Kissinger is quintessential face of US imperialism: Analyst

Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state and national security advisor, is a war criminal who killed millions of people and is a symbol of US imperialism, an American writer and political analyst says.

“He’s the quintessential face of US imperial warmongering and of course wound up getting a Nobel Peace Prize,” said Daniel Patrick Welch, a political commentator in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kissinger received the peace prize by killing two million people in East Asia, “which is what the Nobel committee seems to excel in,” Welch told Press TV on Tuesday.

Kissinger, who was secretary of state and national security advisor during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations, remains an influential foreign policy voice at the age of 93.

Asked how Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize, Welch replied that "the usual way: he killed two million people in Southeast Asia and then stopped doing it when he was forced to, 'negotiated' an end to the war his country started, and got rewarded for it." 

During an interview with CBS that aired Sunday, Kissinger said President-elect Donald Trump could accomplish "something remarkable" in American foreign policy, calling the incoming president “a phenomenon.”

"Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen. So, it is a shocking experience to them that he came into office. At the same time, extraordinary opportunity," Kissinger said.

“And I believe he has the possibility of going down in history as a very considerable president because every country now has two things to consider,” he said.

“One, their perception that the previous president, or the outgoing president, basically withdrew America from international politics so they had to make their own assessment of the necessities,” he added.

The veteran diplomat said the US leadership has always been influential in shaping the world order and expressed hope that Washington will continue to maintain that tradition.

Welch said Kissinger is “missing, I think, two things, either on purpose because he's cynical and a liar. Or he's angling, like I said.”  

“One is his ridiculous notion that Obama was not as harsh as Bush, that ‘America receded from the world stage.’ It’s just lunacy,” he stated.

“Just ask Syria and Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Venezuela, Pakistan, Honduras, Argentina. It’s just an idiotic notion that flies in the face of truth,” Welch said. 

The analyst said that Kissinger "was instrumental in orchestrating the detente with China, which Trump is now imperiling with his bellicose and stupid rhetoric."

"But that may still be the Realpolitik in Kissinger: that it wasn't specifically a detente with China, but a detente that was necessary at the moment. And a One China policy is not as necessary now as this detente with Russia: to pull back from the brink and rework this so that they can keep the game going in their favor," he noted. 

"That doesn't let Russia off the hook. A lot of these people who are falling prey to this lunacy of championing Trump as an anti-imperialist think that -- even in the short term -- it would be China instead of Russia. And of course that's not true -- it would be China before Russia. You ease up on Russia so you can go after Iran and China, and then of course back again to Russia. Because that's what Empire does! Alligators don't drain swamps, and leopards don't change their spots," he explained. 

Elsewhere in his remarks, Welch said "that this guy is 93. And you wonder why, when so many good people are gone, why is this SOB still alive? And it could be that the universe is keeping him alive as a cautionary tale. As the oldest of the living warmongers, he is there to tell us that this policy has never changed." 

"This death squad foreign policy is as old as capitalism itself. And we have to fight it no matter who is in the Oval Office and no matter what false bells they are ringing. This is the time, and we are the people. We have no choice," he concluded. 

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