From https://theoutline.com/post/2239/the-19-most-powerful-people-you-meet-in-hell
by Eoin Higgins in The Outline
SEP—14—2017 09:00AM EST
It's a list of names that sums up so many of the problems in U.S. foreign policy. I'm speaking, of course, of a table in the back of Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner's recent book The Ideas Industry that lists the 15 top foreign policy influencers according to a poll of what's known colloquially as “The Blob” — the D.C. foreign policy establishment.
Drezner polled 440 academics, columnists, think tank officials, and former policymakers in order to come up with his list of foreign policy experts, and the names of influencers were provided by those polled in response to the prompt “the three living writers that you believe exercise the greatest influence over America's foreign policy debates.”
The names they came up with were, for the most part, unfortunate and monolithic. 18 of the 19 are men; 17 of the 19 are white. Twelve are over 60 years of age. If this is what the brightest minds of the foreign policy establishment came up with as their most admired thinkers, U.S. imperialism will continue to destroy the world for decades to come.
However, there is a good use for the list — as a primer on why The Blob never learns from mistakes, why an attitude of being completely unapologetic for the crimes of empire is rewarded in U.S. foreign policy circles, and why the country is doomed to continue repeating the mistakes of its past through blind, stupid hubris. With that in mind, let's begin at No. 15 and work our way down [to No. 1].
…
1. HENRY KISSINGER
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE AND FOUNDER OF KISSINGER ASSOCIATES
Here he is: the big guy, the No. 1, the ultimate killer. The fact that Kissinger is still taken seriously after all the disastrous policies he pursued during his decades in American government and around it is extremely disturbing. The fact that he hasn't died yet despite being weighed down by the blood of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of victims of his policies is proof there is no god.
Let's just look at a few of the awful things Kissinger can reasonably claim responsibility for:
- Bombing Cambodia
- Keeping the war in Vietnam going for Nixon's political gain
- Pushing Golda Meir to the right thus arguably making the Yom Kippur War an inevitability
- Overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean leader Allende, ushering in a brutal dictatorship under General Pinochet
- Facilitated Suharto's genocide in East Timor
Historian Greg Grandin has said that you can attribute “3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa.” Yet his counsel is still sought out by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Hillary Clinton counted Kissinger as a valuable source of advice during the 2016 campaign; Trump hosted Kissinger in New York after winning the election and the White House after firing FBI Director James Comey in May.
One thing you can say for Kissinger is that until the day he finally dies, he'll be in the halls of power spreading his poison. When death claims him, expect an outpouring of grief and remembrance from politicians in each party.
Why he's (probably) on the list: Staying power.