Statue of President William McKinley, St. James Park, San Jose, California. McKinley, a Civil War veteran, was U.S. President during the Spanish American War, a cause for which he was an ardent advocate, and which was not only America’s first overseas war, but one that featured U.S. military war crimes, including torture and civilian massacre. A war declared in the name of democracy and liberty, McKinley’s words engraved as testimony on one panel read: “Let us remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict, and that our real eminence rests in victories of peace and not those of war.”
Our History
When is a war not a war, but a police action? When is killing not killing but a “pragmatic, managerial militarism”? If you guessed, when the war criminal represents a liberal democracy, you win the cheese! If you simply said, “Henry Kissinger,” you win the whole wheel of cheese! “A perfect expression of American militarism’s merry-go-round” is what historian Greg Grandin calls Kissinger’s tautology of justifying wars in the present by appealing to wars in the past. And here at HAG, we have our own name for it. We call it, the narcissism of power. With narcissists of power, it can be pretty hard to tell the heroes from the villains, especially when they all use the same AI-generated come on. But as Frank Herbert reminds, you better think twice before accepting the doe-eyed kid with the perfect locks and curls is a messiah, cause he might just be a pissed off, spice-sniffing, megalomaniac with a rising body count out to settle some scores. Our advice? You might ask to see his publicity photos first, and find what’s going on his statue before, signing over your soul.
Sources Referenced and Items of Interest
Greg Grandin, “Henry Kissinger: To Die at the Right Time,” Jacobin (Nov. 29, 2023).
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“At a time when we are inundated with images of suffering, the problem is not that we have looked at too many photos but that we haven’t looked closely enough. If the act of bearing witness is to be more than a cliche, we cannot afford to look away. More importantly, we must also have the courage to recognize what it is that we see.”
Kim Wagner
History Against the Grain 