Henry Kissinger’s aphrodisiacs

People who amass a great deal of wealth or power are often idolized to an extreme. Certain fawning admirers of Henry Kissinger not only regarded him as a skilled, international strategist and scholar of diplomatic history, but also claimed that he had a great sense of humor. There is some evidence to support this. At high-society gatherings in New York and Washington, he would occasionally greet strangers with a mischievous smile and ask, “Do you think I’m a war criminal?” The short, chubby and nerdy Kissinger was often seen in the company of tall and beautiful actresses. He offered one explanation for his seductive appeal: “Power — it’s the great aphrodisiac.”

His sense of humor also stretched to making jokes about the brutal dictators supported by the United States. One of the most merciless was General Yahya Khan. As president of Pakistan in 1971, he orchestrated a massacre of over 300,000 men, women and children in what is now Bangladesh. Around 10 million Bengalis fled to India as a result. Shockingly, President Nixon and National Security Advisor Kissinger were fully aware of and supported this genocide. They disregarded warnings from their own diplomats in Pakistan and even secretly facilitated the dispatch of American warplanes, which only intensified the destruction and bloodshed. General Yahya Khan was especially valuable to them because he was the mediator in the secret preparations for Nixon’s trip to China the following year. In one of Nixon’s infamous White House recordings, Kissinger was heard admiring the Pakistani dictator’s mediation skills: “Khan enjoys doing this even more than massacring Hindus.”

In 1973 and 1974, opinion polls showed that Kissinger was the most popular political figure in the United States. He appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine wearing a Superman cape and blue tights with a headline that read: “IT’S SUPER K!” In the 1950s, he was a Harvard professor who gained overnight fame when he published a book advocating for the United States to lead a “limited nuclear war.” He was one of those intimidating university professors who, once he had political power, succumbed to a euphoric, intellectual arrogance that spilled beyond offices and classrooms. As he grew old, and then very old, the physical manifestations of influence and wealth became more noticeable. His body bloated from lavish meals and too many long and sedentary meetings. His neck sank from hours spent in leather armchairs, having confidential talks in exclusive clubs with cracking fireplaces and dark wood paneling. The whispering in these rooms, where women were rarely seen, confidentially shaped the future of the world and determined the fates of millions.

A person who spent time with him during his last years told me that Kissinger remained mentally sharp as he approached the age of 100. But he had become so fat and cumbersome that it took two people to move him around. He seemed like an extremely old tortoise, protected by a shell of a reverential celebrity. Hillary Clinton even called him “my tutor.” However, Kissinger exhibited an unwavering moral coldness, matched only by his indifference for humanity. Despite escaping Nazi Germany as a young teenager and experiencing the tragic loss of much of his family in the crematoriums, Kissinger displayed an astounding lack of sensitivity toward the suffering of the persecuted and freely endorsed the boundless criminality of powerful people. Rather, he seemed indignant about the election in 1970 of a socialist president in Chile, and North Vietnam’s determination to resist the relentless American B-52 bombing.

Another favorite Kissinger joke: “We do illegal things very quickly — unconstitutional things take longer.” Without proper congressional notification, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made the decision in 1969 to bomb peaceful Cambodia, in order to disrupt North Vietnam’s supply lines to Viet Cong guerrillas in the south. The scale of destruction was immense, and led to the rise of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that killed nearly two million Cambodians (between 21% and 24% of the country’s 1975 population).

After the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned his presidency in 1974. Kissinger survived with his prestige and smile intact, and served President Gerald Ford as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. That’s when he supported another largely forgotten massacre in a place that’s hard to find on a map. In 1975, with Kissinger’s explicit approval, Indonesia’s military regime invaded East Timor, a former Portuguese colony. The invasion was justified by the claim that a communist revolution was imminent, but tragically resulted in 100,000 deaths. During the Indonesian occupation, thousands died from famine and cold-blooded executions.

Without a doubt, power is the greatest aphrodisiac of all because it also offers impunity and amnesia. Men of a certain age in dark suits talk in hushed tones about world affairs. Meanwhile, a far-off country is decimated by indiscriminate bombing, and innocent men and women are tortured and killed in secret prisons. Heads of government and presidents of corporations came surreptitiously to old Henry Kissinger’s private office, and paid him millions for advice on their international schemes, murmured like oracles in the German accent that he never lost.

If they gave Kissinger a Nobel Peace Prize, maybe Benjamin Netanyahu will get one too.

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