WHAT IF HENRY KISSINGER WAS MY FATHER?

What if Henry Kissinger was my grandfather? Actually, no. What if he was my father!? He’s certainly the right vintage. My late father Pinek Raber would be 90 years old if alive today. If Henry Kissinger was my father I’d be an American Jew and not an Australian one. I’d live in a plush apartment in New York City. I’d be grateful that my dad was alive and well at his over-ripe age. I might even be proud that I had such a revered and accomplished dad. One of the most famous and talked about men in modern history.

Every few weeks on a Friday I’d go to his house for a Shabbat family dinner. We’d start the meal with the traditional Challah, maybe with some egg and onion or chopped liver smeared on. My dad might sing the Kiddush prayer and we’d all sip some sacramental wine and then get stuck into the main meal. Hmm. Wait. Something isn’t quite right. Henry, my dad wouldn’t sing the prayer. He wouldn’t even read it out in that deep Germanic drawl of his. Henry, like most American Jews is an assimilated secular Jew. That means, there is no Challah or chopped liver in this dream sequence.

It isn’t even a Friday night. There is no Shabbat family gathering. Let’s call it a semi regular lunch. At Henry’s house. My half siblings David and Elizabeth are there. And my mum Nancy. It’s a beautiful house, if not a little austere. There’s a housekeeper named Mahalia. She’s cooked a stunning roast lamb and brings out the accompanying side dishes. My wife and two kids are there too. Henry loves his grandchildren, even if he only sees them once in a while at these lunches. The table talk is just the usual banter.

Until my dad brings up the assault by some Code Pink activists who barged into a Senate Armed Services Committee attempting a citizens arrest charging my dad with war crimes. My dad is tough. Well seasoned. He laughs the whole thing off declaring the protesters were just misguided lefties who are essentially un-American.

We continue eating the lamb. It’s the most tender flavoursome lamb I’ve ever tasted but I’m just not able to fully enjoy it. I’m nervous. I know that at this lunch I am compelled to ask my dad some difficult questions. My half siblings are enjoying their food but I am not. You see I’m younger than they are and over the years I’ve gravitated towards some very un-American voices. I’ve read graphic novels and listened to stand up comedians who have voiced some very interesting things about America and its place in the world. I don’t know why, it’s just in my nature. Not just to question the accepted truths but to seek out and find the most potent purveyors of other truths. The truths that have somehow never managed to penetrate my family. It’s amazing what a whole lot of privilege can create — a giant bubble where not a lot of uncomfortable ideas can get through. They just bounce right off and disappear somewhere unknown.

I’m nervous at this lunch. Like I said. Very nervous. In the way that a son or daughter might feel in the build up to telling their parents that they are gay, knowing full well that their small minded parents are not going to embrace the idea — not at all. In some ways this is harder. Because in this scenario, I’m going to reveal something to my dad about himself. Some might say that’s rubbish. The things you’re going to confront your father about are things he is totally conscious of. You won’t be “revealing” anything, just confronting. Maybe. But this is my dad. I have to believe on some level that the crimes he’s committed have been so locked away inside a maze of ideological justification, that by all accounts he has wiped these actions clean. If he ever did classify them as crimes of any kind, this many decades on, they simply can’t be defined that way.

I’m nervous too because I know that by doing what I’m about to do, I’ll be upsetting everyone else in the room. Wives, children, everyone. But you see I confess I’m not just nervous, I’m angry. So my consideration for the emotional well being of others in the room unfortunately isn’t on my radar. At the first available prolonged silence I decide to strike.

“So dad, you might be interested, I’m working on a comparative quantitative study at the moment.”

He looks up from his last piece of the lamb. “Really? When did you get into the business of comparative studies?”

“Well, it’s a topic I’ve always had a passion for and after years and years of reading and absorbing I realised I really wanted to put it all together into some kind of comparative template. Just so I could get really clear about the answers.”

“The answers or do you mean the findings?” he asks.

“The findings are the answers in this case. You see, although the exact numbers in these types of studies are impossible to verify, because they are just so huge, there’s consensus from enough credible research so I’m confident in the results.”

Mahalia brings out the cake and coffee. I continue. I’m now past the nervousness and have entered a strange euphoric adrenal surge which I try very hard to keep under control.

“So my question is WHICH TWENTIETH CENTURY WAR CRIMINAL HAS MURDERED THE LARGEST NUMBER OF NON-COMBATANTS OR CIVILIANS? Purely a numerical question.”

Dad sips his coffee calmly, purposefully.

“Absolutely impossible to be a hundred percent accurate with such numbers,” he states emphatically.

I ignore his statement and continue. And at this point my half siblings decide it’s time they left this warm cosy family lunch. They both mutter some sort of disparaging remarks aimed at me but I am so focussed on my father and on my determination to remain cold and factual — like an advocate delivering his findings at an official hearing — that I don’t really hear what’s being said. As they and their kids line up to kiss Henry goodbye, his eyes remain fixed on mine. Those cold dead Germanic eyes.

I continue even as the farewell hugs and kisses ensue.

“Let’s start with everyone’s favourite demonic dictator madman Adolf Hitler. The total number of deliberately murdered civilians comes to around 11 million. It spikes to around 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation and hunger are included in the equation.”

My mother Nancy has remained at the table. Silent and stoic. But at this point she gently gets up and leaves without saying a word. My wife and children remain by by side. Henry’s eyes never stray from their direct line of fire with mine.

“These are the revised numbers since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s I gather,” says Henry.

“Correct” I reply, and then continue.

“Next is everyone’s second favourite madman, Joseph Stalin. The comparative numbers under Stalin’s regime sit at around 6 million murdered civilians, which jump to around 9 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation and starvation are included.”

Henry returns to his cup of coffee but there is nothing in there. He awkwardly pretends to sip some non-existent liquid.

“Next on the list is Henry Kissinger.” I pause. My heart rate has become so rapid that I can actually hear the beats emanating from my tight chest.

“Your junkie musician friends have filled you with so much hate,” says my dad in a very soft voice. Soft, but not vulnerable. I ignore him and continue with my prosecution. Because that’s precisely what this is and he knows it. He’s trying to deflect this onto me and my life, my choices. But it doesn’t work.

I relentlessly and coldly press on.

“As a result of the illegal bombing of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973, your civilian death toll there sits at around 500,000. This bombing campaign was a direct cause of the destruction of Cambodia’s agriculture system which lead to a major famine which in turn allowed t for the emergence of the maniacal Khmer Rouge who murdered around 3 million civilians. This brings your personal total up to 3,500,000.”

I should reveal at this point that I am delivering these facts while looking down at some pre-prepared notes from my research. There is no way I’d be capable of reeling this stuff off in such an articulate and deliberate manner if I was continually staring up at my dad and looking him square in the eye. Not because I don’t believe in what I’m saying, but because this is the most traumatic emotional moment of my life.

I am sitting here at my father’s dining table, confronting him with a list of his known crimes and I am simultaneously knowingly destroying something that is utterly heart breaking to destroy: a father son relationship. I know that after I leave this lunch, I will never see or speak to my dad again. And that’s so huge, so heart crushingly massive, that I can’t begin to even understand one millionth of how different my life will be after this lunch.

But I press on regardless.

“As a result of your personal green lighting and sponsoring of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, the civilian massacres there total around 200,000. This bumps up your sub-total to 3,700,000.”

“You should tell your husband to stop now,” says Henry to my wife.

“I don’t think I could do that, even if I wanted to,” she calmly replies.

My father stays put. At the head of the table, a position of power. Power means everything to my dad. Even he can admit that. At certain moments I wonder why he’s just sitting there, taking it all in. Why hasn’t he removed himself from the table? But this is his house and this is his honour at stake. He won’t be ousted by his dissident son. Not today. Not ever.

And so he allows me to continue and that’s exactly what I do.

“As a result of your military and financial support of the coup in Chile, installing the murderous dictator Pinochet whose ‘Caravan of Death’ maimed and executed Chilean opponents, as well as the sanctioning of ‘Operation Condor’, a network of equally brutal dictatoships spanning several other South American countries who co-operated in a vast campaign of terror, your death toll sits at an estimated 50,000. There is also the estimated 30,000 people who were “disappeared” but I think it’s safe to add them to the number of murdered as that’s more than likely what happened to them. So your Chile coup total sits at 80,000.”

I take a sip of water. My mouth is dry. My father remains still and silent.

“For your complicit support and arming of the genocidal invasion of Bangladesh by West Pakistan forces which included the violent removal of its democratically elected government — ‘regime change’ I believe we call it these days — you have the blood of 10,000 civilians butchered in the first three days on your hands. The accepted eventual death toll sits at a low estimate of 500,000 but some research suggests an upper figure of 3,000,000. I’ll cut you some slack and we can settle somewhere in the middle, let’s say 1,500,000. As a side note let’s not omit the program of genocidal rape of between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women. Moving on to Cyprus and the coup you turned a blind eye from in support of your client state Greece at the time, which then sparked the barbaric invasion of Cyprus by Turkey. Unfortunately because of the complexity of this conflict and the various clashing narratives, I can’t land on an accurate estimate of dead civilians, so we’ll just leave that one open ended shall we?“

“Of course. And your previous figures are so accurate aren’t they?” he says with a slice of sarcasm.

“I believe they are, yes” I reply.

“Well, aren’t you going to give me my grand total?”

His eyes are so dead as I stare into them. I’m aware not to stare too deeply as I’m afraid I might enter too deeply into the man’s soul, if he has one. And it’s not a place I want to visit. Not even for a second.

I finally respond to his question.

“No dad, I’ll leave the adding up to you — to do yourself.”

I decide this is the right time to get up and take my family and leave my father’s house.

“You can see yourselves out”, he says.

There is a moment as we’re leaving where my nine year old is confused about whether or not he should give a goodbye hug and kiss to his grandfather. The three year old is untouched by the goings on however and he runs to give dad a hug. He receives it with the usual warm gusto, after all he does love his grandchildren.

**************************************************************

Post Script:

My dark fantasy is of course only a general summary of Kissinger’s crimes and the matching death toll is likely far greater if one was to read ‘THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER’ by Christopher Hitchens. In his introduction he writes:

“I am concerned only with those Kissingerian offenses that might or should form the basis of a legal prosecution: for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap and torture. Thus I might have mentioned Kissinger’s recruitment of and betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds, who were falsely encouraged by him to take up arms against Saddam Hussein in 1972–75 and who were then abandoned to extermination on theirhillsides when Saddam Hussein made a diplomatic deal with the Shah of Iran.”

Hitchens goes on to say that this episode in the Middle East reveals on Kissinger’s part “a callous indifference to human life and human rights but they fall into the category of depraved realpolitik and do not seem to have violated any known law.”

And it is in this introduction that Hitchens goes on to list other similar examples that can’t fit into the self imposed legal parameters for his book.

For the elaborated documentary evidence outlining Kissinger’s crimes, I implore everyone with a conscience to read Hitchens’ book. It is not a dry academic read but a thrillingly and compellingly disturbing onslaught of indisputable facts. If one holds onto a perpetual understanding that this is not a Hollywood narrative but a volume of truth, the overall devastation and anger is totally unavoidable. Be prepared.