Comment by breput

The rest of the west is allied with the US because they’re the least evil guys, not because they’re the good guys.

I’m Dutch and knowing that the US has a constant threat of extreme violence against us written into their law scares the crap out of me. We’re supposed to be happy jolly NATO allies but srsly that shit is not cool.

> we have on the books the authorization to be able to invade the Hague in case any US person was being held or tried. Hague Invasion Act / ASPA is wild.

That's more the reason to move the court to a country with nukes, say France, Strasbourg and put some retaliation Act in place if Americans put Strasbourg Invasion Act in place

And very well-researched - I think this part is important especially for people skeptical of the show’s name.

Also “light entertainment” really depends on the particular episode’s subject imo

>In general a podcast series will be started after the hosts have researched the subject, and decided they have an angle to present it to their public. Following them while doing their research could be interesting at small doses, but the number of absolute non stories or boring conclusions would be staggering and they'd need to be crazy entertaining by themselves to keep a whole podcast going on that pace.

This is false. Age of Napoleon is quite good at presenting the factual history of its topic and then weighing dual interpretations of events. He highlights that something is his opinion when he gives it. The result is a wildly engaging podcast.

Hell, he's an avowed Marxist, which is a belief system I find repugnant. However, other than one or two clearly labeled bonus interview episodes, his views are AFAICT, totally absent from his presentation of history. He strives very hard to not tell you what to think.

It is disheartening that you believe information must be presented with an agenda.

> The greatest irony here is that he managed to make it to 100.

"Only the good die young, only evil seems to live forever". Iron Maiden

As the classical saying goes "Those whom the gods love die young".

Tom Lehrer retired when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, because he said satire was dead at that point[1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures...

Do you think the NYT's war coverage (Ukraine & Israel) is still so slanted, or have they improved?

If Chomsky had known this...

Chomsky have denied genocide that Kissinger helped perpetrate, so he could have known.

Rest in piss indeed! Good riddance!

Funny! But your question did get me thinking. I don't know anything about this podcast nor much about Kissenger, but a podcast dedicated to bad people could be objective, I think, if they were to pick their subjects based on objective criteria.

I listened to it once based on some redditor's enthusiastic recommendation, and it was as bad (i.e. blatantly unapologetically biased) as you might expect.

That's a great podcast and the person you replied to is foolish - any opinion piece knows where it is going when it is published.

The podcast, no. But if a comment is going to offer a link with the conceit of “consume this to fully understand who this person was” it would be good if the source were not something with the explicitly stated thesis of “hey, this guy’s a bastard”. I mean, you don’t even need to listen to it to know what the conclusion is going to be.

Which makes it such a shame that people throw them around like they are an authoritative source of anything. It’s literally just some guy who read a book and has a microphone. It’s as good as whatever book they read.

Try Age of Napoleon.

Mentioned the reasons in my last post.

It’s co-hosted by the guys from The Dollop, who I’ve listened to quite a lot. They’re funny and entertaining, but they’re comedians not historians. Their whole schtick is just reading some book and incredulously saying “holy shit” about whatever it says, without any critical analysis.

Edit: and there’s nothing wrong with that! Just recognize when something is entertainment vs. trying to be objective.

'attempted objectivity' is better. It would include: - narrator reveals his convictions at the start - focuses on things that physically happened - weigh dual/multiple interpretations and views of said events from relevant factions, attempting the greatest charity with the one(s) opposed to the initially revealed convictions.

That’s why they put all those pictures and descriptions on book covers.

Those wars in Cambodia and Vietnam didn't further the interests of the US at all. They just wasted tons of lives for nothing. Same as with the recent Afghanistan campaign.

At least the military industrial complex got even richer of it. That's the only reason.

Diplomacy and "ass-kissing to stay in the halls of power forever" seem like they can have some nonempty intersection, but still are different concepts.

Diplomacy would further the needs of a state or at least a faction of people. Ass-kissing for personal gain seems like a different thing that may even hinder more genuine diplomatic efforts.

> He may have furthered his own interests but did he also further the interests of the US more effectively than most could?

No.

It depends on your evaluation of his outcomes, but the scholarly opinion of him is that the legacy of his that endures is the death toll, while the geopolitical outcomes were bad for the U.S. (losing Vietname/Cambodia/Laos), temporary advantages (Pinochet in Chile), or opinionated side-taking that has not been good for the U.S. or the world (Israel/Palestinians).

He was very effective at remaining in a position of power and influence. I don't think you'll find many who believe he was as consequentially good for America.

“ He may have furthered his own interests but did he also further the interests of the US more effectively than most could?”

Hahahahaha nope, he literally was just a leech on society that got into high enough positions that his vapid bullshitting didn’t just fool his bosses into paying him a good wage but directly contributed to the deaths of countless innocent humans… for absolutely zero good reason from any perspective other than kissingers. Seriously this isn’t serial killer level stuff, this is war criminal mass murderer levels off violence and he never ever faced any real consequences for it.

I am not religious but Kissinger makes me want to believe in hell just so I can fall asleep with the comforting thought that Kissinger is burning in hell forever. He deserves nothing less, rest in piss, Kissinger.

The crowd here might find it preposterous but Kissinger dated models and movie stars. One that I remember was the actress Jill St. John who was a Bond girl in the movie Diamonds are forever. The two dated for a couple of years. Miss St. John also dated Michael Caine, Sean Connery, David Frost and Tom Selleck.

Interestingly, the Behind the Bastards episodes on him point out that his relationships with women may have been one of the only non-bastard things about him. He was seen as “safe” compared to other men of the time!

If you listen to Nixon’s tapes, there are many instances where Nixon makes outrageously antisemitic comments, and Kissinger (who was Jewish himself), ever the brown-noser, agrees and responds with an even more outlandish one.

I suggest reading up on the subject now that enough time had passed that information is more readily available. The KLA was designated as a terrorist organisation by (among others) Amnesty International and the FBI itself removed it from its terrorist list only months before the bombing started. But even past that point, Rambouillet was not in good faith by any way you look at it, it was designed to be unacceptable and justify a military operation that did nothing to help the people out claimed to protect.

Nuanced and unbiased conversation is much needed in this world, and having multiple viewpoints from people with different biases helps us all.

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Not just "above"; US law explicitly gives the President the power to invade The Hague if they get their hands on American officials or military personnel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

> The Act gives the President power to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court".

"International war crimes courts" do not prosecute treason.

And it isn't about the personnel being "above" anything. It's simply that the ICC is not a court and does not respect due process, so we do not subject American citizens to it (and indeed it would be an interesting Constitutional question as to whether that's even truly possible).

From a more pragmatic perspective, as long as Russia and China don't recognize the ICC's authority, it would be a major global strategic blunder to impose checks and balances only on the United States.

Is there any country that is more powerful than the counterparty that will submit to the decision of an international court?

This position is not unique to the US and stems from the potential for politically motivated prosecutions and the need to protect military personnel. Other countries (India, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, etc) are also cautious about subjecting their citizens to the jurisdiction of international courts.

If Kissinger committed treason, there was nothing stopping the US government from pursuing charges

> The crazy thing about this is that the folks calling Kissinger out for war crimes and the folks like you pointing out the good things he enabled both have a valid point.

The biggest problem is that what a lot of people know about Kissinger is "folk knowledge" they picked up from other people, and this gets passed down as a game of telephone until it's common knowledge, but no one has bothered to check if it's accurate or not. It doesn't help when there are articles like the Rolling Stones one that's been posted, which seem more interested in cherry-picking facts to fit the narrative then in actually looking at what happened with open eyes.

A few years ago, I thought to myself that since people talk about Kissinger so much, I should go and look at what he actually did. I was surprised to see that he didn't seem to be the driving force behind bad policy decisions in the Nixon White House. He was certainly involved as National Security Advisor, but most of the time it looked like Nixon would have made the same decisions without him. Yet for some reason, Kissinger is usually blamed much more than Nixon.

For instance, at least according to the State Department Historian[1] it was General Creighton Abrams that first suggested bombing enemy bases in Cambodia. Nixon agreed, and involved Kissinger, who was the National Security Advisor. But the bombing is usually presented as Kissinger's bombing of Cambodia. General Abrams isn't mentioned in the Rolling Stones article at all. Compare the Google results for "Creighton Abrams Cambodia" with "Henry Kissinger Cambodia" to see how slanted things are.

That's not even getting into the fact that blaming the Khmer Rouge on the bombing campaign is an extreme stretch. But that's how people approach the folk knowledge - they get told something is true, believe it to be true, then stitch together whatever facts they can find to support the narrative they've already set their mind on.

[1] https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/vi/64033.htm

I mean, the Paris peace accords happened after the Nixon campaign convinced the south Vietnamese to walk out of earlier talks and crash the Johnson campaign. So it seems weird to praise those people for getting almost the same result after killing lots of anmerican and lots more Vietnamese, not to mention the noncombatants in laos and Cambodia Kissinger directed the bombing of. And after all that it was barely a different deal.

People are complicated. I'd be more tempted to see the good, if he had ever shown remorse or admitted to mistakes.

The Nobel prize is based on explosives. Most scientists 100 years ago were eugenicists. It's difficult to judge people's beliefs and decisions outside of their era. That doesn't mean that you can't build a moral or ethical system outside of it, but they're all based on assumptions of what is good.

It's not like there weren't people calling out Kissinger contemporaneously, or even Lincoln (for his handling of the Dakota). It's more weird when people obliviously deny recent history or create hagiography upon their death.

I'm not disputing his complicated legacy, but it seems strange and unjust to me that if he had committed some straight-forward crime, like murdering his wife, we probably wouldn't be talking about his complicated legacy. He would be a politician whose career ended in disgrace.

But we somehow feel compelled to weigh war crimes that lead to the death and suffering of millions against other positive accomplishments as if one justifies the other. We're basically conceding to Kissinger yet again by evaluating his legacy in terms of realpolitik.

> so people who act in the name of states can't be bound by international laws.

I’d say exactly the same if I were a war criminal

Especially since there is evidence the Nixon campaign prolonged the war by sabotaging Johnson’s peace talks, going directly to the south Vietnamese and promising them a better deal if they would make sure Johnson didn’t get to end the war.

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