By Fred Branfman

Note: Henry Kissinger is to be the honored as the recipient of the "2011 History Makers Award" at a New York Historical Society Dinner on November 7, 2011.

"There wasn't a night when we thought we'd live until morning, never a morning we thought we'd sur­vive until night. Did our children cry? Oh, yes, and we did also. I just stayed in my cave. What did I think about? Oh, I used to repeat, `please don't let the planes come, please don't let the planes come, please don't let the planes come.'"

– refugee from the Plain of Jars in Laos, describing life under the U.S. bombing directed by Henry Kissinger, from Voices From The Plain of Jars, Harper and Row, 1972

The New York Historical Society has insulted history and the memory of the Americans and Indochinese who died in Indochina from 1969-75 and made a mockery of itself by awarding Henry Kissinger the "History Makers Award" at its November 7, 2011 dinner. The evidence is overwhelming that Mr. Kissinger was the architect of the most massive, prolonged and illegal bombing of civilians in world history. Those attending this dinner soil themselves by honoring rather than censuring Mr. Kissinger for his mass murder of civilians in Indochina.

Mr. Kissinger has consistently falsified history – during his years in power and in his writings about it ever since. Honest history would seek to uncover his deceptions not give him a platform to perpetuate them. Unlike Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, he has never had the decency to acknowledge, let alone apologize for,  his disastrous  miscalculations and war crimes, which needlessly prolonged the war for 5 1/2 years; laid waste two countries in addition to Vietnam; and killed, wounded and made homeless more than an officially-estimated ten million Indochinese, including  countless civilians.            

Falsifying history is one of the most serious offenses one can commit against human civilization itself. After 40 years, the American people and particularly its young need to understand the true history of what occurred in Indochina, so they do not repeat it, and so our nation can heal from the moral stain left by its mass killing of innocents there.             

To venerate Mr. Kissinger is also Orwellian, as it promotes an untrue, officially-approved government version of history that falsifies the past so as to justify current and future policy-makers' illegal and immoral war-making.           

Thirty-five years have passed since the ending of the war in Indochina and the historical evidence since has overwhelming revealed that:

(1) Mr. Kissinger was the major architect of the most massive bombing of civilian targets in human history, bombing which violated the laws of war and the most basic tenets of human decency and civilization. The 3,984,563 tons he dropped on Indochina between 1969 and 1973 was in addition to the 2,742,521 tons dropped by Lyndon Johnson and twice  the 2 million tons dropped on hundreds of millions of people throughout all of Europe and the Pacific in World War II. The historical evidence is also overwhelming that this massive bombing killed countless civilians in violation of the laws of war which the U.S. had signed and ratified, and for which as Secretary of State he was responsible for enforcing rather than violating.

(2) Mr. Kissinger bears a major responsibility for invading the previously neutral nation of Cambodia and orchestrating a bombing campaign that not only  killed countless Cambodian villagers but drove millions more underground for years on end.  As he launched the bombing campaign he told General Alexander Haig to undertake “a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.” This statement is evidence of intent to commit violations of the U.S.-supported international laws protecting civilians in times of war.  Mr. Kissinger then compounded his crimes against  Cambodia  after the victory of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, when he told the Thai Foreign Minister on November 26, 1975, that "you should also tell the  Cambodians (i.e. Khmer Rouge Government) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don't tell them what  I said before." The historical record is replete with similar incidences of Mr. Kissinger's cynicism, callousness and  viciousness.            

(3) Mr. Kissinger also bears a major responsibility for illegally increasing the bombing of civilian targets in Laos, dropping 1,628,900 million tons of bombs in addition to the 454,200 tons dropped by Lyndon Johnson.  On July 9, 1973, N.Y. Times columnist Anthony  Lewis wrote that  “the most appalling episode of lawless cruelty in American history (is) the bombing of Laos. The human results of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world were expectably pitiful. They are described without rancor - almost unbearably so - in a small book that will go down as a classic. It is Voices From the Plain of Jars, in which the villagers of Laos themselves describe what the bombers did to their civilization. No American should be able to read that book without weeping at his country's arrogance."

(4) Mr. Kissinger also exulted about vastly increasing the bombing of North Vietnam in an April 15, 1972 telephone conversation with Richard Nixon: "It's wave after wave of planes. You see, they can't see the B-52 and they dropped a million pounds of bombs ... I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month ... each plane can carry about 10 times the load of World War II plane could carry."               

(5) All told Mr. Kissinger bears a major responsibility for murdering, maiming and making homeless more than 10,770,000 Indochinese, including countless civilians, as officially estimated by the U.S. Government between January 20, 1969 and April 30, 1975. (Please see “Indochina War Statistics”, Congressional Record, May 14, 1975, p. 14265.) These facts reveal that Kissinger is largely responsible for the mass murder of civilians in Indochina.  To dispense with euphemisms and speak the simple truth: Henry Kissinger is a mass murderer.

(6) Mr. Kissinger’s overall record in Indochina constitutes some of the most massive violations of the Nuremberg Principles,  Geneva Conventions and U.N. Charter since World War II – particularly those provisions requiring protection of civilians in time of war. There is no serious doubt that if these laws of war  had been applied to Mr. Kissinger’s massive and indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in Indochina he would have been indicted and convicted of having committed crimes of war.

 (7) Mr. Kissinger has consistently lied to Congress and the public  about his bombing of civilian targets both during and after the war, claiming  that the U.S. only struck legitimate military targets. He dispatched William Sullivan, representing the State Department to commit perjury before the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees on April 22, 1971, when he testified that “the policy of the U.S. is deliberately to avoid hitting inhabited villages.” Seven months earlier, the Subcommittee's staff had issued a report stating that "the United States has undertaken a large-scale air war over Laos to destroy the physical and social infrastructure of Pathet Lao areas. The bombing has taken and is taking a heavy toll among civilians."  He also misled Congress and the public when he secretly began bombing Cambodia without Congressional authorization in 1969.  And he has consistently denied bombing civilian targets in his writings ever since, disgracing himself as an historian as well as policy-maker.  When an Executive Branch leader misleads Congress it is the most serious possible violation of the U.S. Constitution, makes a mockery of democracy and constitutes autocratic rule.

 This is only a brief list of Mr. Kissinger's innumerable crimes and deceptions during his years in power. By honoring such a man, the New York Historical Society is making a mockery of history itself. Yes, Mr. Kissinger was a "history maker". But so too were Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic. No sane or decent historical society on earth would honor these men for "making history."  For the New York Historical Society to so honor Henry Kissinger would be a bad joke if it did not so dishonor the millions who died as a result of his self-seeking careerism and brutality.           

History is sacred. Continuing to deny U.S. responsibility for the countless civilians who died from U.S. firepower during the war, continues to stain our national soul and prevent the possibility of moral renewal.            

And, most importantly, falsifying history abuses our young people and children. When we rob them of their history we doom them to repeating it. We owe them far better.