did more to put Kissinger’s foreign policy ideas into practice than just about any other US president. Bush can barely say a thing positive about Kissinger in 2023."
These words are not a ringing endorsement of Kissinger.
— Conor Powell (@ConormPowell) November 30, 2023
And yet George W Bush as president did more to put Kissinger’s foreign policy ideas into practice than just about any other US president.
Bush can barely say a thing positive about Kissinger in 2023
An excerpt ripping Kissinger from late chef Anthony Bourdain's book, “A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal,” published after his death in 2018, also circulated online Wednesday, according to HuffPost.
"Once you've been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands," Bourdain wrote. "You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.
"Witness what Henry did in Cambodia ― the fruits of his genius for statesmanship ― and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to [Serbian President Slobodan] Milošević,” Bourdain wrote.
The excerpt was far from the hit the chef had taken at Kissinger. In a 2017 profile of Bourdain in the New Yorker, his publisher praised the influence he had with "Parts Unknown," a travel and food show where he traveled the world and discussed cuisines, cultures and political issues in each place, saying Bourdain had "become a stateman" because of the global awareness his show gave viewers.
Bourdain, however, pushed back on the idea. “I’m not going to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. I don’t need to be laughing it up with Henry Kissinger," he said.
Despite being behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, Kissinger had been seen in amicable exchanges with notable figures from President George W. Bush, Nixon, Oprah Winfrey and Princess Diana.
“Any journalist who has ever been polite to Henry Kissinger, you know, f—k that person,” Bourdain said. “I’m a big believer in moral gray areas, but, when it comes to that guy, in my view he should not be able to eat at a restaurant in New York.”
