Students protest Kissinger

Henry Kissinger’s lecture on “The Ethical and Moral Dimensions of America’s War on Terrorism” sparked a demonstration Wednesday afternoon.

Approximately 25 protestors, including two SMU students, filled the four corners at Airline and McFarlin. They held signs and passed out flyers concerning Kissinger’s role during the Vietnam War to anyone who would take them.

The demonstrators expressed concern about the university’s decision to invite a man to speak on ethics whom they perceive as a war criminal.

A.J. Anderson, a history graduate student and president of SMU’s Green Party, was one of the protesters who saw the university’s decision as being hypocritical.

“Inviting Kissinger to speak about ethics at SMU is like inviting Osama bin Laden to talk about peace,” Anderson said. “He is responsible for escalating the bombing on Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, even though [Nixon and Kissinger] knew the war was unwinnable,” Anderson said.

Kissinger was involved in the 1973 bombing of Cambodia, under President Nixon, when he served as Secretary of State. The bombing killed an estimated 500,000 people.

Harvey Herr, a first-year, thought SMU did the student body an injustice by inviting Kissinger without fully informing the campus of the morals and ethics of his past war decisions.

“Surprisingly, there is enough incriminating evidence within our campus libraries that indicates this man should be on trial for war crimes,” Herr said.

Herr also questioned Kissinger’s character for speaking about morals during war.

“A man with no conscience has no fear,” Herr said.

Ironically David Halberstam, who was part of the special panel for the Tate Lecture Series, spoke the same day as Kissinger. He was one of the first journalists to publicly declare the conflict in Southeast Asia unwinable for the United States.