The Weekly Flail — December 1, 2023

Celebrating the death of Henry Kissinger but with respect for his mind. The best epitaph I have seen is the tweet from Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s ambassador to the US, courtesy of Axios.

“Ha muerto un hombre cuyo brillo histórico no consiguió jamás esconder su profunda miseria moral. K.”

“A man has died whose historical brilliance never managed to conceal his profound moral misery.”

An early lesson in Henry Kissinger’s Realpolitik for me was 1971, during the Paris Peace negotiations on the Vietnam War. I was young and stationed at a special operations base in Thailand, working in Air Force intelligence. It was publicly announced that Kissinger was halting North Vietnam bombing missions to further the negotiations.

The same day, we were copied on operational orders to intensify the bombing of North Vietnam. The details of that are long gone, but I never forgot it. I never trusted Henry Kissinger or my own nation again.

The temporary ceasefire has ended. There was little doubt it would, as Netanyahu and his staff publicly stated they intended to kill everyone they could in Gaza until they were stopped. So far, the only warnings from Washington are to go a little slower on killing civilians.