#US bombing of Cambodia

[wizardclown]

learning about henry kissinger death, and my own ignorance about the depth of this war criminal is alot

especially when hes responsible for 150,000~ Cambodian civilian deaths

Literally as the daughter of Cambodian refugees its really crazy to read this and see that America's red scare killed so many people. The "effort" to ensure communism doesnt spread in SE Asia, and made it worse and made tons of those countries anti-american

[orwellsunderpants]

It's not over, even today. There's still a fuckton of dangerous, unexploded ordnance buried under the soil in both Cambodia and Laos.

Kissinger.

US bombs dropped on Laos, 1964-1973. [Map published in article: Rosita Boland. "Death from below in the world's most bombed country." The Irish Times. 13 May 2017. Though map first uploaded on Redd/it by Andrew Gloe, as u/AJgloe, 12 September 2016.]

US bombs dropped, 1965-1972. [Map and animation by: Ha Pham. "Vietnam bombing history with data - Part 1." Medium. 4 November 2018.]

Laos. From 1964 to 1975, the US dropped over 2 million tons of bombs, equating to over 250 million bombs/ordinances. By some estimates, this averages as: full plane load of bombs dropped on Laos every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. After the official end of the US military campaigns, US bombs on the ground continued to kill dozens of people every year. For decades. The bombs still maim and kill today, as over 80 million unexploded bombs/munitions still remain on the ground in Laos.

Cambodia. Kissinger was architect of the "Secret War", which the US president initially tried to hide from the public. Beginning in 1969, the US dropped over 2 and a half million tons of bombs at over 112,000 sites; over 11,000 sites were bombed indiscriminately. Most estimates suggest that US bombing of Cambodia directly resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. On 17 March 1969, when the president's office received news of the first bombings in Cambodia, Nixon's chief of staff wrote in his diary: "Historic day. K's [Kissinger's] 'Operation Breakfast' finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P [President]." The next day he added: "K's 'Operation Breakfast' a great success. He came beaming in [...]."

[feddy-34]

ijbol

[mimosita]

[i've never doubted that palestine will live.

the US dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on vietnam, laos and cambodia from 1965-75. they destroyed our land, used agent orange, slaughtered villages, separated families, the list goes on.

but we're. still. here.

indigenous people are still here. black people are still here. colonized people are resilient. even if you kill our people, ban our languages, destroy our homes, heritage sites and artifacts, we will always find a way to keep our cultures alive and that has always been true

so much of the west and isntreal's tactics and actions are hauntingly familiar to me as a viet person. its a colonizer's rinse and repeat. and so that's how i know palestine will be free. we've seen this film before]

[niveditaabaidya]

Cambodian PM Urges Ukraine Not To Use US Cluster Bombs. #cambodia #vietn...

[loverofallthingssmart]

[ID: a reply by @/this-song-of-mine that reads "You all realze that Henry Kissinger literally fought in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII and chaired the first 9/11 Commission. I sincerely doubt that any of you have served your country or the world, as he did. So kindly don't dance on someone's grave if you can't even lick their bootstraps. /end ID]

AITA for celebrating the death of Henry Kissinger?

NTA

[steveyockey]

Measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh detonated a massive bomb at the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. The government killed McVeigh by lethal injection in June 2001. Whatever hesitation a state execution provokes, even over a man such as McVeigh — necessary questions about the legitimacy of killing even an unrepentant soldier of white supremacy — his death provided a measure of closure to the mother of one of his victims. “It’s a period at the end of a sentence,” said Kathleen Treanor, whose 4-year old McVeigh killed.

McVeigh, who in his own psychotic way thought he was saving America, never remotely killed on the scale of Kissinger, the most revered American grand strategist of the second half of the 20th century.

The Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow, estimates that Kissinger’s actions from 1969 through 1976, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon’s and then Gerald Ford’s foreign policy as national security adviser and secretary of state, meant the end of between three and four million people. That includes “crimes of commission,” he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission, like greenlighting Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor; Pakistan’s bloodshed in Bangladesh; and the inauguration of an American tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds.

No infamy will find Kissinger on a day like today. Instead, in a demonstration of why he was able to kill so many people and get away with it, the day of his passage will be a solemn one in Congress and — shamefully, since Kissinger had reporters like CBS’ Marvin Kalb and The New York Times’ Hendrick Smith wiretapped — newsrooms. Kissinger, a refugee from the Nazis who became a pedigreed member of the “Eastern Establishment” Nixon hated, was a practitioner of American greatness, and so the press lionized him as the cold-blooded genius who restored America’s prestige from the agony of Vietnam.

Not once in the half-century that followed Kissinger’s departure from power did the millions the United States killed matter for his reputation, except to confirm a ruthlessness that pundits occasionally find thrilling. America, like every empire, champions its state murderers. The only time I was ever in the same room as Henry Kissinger was at a 2015 national-security conference at West Point. He was surrounded by fawning Army officers and ex-officials basking in the presence of a statesman.

[philsmeatylegss]

I’ve seen a few people, mostly non-American, who don’t know who Henry Kissinger is or what he did. So your local history student and nerd is going to try to give a quick summary of the main atrocities he committed.

-Role in the Vietnam War: this is the first and biggest reason most people have for hating Kissinger. He unnecessarily extended and expanded the war prolonging the already frivolous conflict. He purposefully delayed negotiations. He approved large scale carpet bombings done with the use of B-52 bombs killed thousands to millions of innocent civilians. The Christmas Bombing was an intense, focused bombing that caused large civilian deaths in a short period of time. He engaged in negotiations with the North Vietnamese often without permission or knowledge from the US government. He was the National Security Advisor and overall had much knowledge about 1) how useless the war was 2) the travesties happening to both the North Vietnamese and South, as well as America’s own soldiers.

-Secret Bombing and Invasion in Cambodia: Kissinger (and Nixon) lead secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia aimed to destroy North Vietnamese trails and routes that ran through the country. Cambodia originally pursued neutrality in the war. Its citizens were not involved.

-Invasion and Bombing of Laos: Laos also held North Vietnamese routes, so Kissinger led Operation Lam Son which was a full scale invasion supplied with American air power and weapons. Not that it would matter, but this invasion did little to interrupt the trade routes. The North Vietnamese, made up of people who lived and knew the landscape of Vietnam, were able to adapt and find new routes. There was also secret bombings carried out in Laos, authorized by Kissinger, aimed to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail, which, once again, wasn’t disrupted and just took innocent civilian lives in Laos. Laos also remained neutral in the Vietnam War. They were not involved, yet they were punished.

-Involvement in the Bangladesh Liberation War: this was a war between Bangladesh and Pakistan. Kissinger remained in a close relationship with Pakistan which, by now, was known to be committing horrendous human rights abuses, including large scale killings of the Bangladeshis. In fact, Kissinger and America provided funding for them. America was aligned in the first place because of bullshit Cold War alliances.

-Supporting and funding a dictator over an elected president: Chile had elected a *gasp* socialist president that really made Kissinger piss his pants. Project FUBELT, directly under Kissinger’s guidance, initiated covert actions to undermine and prevent the socialist President, Salvador Allende, from rising to power. Financial support was provided to anti-Allende groups and would eventually provided support to a military coup who would kill Allende. The leader of the coup, Augusto Pinochet, would then assume power and take rule an authoritarian government and become a dictator for 17 years. Under his rule, torture and executions were carried out against political dissidents and others. This wasn’t a secret.

-Supported the brutal invasion of East Timor: Indonesia would invade and occupy East Timor in 1975. Kissinger and Nixon had knowledge of the invasion beforehand and provided military support despite the knowledge of human rights abuses already taking place in East Timor by the Indonesians, abuses often using US weapons. Massacres, forced displacement, suppression of political dissents, torture, sexual abuse, restrictions of religious and cultural practices, and scorched earth policies are just some examples.

To my knowledge, these are usually the largest reasons cited, but please add more if I’m wrong. There are also lesser known atrocities either supported or funded by Kissinger, many taking place in Africa, that I thoroughly implore you to read about. Please correct any inaccurate things I said.

[dailyhistoryposts]

A Rundown of Henry Kissinger's Life

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

--Anthony Bourdain (2018)

It's difficult to be precise, but all told Henry Kissinger killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in pursuit of American business interests.

EARLY LIFE

Henry Kissinger was born in 1923 as Heinz Kissinger in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany, to a German-Jewish family. Throughout his youth, he was relentlessly and violently harassed and discriminated against by members of the Hitler Youth and authorities. At the age of 15, Kissinger and his family fled Nazi Germany, settling in New York City. He finished high school at George Washington High School in NYC and began studying accounting at the City College of New York, but his undergraduate studies were interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the US army.

In the army, fluent German speakers were in short supply, so Kissinger was quickly assigned to military intelligence. During the American invasion of Germany, he worked to set up civilian administration of conquered cities and tracked down Gestapo officers as a Special Agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps. He received the Bronze Star Medal

After his time in the army, Kissinger returned to his studies. He graduated summa cum laude in political science from Harvard College, as well as his Masters and PhD. He taught at Harvard, and his studies focused on international 'legitimacy', when an international order is widely accepted by international leaders, without regard to public opinion or morality.

POLITICS

Beginning in the 1950s, Kissinger began to be more active on the political stage. He was a consultant for the National Security Council and a study director for the Council of Foreign Relations. He notably was against Eisenhower's massive retaliation nuclear doctrine, where the United States would respond to a nuclear attack with a much, much greater nuclear attack. Instead, Kissinger advocated the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis in more wars.

In the 1960s, Kissinger began working with Republicans running for office as an advisor in foreign affairs. He contributed to the Nixon campaign, and when Nixon took office in 1969, Kissinger was appointed as National Security Advisor, and later Secretary of State. As a diplomat, Kissinger heavily used Realpolitik, the in-fashion Cold War approach focusing on pragmatism and realistic outcomes rather than ideological or moral purity. In international politics, it largely has to do with obtaining and maintaining power on the world stage.

Kissinger focused on relaxing US tensions with the USSR and China, leading an American foreign policy that supported Taiwan on the face but in the shadows removed all support for Taiwan and essentially waited for it to fall apart.

In 1974, he directed the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200), sometimes called the "Kissinger Report" the official United States policy for many years, though it remained classified until the 1990s. The Kissinger Report advocated for population control in undeveloped nations to ensure easy resource extraction and protect American business interests abroad. Projects were designed to reduce fertility while keeping up the appearance of improving quality of life--the plan specifically attempted to avoid an appearance of "economic or racial imperialism". Birth rate was particularly noted due to concerns about an adequate global food supply and because young people more readily fight back against corruption and imperialism. The Report also brought up increasing abortion rates as a method of obtaining this goal.

In 1975, policies based on the Report went into affect. The National Security Council would recommend withholding food and using military force to prevent population growth, prioritizing aid for small families, and even paying people to get sterilized. Thirteen countries were named as particularly problematic to US interests. Of note, Nigeria lost development and the United States took control of Nigerian resources, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was responsible for some of the 300,000 forced sterilizations in Peru--largely impoverished or indigenous women--during the Fujimori administration. The Fujimori government has been accused of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for these abuses, and today the Peruvian economy suffers due to the low population resulting from these sterilizations.

ACTIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

The Vietnam War had started back in 1955. Kissinger had originally supported it, but as time dragged on began to view it as harming American prestige. Kissinger leaked information about peace talks to get into power at Nixon's side, and then failed to end the war in 1972, leading to the Christmas bombings. A very similar agreement was signed the next month, leading to a ceasefire (that would collapse) and the withdrawal of American troops--bitterly seen as a betrayal by South Vietnam. When Kissinger and Vietnamese diplomat Lê Đức Thọ were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this, Thọ declined to accept it and two members of the Nobel Committee left it in protest.

It was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and during the Cambodian Civil War, that Operation Menu and Operational Freedom Deal went into play. From March 1969 to May 1970, the United States Strategic Air Command carried out a series of first tactical and then carpet bombings in eastern Cambodia. Then, from May 1970 to August 1973, the United States provided close air support and widespread bombing. Part of a 'secret' war to support the Kingdom of Cambodia/Khmer Republic against communist rebels, it ultimately failed and the communists would take power in 1975.

In the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Nixon and Kissinger supported the Pakistani president Yahya Khan. It was in this that the strongest dissent in the history of the U.S. Foreign Service, the Blood Telegram (named after sender Archer Blood), was sent. It reports the US was about to lose, describes systemic abuses, and uses the word 'genocide' to describe the actions by US-supported Pakistan. It said the US government was morally bankrupt. Blood was recalled early from Bangladesh, and US interests were lost when Bangladeshi Independence was secured within the year.

MIDDLE EASTERN POLICY

Kissinger was originally excluded from any policy-making on Israel, as part of Nixon's orders to exclude all Jewish-Americans from such work. Still, in 1973, when Kissinger became Secretary of State, he was included in all US Middle Eastern policy. This means he was largely responsible for the handling of the Yom Kippur War--this handling included not noticing precipitating factors leading up to it (he was so engrossed in Paris peace talks he didn't notice the Egyptian President Sadat ready to move on Sinai), delaying telling Nixon about and stalled negotiating a ceasefire, hoping Israel would push across and fully obtain the Suez Canal.

Kissinger's diplomacy included giving equipment to Israel, but not as much as he'd promised, and selling weapons to Saudi Arabia at the same time, in exchange for access to Saudi Arabian oil. By largely handling to event and not involving France or the United Kingdom, and by minimizing the power of the Soviet Union, Kissinger took large steps in giving US power over much of the Middle East.

It should be noted that this was done purely to protect US interests rather than any form of Jewish security. When questioned about the persecution of Soviet Jews at the same time, Kissinger said

"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy, and if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."

-Henry Kissinger (1973)

Also in the region., Kissinger supported Iran against Iraq.

TURKISH INVASION OF CYPRUS

In 1974, the Greek military regime and Turkiye invaded the island of Cyprus. The military regime had been supported by Kissinger, and anti-Kissinger sentiment was strong among young people. Cyprus is now an independent island country, though its northeast portion is de facto separate, making up the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Kissinger considers his own handling of the Cyprus Issue unfavorably.

LATIN AMERICA

With Kissinger's influence, the United States maintained relations with non-left-wing governments regardless of commitment to democracy. It was with Kissinger's input that the CIA encouraged a military coup against Chilean president-elect Salvador Allende due to his socialist ideals.

Operation Condor, a US-backed program of political repression by right-wing dictatorships of southern South America, was also Kissinger's work. It included assassinations, the Dirty War in Argentina, and supporting Brazil's nuclear weapons program because it would benefit the U.S. private nuclear industry.

SOME OTHER STUFF

Kissinger's policy on post-WWII decolonization was mixed, based on what would benefit the U.S. He helped transition Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) away from White minority rule, expressed moderate support for the Portuguese Colonial Empire, and helped Indonesia occupy East Timor.

After Watergate forced Nixon to resign, Kissinger stayed on under President Ford but left office when Democrat Jimmy Carter came into power. He was offered an endowed chair at Columbia University, which was canceled due to student opposition, but was appointed to Georgetown University instead. He ran a consulting firm, supported the Chinese government in the Tiananmen Square massacre, and served on the 2000 Commission of the International Olympic Committee. He was supposed to help President Bush respond to the 9/11 attacks but stepped down because he refused to reveal if he had a business conflict of interest.

In 2010, he took a strong stance urging world governments to destroy all nuclear weapons. In the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, he said that Crimea should remain under Ukrainian sovereignty, but in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine said that Crimea and Donbas should be given to Russia.

Kissinger was a board member of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes' biotech scam.

In response to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and seeing pro-Palestinian protestors in Germany, Kissinger called Muslim immigration into Germany "a grave mistake".

DEATH

Kissinger died peacefully in his home in Connecticut on November 29th, 2023,

[mariacallous]

MYKOLAIV, UKRAINE—Kateryna Nahorna is getting ready to find trouble.

Part of an all-female team of dog handlers, the 22-year-old is training Ukraine’s technical survey dogs—Belgian Malinois that have learned to sniff out explosives.

The job is huge. Ukraine is now estimated to be the most heavily mined country on Earth. Deminers must survey every area that saw sustained fighting for unexploded mines, missiles, artillery shells, bombs, and a host of other ordnance—almost 25 percent of the country, according to government estimates.

The dogs can cover 1,500 square meters a day. In contrast, human deminers cover 10 square meters a day on average—by quickly narrowing down the areas that manual deminers will need to tackle, the dogs save valuable time.

“This job allows me to be a warrior for my country … but without having to kill anyone,” said Nahorna. “Our men protect us at war, and we do this to protect them at home.”

A highly practical reason drove the women’s recruitment. The specialized dog training was done in Cambodia, by the nonprofit Apopo, and military-aged men are currently not allowed to leave Ukraine.

War has shaken up gender dynamics in the Ukrainian economy, with women taking up jobs traditionally held by men, such as driving trucks or welding. Now, as mobilization ramps up once more, women are becoming increasingly important in roles that are critical for national security.

In Mykolaiv, in the industrial east, Nahorna and her dogs will soon take on one of the biggest targets of Russia’s military strategy when they start to demine the country’s energy infrastructure. Here, women have been stepping in to work in large numbers in steel mills, factories, and railways serving the front line.

It’s a big shift for Ukraine. Before the war, only 48 percent of women over age 15 took part in the workforce — one of the lowest rates in Europe. War has made collecting data on the gender composition of the workforce impossible, but today, 50,000 women serve in the Ukrainian army, compared to 30,000 before the war.

The catalyst came in 2017, years before the current war began. As conflict escalated with Russia in Crimea, the Ukrainian government overturned a Soviet-era law that had previously banned women from 450 occupations.

But obstacles still remain; for example, women are not allowed jobs the government deems too physically demanding. These barriers continue to be chipped away—most recently, women have been cleared to work in underground mines, something they were prevented from doing before.

Viktoriia Avramchuk never thought she would follow her father and husband into the coal mines for DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.

Her lifelong fear of elevators was a big factor—but there was also the fact that it was illegal for women to work underground.

Her previous job working as a nanny in a local kindergarten disappeared overnight when schools were forced to close at the beginning of the war. After a year of being unemployed, she found that she had few other options.

“I would never have taken the job if I could have afforded not to,” Avramchuk said from her home in Pokrovsk. “But I also wanted to do something to help secure victory, and this was needed.”

The demining work that Nahorna does is urgent in part because more than 55 percent of the country is farmed.

Often called “the breadbasket of Europe,” Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of grain. The U.K.-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which has been advising the Ukrainian government on demining technology, estimates that landmines have resulted in annual GDP losses of $11 billion.

“Farmers feel the pressure to plow, which is dangerous,” said Jon Cunliffe, the Ukraine country director of Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British nonprofit. “So we need to do as much surveying as possible to reduce the size of the possible contamination.”

The dogs can quickly clear an area of heavy vegetation, which greatly speeds up the process of releasing noncontaminated lands back to farmers. If the area is found to be unsafe, human deminers step in to clear the field manually.

“I’m not brave enough to be on the front line,” 29-year-old Iryna Manzevyta said as she slowly and diligently hovered a metal detector over a patch of farmland. “But I had to do something to help, and this seemed like a good alternative to make a difference.”

Groups like MAG are increasingly targeting women. With skilled male deminers regularly being picked up by military recruiters, recruiting women reduces the chances that expensive and time-consuming training will be invested in people who could be drafted to the front line at a moment’s notice. The demining work is expected to take decades, and women, unlike men, cannot be conscripted in Ukraine.

This urgency to recruit women is accelerating a gender shift already underway in the demining sector. Organizations like MAG have looked to recruit women as a way to empower them in local communities. Demining was once a heavily male-dominated sector, but women now make up 30 percent of workers in Vietnam and Colombia, around 40 percent in Cambodia, and more than 50 percent in Myanmar.

In Ukraine, the idea is to make demining an enterprise with “very little expat footprint,” and Cunliffe said that will only be possible by recruiting more women.

“We should not be here in 10 years. Not like in Iraq or South Sudan, where we have been for 30 years, or Vietnam, or Laos,” Cunliffe said. “It’s common sense that we bring in as many women as we can to do that. In five to 10 years, a lot of these women are going to end up being technical field managers, the jobs that are currently being done by old former British military guys, and it will change the face of demining worldwide because they can take those skills across the world.”

Manzevyta is one of the many women whose new job has turned her family dynamics on their head. She has handed over her previous life, running a small online beauty retail site, to her husband, who—though he gripes—stays at home while she is out demining.

“Life is completely different now,” she said, giggling. “I had to teach him how to use the washing machine, which settings to use, everything around the house because I’m mostly absent now.”

More seriously, Manzevyta said that the war has likely changed many women’s career trajectories.

“I can’t imagine people who have done work like this going back and working as florists once the war is over,” she laughed.

[contemplatingoutlander]

In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on student debt forgiveness in Biden v. Nebraska, it seems it might be useful to revisit why American students have so much student debt.

Ironically, it all dates back to Reagan's and the Republicans' decision to cut back on funding for public colleges and universities in order to avoid the possibility of having an "educated proletariat."

So it isn't surprising that is is Republicans who were opposed to any government debt forgiveness for student loans. THEY DON'T WANT TO HAVE EDUCATED CITIZENS. The poorly educated are much easier to manipulate and control.

In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him. Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].” “If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.”

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 4 May 1970, the Kent State massacre took place when the Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds into a crowd of students protesting against the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war, killing four and wounding nine others, including bystanders and one person who was permanently paralysed. Those killed were Sandra Lee Scheuer, aged 20, Allison B. Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, and William Knox Schroeder, 19. The repression galvanised anti-war sentiment, with students in New York hanging banners stating "You Can't Kill Us All" and in the next few days millions took to the streets in protest. Learn more about the movement against the Vietnam war in our podcast episodes 43-46. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or here on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/09/23/e43-46-the-movement-against-the-vietnam-war-in-the-us/ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=620281590145060&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jack Elbaum

Despite the unanimous vote and the seemingly uncontroversial content of the bill, it garnered opposition from radical anti-Israel and progressive organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies.

The bill “was surprisingly opposed by Jewish Voice for Peace, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies,” JPAC wrote in a press release.

The root of this opposition, the group claimed, had to do with opposition to Israel: “They argued that Holocaust educational institutions should not contribute to Holocaust education if those institutions also support Israel.”

But JPAC noted that “all major US Holocaust educational institutions do [support Israel].”

“Despite such disingenuous opposition,” JPAC added, “the bill’s overwhelming bipartisan support in the legislature demonstrated the desire for such education.”

The Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) was another organization that opposed Senate Bill 1277.

The legislation would “put genocide education in the hands of anti-Palestinian organizations that deny Israel is committing a genocide,” Lara Kiswani, executive director of AROC and a lecturer at San Francisco State University, told the progressive news organization Truthout.

The opposition to the bill was despite the fact the program would go beyond just Holocaust education.

“In addition to the Holocaust, educational groups about the Rwandan, Cambodia, Guatemalan, Uyghur, and Native genocides are members of the Collaborative,” JPAC noted. “Together, they develop curriculum, train 8,500 public school teachers, and educate one million students by 2027 – including teachers and students in every California local educational agency (LEA).”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has a long history of celebrating and justifying terrorism against Israel. It created and distributed flyers that read “L’Chaim Intifada” at the height of the second intifada, which featured more than 130 suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and countless shooting and stabbing attacks. The flyer also included a picture of Leila Khaled, a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked a plane in 1969 and attempted to do it again a year later.

[bambamramfan]

Not much I can usefully say about the death of Henry Kissinger. I do not generally celebrate the death of anyone, even my enemies. And he was definitely a war criminal. But a lot of the jocularity around his death seems to come from just how old he had gotten - even the edgelords who admired him joining in - and that this was a punchline on years of "how come beloved celebrity died but the butcher of Cambodia is still around?" Sometimes its impossible not to laugh.

Plus, I pray that all of us make it to that age and die on our hundredth birthday (transhumanists aside.)

All I can say is that the first dirty joke an adult taught me was about Henry Kissinger.

***

bud: did i tell you about the time nixon was wandering through the white house looking for his wife, and found her in the lincoln bedroom, underneath... what was that guy? the diplomat and bombing guy?

me: kissinger?

bud: no he was FUCKING HER

[breawycker]

People talk about human rights in like the US versus so called "socialist" countries (USSR, Cuba, China, etc which I do not support) or other authoritarian countries as if people didn't have to fight and die for those rights. The government didn't just end slavery, allow women and people of color to vote, have better labor laws, queer rights, etc. The government did horrible things to those who tried to fight slavery or get better working conditions. How much opposition there was to these groups. We don't have to even think about how in the future people will look back and see us as backwards for not supporting these issues because a lot of them are just the same issues we've been fighting and supporting for years. Especially since the government can just erase our rights like with Roe v. Wade or all the anti-trans and racist laws. How many people died in the civil rights movement before the state was like fine we'll give you the bare minimum? How many more will die for us to keep the scraps they give us? We come out in the millions and yet the bombings in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon continued. When are we all going to get together and decided "Enough"?

[irregularincidents]

As the 1960s rolled to a close and with the Vietnam War proving itself to be increasingly unpopular amongst the American public, in 1968 President Lyndon B Johnson began secret talks with the North Vietnamese to begin the process of ending the conflict.

Unfortunately for the people of Vietnam and... pretty much everyone directly involved, Richard M Nixon was running on a platform of ending the war as well at the time and the Vietnam War ending too soon under a Democratic president wouldn't do his campaign any good... So naturally, the staff in Nixon's election team were instructed to sabotage the proceedings.

In a telephone conversation with H. R. Haldeman, an aide who would go on to become White House chief of staff, Nixon gave instructions that a friendly intermediary should keep “working on” South Vietnamese leaders to persuade them not to agree to a deal before the election, according to the notes, taken by Mr. Haldeman.

Additionally, it was discovered via the FBI bugging the phone calls between the South Vietnamese ambassador and of Anna Chennault, one of Nixon’s aides, that she had been advised to do the same things ahead of prospective peace talks that were planned to take place in Paris.

Johnson, who habitually recorded his own telephone conversations, is on tape as having been aware of what Nixon and his people were up to, and needless to say he wasn't exactly happy.

In the recently released tapes, we can hear Johnson being told about Nixon’s interference by Defence Secretary Clark Clifford. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese ambassadors phone. They had Chennault lobbying the ambassador on tape. Johnson was justifiably furious — he ordered Nixon’s campaign be placed under FBI surveillance. Johnson passed along a note to Nixon that he knew about the move. Nixon played like he had no idea why the South backed out, and offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

Despite it being a matter of record that Nixon's presential campaign was trying to prolong the very war he was promising to end, Johnson unfortunately chose not to make said evidence public. Partly because this would mean he'd have to admit to spying on the South Vietnamese ambassador, partly because he thought that his vice president Hubert Humphrey was a lock to win the next election so Nixon wouldn't be a problem anymore, and allegedly because Johnson believed that revealing Nixon's actions would cause the public to loose faith in the government...

Unfortunately, by the time the election finally rolled around, Nixon won the popular vote against Humphrey by just 1%. At that point, despite/due to placing Henry Kissinger in charge of the peace talks to end the war on Nixon's terms, the fighting continued for an additional five years with bombing spreading into neighbouring Laos and Cambodia, resulting in thousands more deaths.

As Robert Evans of the Behind the Bastards podcast put it on their series of episodes about Kissinger, the issue was basically that while Nixon wanted to get out of Vietnam, Vietnam wanted America out of Vietname, and the American public wanted America out of Vietnam, both Nixon and Kissinger didn't want to leave in a manner that made it look like they'd lost. Hence the escalation in fighting and bombing, because they'd gotten themselves stuck in a situation they had no easy solution to escape.

AND YET, it could have gotten worse.

In some tapes released by America's National Archives from 1972, between his complaining about Jews and liberals to Kissinger (yes, he was aware Kissinger was Jewish, yes he called him antisemitic stuff to his face), Nixon brought up a new suggestion...

Nixon is heard discussing an extension of bombing raids over North Vietnam with Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser. Then, rather abruptly, he says: "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb." Whether Nixon was serious or trying to provoke Mr Kissinger is not clear. In his baritone voice, his adviser replies: "That, I think, would just be too much." But Nixon then goes on: "The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you? I just want you to think big."

The Vietnam War eventually came to a close on 30th April 1975, seven years after Nixon sabotaged an attempt to begin ending the war sooner.