Ben Rhodes labels Kissinger a hypocrite

Ben Rhodes, a former national security adviser, blasted the late Henry Kissinger as a hypocrite over decisions he took while serving as the U.S.’s top diplomat under two administrations.

“At turns opportunistic and reactive, his was a foreign policy enamored with the exercise of power and drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake,” Rhodes wrote in a New York Times op-ed titled “Henry Kissinger, The Hypocrite.”

“Precisely because his America was not the airbrushed version of a city on a hill, he never felt irrelevant: Ideas go in and out of style, but power does not.”

Kissinger, who at one point served as the national security adviser and the secretary of State simultaneously, died Wednesday at the age of 100. He served in President Nixon’s and President Ford’s administrations and heavily shaped and influenced U.S. foreign policy.

Rhodes detailed how Kissinger was responsible for extending the Vietnam War and expanding it to Cambodia and Laos, both of which were heavily bombed by the U.S. He said Kissinger also “backed genocidal campaigns” and noted that he was accused of helping set up a coup that resulted in the death of Chile’s leftist president in 1973.

Rhodes accused Kissinger of writing numerous books to clean up his own reputation, as he has been praised by politicians on both sides of the aisle for his leadership serving in the U.S. government. Critics of Kissinger, such as Rhodes, have argued that his policies led to unnecessary death and destruction that have had long-lasting effects.

“He wrote a shelf of books, many of which polished his own reputation as an oracle of global affairs; after all, history is written by men like Henry Kissinger, not by the victims of superpower bombing campaigns, including children in Laos, who continue to be killed by the unexploded bombs that litter their country,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes also wrote that history has come “full circle” in the U.S., pointing to the U.S.’s support of Israel in its military campaign against Gaza after the deadly attack on Israel and the war in Ukraine. He conceded that recent events that may have been influenced by Kissinger’s policies are not all at the fault of the late diplomat but warned that Kissinger represents a “cautionary tale.”

“As imperfect as we are, the United States needs our story to survive. It’s what holds together a multiracial democracy at home and differentiates us from Russia and China abroad,” he concluded. “That story insists that a child in Laos is equal in dignity and worth to our children and that the people of Chile have the same right of self-determination as we do. For the United States, that must be a part of national security. We forget that at our peril.”