December 1, 2002 by lonbud

The Company We Keep

I haven’t been feeling much like myself lately. I’ve been a little confused, even, trying to determine just what it is I have been feeling, but whatever it is, it hasn’t been like the me I’ve been struggling to accept and to celebrate for much of the past forty-odd years.

Perhaps the events of 9/11 are catching up to me. Indeed.

Or, I’m anxious about the impending War for Black Gold, Texas
Tea, Oil, that is…. Likely so.

Maybe I’ve been tempering the joy and wonder of parenting a
confident, adventurous, energetic, sweet, gentle, loving boy with
fear and pessimism and existentialist resignation about the world
he will inherit from me. A stretch, but not without some possibility.

Because so many things happening in the world around me
seem in constant conspiracy against the peaceful, easy feelings I
know to infuse my core, I try very hard to live by that maxim about accepting the things I cannot change and being strong enough to change the things I cannot accept. It’s an approach that has seen me through great sorrow and pain in my life, and led me to bear good fortune and the occasional outstanding victory with some
grace and humility.

But I’m starting to get pissed off here.

Henry the K? Henry Kissinger is going to lead the Warren
Commission investigating the events of 9/11?

Does hubris know no bounds?

Those of you born before, say, 1965 may recall Henry Kissinger as the man who rained death from the skies on many tens if not hundreds of THOUSANDS of innocent civilians in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. You may also recall that the United States and Cambodia were not at war with one another at the time; clearly there is precedent for the United States to drop bombs on whomsoever it pleases.

The appointment of Henry Kissinger to this very public, very
superficial, very late-arriving exercise is nothing more than a
phlegm-filled spit in the face of a) the memory of those innocent
civilians killed in the events of 9/11, and b) every thinking person of conscience and good will who believes terrorism is worth fighting against.

The investigation has been charged with helping the Bush
administration learn the tactics and motives of the enemy. Perhaps
they figure it takes one to know one, for Henry Kissinger will be
known to history as one of the 20th Century’s most notorious
architects of Death and Terror. Stalin ravaged his own people, as
did the misguided disciples of Mao; Hank’s pal Suharto had big
numbers but he stayed mostly in Indonesia (unless you count his
venture in East Timor). The Khmer Rouge, for whom Hank opened
the door in Cambodia, inspired a Hollywood movie. But Kissinger
has Chile, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador, Honduras, and
Nicaragua notched in his belt. He’s perhaps the greatest
unprosecuted war criminal of all time. This guy should have had his head on a pike in front of the US Capitol in 1973; instead he got the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

Connect the dots, people. Look who is running the show (again):
it’s the same folks who brought you Vietnam, Watergate and its
Cover-up, Iran-Contra, CIA covert ops, and Iraq 1.0 -is anyone paying attention? Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush the Elder, Poindexter (!), Kissinger, these cats all started out working for the great crook himself, Richard Milhous Nixon. They ran the original lame-duck presidency of Gerald (Can I Get a Slipmat) Ford, honed their fearful, nefarious ambitions (and made some pretty good bank, thank you very much) under Reagan and Bush I, and now they are back at the tiller, cackling away about what a great rush it is to spend American tax dollars staging video game warfare to secure access to Middle Eastern Oil for American Oil companies (with which they are each intimately connected both spiritually and financially).

No wonder I haven’t been feeling myself.

I said before he was installed, “there is no way George W. Bush
will serve a full term as President.” This appointment may prove to be his undoing, because, honestly, there could not be a greater
lightning rod on the planet to bring the shock of illumination upon the criminal cynicism, greed, and inhumanity of the current American enterprise than is Henry Kissinger.

I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boys….