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POLITICA >>Kissinger | ||||
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Hitchens, C. 2001. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso, London, UK. Rating: JJ About the Author: Christopher Hitchens writes regular columns for the US publications Vanity Fair and The Nation. He is also Professor of Liberal Studies at the New School, New York . Books by
the same author: Prepared
for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports; The Elgin
Marbles: Should they be Returned to Greece?; Hostage to History:
Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger; Blaming the Victims (edited
with Edward Said); James Callaghan: The Road to Number 10; Karl
Marx and the Paris Commune; The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain’s
Favourite Fetish; Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies;
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports; International
Territory: The United Nations 1945-95; The Missionary Position:
Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice; When the Borders Bleed:
The Struggle of the Kurds; No one Left to Lie to: The Values of
the Worst Family; Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public
Sphere. |
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Review With the dramatic
trial of Slobodan Milosevic entering a new phase, Christopher
Hitchen’s book becomes all the more essential to correct our unbalanced
view of international justice. He presents damning evidence, which,
in any serious court of law, would lead to the indictment for
war crimes and other atrocities of former US Secretary of State
and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger. No stone is left
unturned in this rigorous analysis of the destruction left behind
by Kissinger, from Cyprus to Indonesia, not to forget Vietnam.
The Kissinger-Nixon administration is accused of deliberately
prolonging the horrendous war against Vietnam, in which so many
civilians died, by sabotaging the 1968 Paris peace talks. Worse,
Kissinger was aware of the massacres (e.g. My Lai) being perpetrated
by American troops in Vietnam, of the enormous civilian toll of
the incessant bombing (nearly half a million vietnamese died in
the war), and continued the war regardeless[similar accusations
are now being directed at Slobodan Milosevfic regarding Kosovo,
but Kissinger has yet to be indicted for war crimes]. Some chapters
are more speculative, but this shortcoming is more than compensated
by other sections. Hitchens is at his most convincing when relating
the multiple breaches of the Geneva Convention by the USA during
the war in Vietnam, their interference with the democratic process
in Chile (the destabilisation and later assassination of Allende),
and the sacrifice of Cyprus to Turkey in 1974. For all those who
believe in international justice, this book is a must-read.
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