Yesterday, the Obama administration did something horrifying. [View all]

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It's difficult not to despair. This is all kinds of wrong. This country has normalized and white washed Kissinger. That's wrong. And dangerous.

This is sick.



On Monday afternoon, at 4 pm Eastern, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will host an awards ceremony at the Pentagon honoring one of the world's most notorious war criminals.

The criminal in question, Dr. Henry Kissinger, has never been charged. But the evidence that he aided and abetted war crimes during his time in the White House advising Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford is well-established and overwhelming.

While Kissinger deserves real credit for some of America's most important Cold War victories, including Nixon's diplomatic opening to China, he is also responsible for some of its worst atrocities. Carpet-bombing Cambodia, supporting Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh, greenlighting the Argentinian dictatorship's murderous crackdown on dissidents — all of those were Kissinger initiatives, all pushed in the name of pursuing American national interests and fighting communism.

While the Obama administration might want to pretend that only the first half of his résumé exists, that doesn't change reality. The secretary of defense is handing an award to a man whose actions belie the values Obama administration claims to stand for. It's hardly alone in this: Kissinger has been treated as an elder statesman in polite Washington society for decades. But this is the most recent example, and one of the most high-profile, of polite Washington society rewriting Kissinger's legacy. Let's not forget what it really is.


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http://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11640562/kissinger-pentagon-award