Comment by shadowgovt
2 years ago
Indeed, which is to say, it is possible the rational view here is the man who facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge by testing an entire country as collateral damage is, well, a bastard.
2 years ago
Indeed, which is to say, it is possible the rational view here is the man who facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge by testing an entire country as collateral damage is, well, a bastard.
Maybe. Maybe the alternatives available at the time were believed to result in something 10x worse than the Khmer Rouge. Would he still be a bastard then? Or someone who had to make a hard choice among terrible options?
I don't know, for the record. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't sound like a reasoned consideration of the evidence taking into account the historical context. It sounds like someone who thought "I bet Henry Kissinger was a bastard", then found a book that says "Henry Kissinger was a bastard!" and then made a podcast saying "See? I knew it!"
He supported and enabled dictatorships in Latin America. Do tell us how that was defensible. This is very much part of public record, thanks to diplomatic cables declassified in 2016.
His point of view was that communism had to be stopped everywhere and that's what he went with. Clearly he knew that it meant aligning with bad folks in some cases. Hence why he's known as the "real politik" guy. You can disagree with his conclusions but it's not like it's helpful to assume that this man had zero moral compass and was pure evil. He might have been wrong (I'm not saying he was or wasn't), many of us are in our attempts at doing what seems necessary for the greater good.
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Maybe try listening before opining further; you are offering a purely uninformed opinion out of ignorance.