Sir, - Why is it that the enormity of Henry Kissinger's crimes against humanity is not apparent to all? Could it be because Dr Kissinger is the greatest spin-doctor of them all? Tom Farrell (An Irishman's Diary, August 17th), made a fine attempt to redress the situation with regard to Indonesia and East Timor. He tells us that in the index to Kissinger's recently published memoirs, Years of Renewal, there is no entry for either "Timor" or "Le Duc Tho".
During the Vietnamese War in 1973, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho - with whom he had negotiated a peace accord that in the event did not bring peace to Vietnam - were chosen to share the Nobel peace prize (presumably even those good Swedes were taken in by the master of spin). Although Le Duc Tho had the grace to decline, Kissinger had no compunction about accepting the award.
Kissinger's record as national security adviser and then Secretary of State to Richard Milhous Nixon includes the prolongation of the war in Vietnam and the infamous carpet-bombing of Cambodia, which in turn led to the setting up of the nefarious Pol Pot and one of history's cruellest regimes. In the US, involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Panama, the Philippines, Israel and South Africa, Kissinger shaped policies which caused millions of deaths.
The infamous Kissinger-engineered coup, the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, also occurred in 1973. Chile had the best record of democracy in Latin America until then. This mistake was made despite the obvious lessons of the calamity in Vietnam. General Augusto Pinochet took power and started a reign of terror in which over 3,000 people were executed without trial. Could this really be the kind of thing that Thomas Woodrow Wilson had in mind when he said in 1917: "The world must be made safe for democracy"?
Yet John Bruton concluded in his Sunday Tribune (July 18th) review of Kissinger's memoirs, that "The verdict on Kissinger must be broadly favourable." The master spin-doctor does it again! - Yours, etc.,
Myles Crowe, Old Brewery Lane, Clonakilty, Co Cork.