In 1950, Henry Kissinger—who would go on to serve as an inordinately powerful U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State—wrote that “life is suffering, birth involves death”.
As historian Greg Grandin documents in his just-released book “Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman”, the man’s “existentialism laid the foundation for how he would defend his later policies”. In Kissinger’s view, Grandin explains, life’s inherently tragic nature means that “there isn’t much any one individual can do to make things worse than they already are”.
Of course, the victims of Kissinger-sanctioned military escapades and other forms of inflicted suffering might beg to differ. Among the countless casualties are the dead and maimed of the Vietnam War—a disaster Kissinger fought to prolong despite recognising that it was unwinnable—and the secret U.S. war that was launched on neutral Cambodia in 1969. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.