Kissinger in Bangladesh
When war erupted in South Asia in 1971, Henry Kissinger called Indians “bastards,” and Richard Nixon said they needed “a mass famine.” For both men, US interests were worth killing hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis and displacing millions more.
Henry Kissinger is received by Agha Hilaly, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, en route to China during a secret 1971 trip. (Ghulam Nabi Kazi / Flickr)
When war erupted in South Asia in 1971, President Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, expressed their displeasure with the way the Indian government was acting. While discussing the war with Kissinger one day, the president fumed: “The Indians need . . . what they really need is a–”
Kissinger chimed in: “They’re such bastards.”
But the president was not done speaking. He completed his thought: “What they really need is a mass famine.”
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