ecmsquared 's review for:

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass

3.5

challenging dark informative sad slow-paced

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An absolutely necessary and commendable work of investigative journalism on a forgotten scandal, an event that should serve as a stain upon Nixon and Kissinger’s legacies but is sadly all but erased by all the other stains to their legacies (ie Nixon’s scandals and Kissinger’s other war crimes). However, and this is just a personal gripe as a filthy leftist, I found it a bit frustrating that Bass didn’t do more to connect this tragedy to the overarching theme of anticommunist repression that underlies most US foreign policy in the Cold War era. Obviously it was mentioned many times, but it was treated more as a battle between two military powers — the US and the USSR — rather than a battle between ideologies. I don’t mean to diminish the important work Bass did just because he doesn’t share my politics (which are on the more extreme end, comparatively), but I think it is a historiographical disservice to not state in clear, unflinching terms that the US openly and eagerly backed (even directly instated) many, many tyrants in the global South in the name of capitalism.