While Kissinger is hailed by many for helping open relations with Maoist China – he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 – he’s also decried as a “war criminal” for orchestrating an illegal bombing campaign in Cambodia that lefthundreds of thousands of innocents dead.
Kissinger’s mixed record – which also included becoming a Nobel Peace Prize recipient after he negotiated a 1973 cease-fire in Vietnam – was evident at the U.S. Capitol today. Few lawmakers wanted to discuss in detail the newly deceased academic-turned-diplomat.
“He served his country well, and I'll leave it at that,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told Raw Story.
Brown then stopped and corrected himself.
“I mean, he served his country for a long time,” Brown said.
“What do you think his legacy is globally?” Raw Story asked.
“I said all I want to say,” replied Brown, who is defending his highly coveted Senate seat next year.
“Why don't you want to talk about him? All the deaths?”
“I think there’s more things that are important to talk about now,” Brown said.
Brown may be so shy because the proud progressive doesn’t want to say aloud what his former House colleagues are screaming on social media.
“Remembering all the lives Henry Kissinger destroyed with the terrible violence he unleashed in countries like Chile, Vietnam, Argentina, East Timor, Cambodia, and Bangladesh,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) tweeted on X. “I never understood why people revered him. I will never forgive or forget.”
That sentiment is echoed by eight-term Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) – the third most senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“His legacy badly needs reassessment. He unleashed some of the worst violence of the last fifty years in Chile, Cambodia, Iran & Vietnam – just to name a few,” Connolly tweeted on X. “His indifference to human suffering will forever tarnish his name and shape his legacy.”
Back in the Senate, Democrats are more circumspect.
“He certainly had a tremendous impact on foreign policy,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) – himself a former House member who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – told Raw Story. “It was a mixed record.”
Over his 36 years in Washington, Cardin was in meetings with Kissinger – confabs Kissinger dominated, even when he no longer held any formal government title.
“You knew he was there,” Cardin remembered. “He was opinionated. He talked more than he listened.”
That’s a common Kissinger theme.
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While some Republican policy makers – past and present – have heaped praise on the former secretary of state who advised 12 presidents, including President Joe Biden, today’s Republicans tend to be more isolationist than leaders from the party’s recent neo-conservative era, and many are eager to avoid characterizing Kissinger’s legacy.
“I mean, he was certainly a pragmatist, but you want to undergird your pragmatism with principle,” Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) – a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee – told Raw Story.
“Do you think he had principle?”
“His principle was pragmatism,” Budd said, before an aide cut the short interview off after 40 seconds.
Even the GOP vice chairman of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence doesn’t want to discuss the specifics of Kissinger’s storied — and blood-soaked — career.
“Obviously, he was a very prominent figure in shaping American foreign policy in the 20th century and was active until very recently,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told Raw Story.
Rubio, who’s also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was in many meetings with Kissinger.
In those meetings, Kissinger was genuine, even if – like Cardin – the former diplomat came across as arrogant to Rubio.
“Same as you see on television,” Rubio said as he laughed. “You know, he had it all figured out.”
