May 16, 2013
Mr. Luke Sacks, PR Director
Intrepid, Sea, Air, & Space Museum
Pier 86, W. 46th St. and 12th Ave.
New York, New York 10036-4103
Dear Mr. Sacks,
Florida Veterans for Common Sense Inc. has learned that your museum intends to make an award to Henry Kissinger for “defending democracy and freedom.”
We request that you reconsider this award. Henry Kissinger does not respect American ideals or laws as expressed by his own words, “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Kissinger’s morality is power. As he said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” As the Secretary of State during the Nixon administration, Kissinger supported the illegal bombing of Cambodia. He also supported a military coup in Chile that toppled the democratically elected government. As Kissinger’s apologist, Robert D Kaplan said, “Their cold moral logic was that a right-wing regime of any kind would ultimately be better for Chile —than a leftist regime of any kind— and would be in the best interest of the United States.” Kissinger’s logic resulted in the death of innocent Chileans by the thousands and democracy died in Chile. Kaplan notes that as a result, Kissinger can’t travel to a number of countries where legal threats hang over his head.
If America stood for the rule of law as it should, legal threats would hang over his head here as well. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert H Jackson, said at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII, “If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner’s dock rather than the way to honors, we will have accomplished something toward making the peace more secure.”
Your organization should not award Henry Kissinger the “Democracy and Freedom” award. To do so is an insult to veterans who died, and were willing die, for principles Kissinger subverted and does not support.
Sincerely,
Gene Jones,
President, Florida Veterans for Common Sense, Inc.