MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Rings In Kissinger’s 100th Birthday — By Laying Millions of Deaths at His Feet
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan celebrated famed American diplomat Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday on Thursday by discussing “the many, many people around the world who didn’t get to live ’til 100, or even 60, 70, or 80 because of Henry Kissinger.”
Hasan, who pointed out Kissinger enjoys broad support from American politicians on both sides of the aisle, pinned the blame for millions of deaths on Kissinger’s “support for brutal dictators, brutal regimes, brutal wars, and war crimes.”
He continued:
Let’s start, where else, in southeast Asia. The war in Vietnam which Kissinger might have ridiculously won a Nobel Peace Prize for “ending,” but which he prolonged and escalated in the first place, including a secret and illegal expansion of that bloody war to Laos and Cambodia. It was him!
The host went on to cite reporting that U.S. and South Vietnamese bombings killed 350,000 Laotian and 600,000 Cambodian civilians dead. Kissinger has defended those bombings as attacks on invading North Vietnamese forces.
Hasan next indicted Kissinger for his support of a coup d’état of Isabel Perón in Argentina and a subsequent crackdown on political dissidents. Kissinger reportedly supported the repressive actions of the new regime, telling the Argentine foreign minister that “we are aware you are in a difficult period… We understand you must establish authority… if there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.”
He also faulted Kissinger for his support of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor during the Ford administration and West Pakistan’s invasion of East Pakistan during the Nixon administration, before ultimately pinning between 3 and 4 million deaths on Kissinger.
“So where is the accountability? The reckoning? Where is justice, dare I ask?” asked Hasan, who also knocked high-profile U.S. officials, to include Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden for their praise of Kissinger.
Kissinger fled Nazi Germany as a Jewish refugee in 1938. He served as national security advisor and secretary of state — including as both at the same time for over two years — under Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon.
Watch above via MSNBC.
