“While Henry Kissinger left formal government office more than 45 years ago, his influence remains. It is not an exaggeration to assign to Kissinger an impact on U.S. foreign policy and the world that can rarely be attributed to one individual. The bipartisan D.C. foreign policy establishment, the business suit-wearing appendage of the US war machine, is his living legacy. The most important aspect of that legacy is an institutionalized unaccountability for not just foreign policy failures, including spectacular blowback, but for crimes against humanity. 

A foreign policy establishment built in Kissinger’s image, upon ego, irresponsibility and murder, realized a post-Cold War world of instability, horror for tens of millions and a military-industrial complex that has hollowed out the US economy and deprived American families while making the U.S. less safe. Kissinger, never held to account for his failures and crimes, was (and is) lionized and, as today’s New York Times obituary points out, D.C. offices were replete with copies of his books. Having Kissinger’s book on your shelf in DC symbolized that loyalty, not intellectual or moral decency, was your paramount attribute, loyalty being Washington’s most prized trait 

Brown University’s Costs of War Project reported this week that US armed forces engaged in combat in at least 13 countries, and maybe as many as 19, in this first term of the Biden Administration. These hidden and secret wars, like many of Kissinger’s, serve no practical American interests and make a mockery of purported American values. Kissinger is now dead, like millions of his victims, but his ruinous legacy remains.”