KISS OFF,

When Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100 recently, leading politicians of both parties praised him effusively. Kissinger was national security adviser and then secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford but offered advice to every administration ever since.

“One of the very few things that still brings the Republican and Democratic political establishments together is their shared reverence for Henry Kissinger,” Julian Borger of The Guardian wrote. This has angered

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many progressives who consider Kissinger to have been a ruthless war criminal.

President Joe Biden, who had praised Kissinger when he was a senator, was cautious this time: “Throughout our careers, we often disagreed. And often strongly. But from that first briefing, his fierce intellect and profound strategic focus was evident.”

Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, speculated about the widespread reverence: “Some

Democrats and some liberals have a lack of confidence on foreign affairs, and there’s this aura of credibility around Kissinger,” adding that many Democrats can feel defensive about being considered unrealistic idealists.

Rhodes’ former boss, Obama, was an exception. In an interview with The Atlantic in 2016, Obama criticized Nixon and Kissinger’s legacy in southeast Asia: “We dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II, and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind