Anthony Bourdain didn't mince his words when it came to Henry Kissinger.
“Henry Kissinger walks into a bar. Would you mind if I walked up and punched Henry Kissinger in the face? Bourdain once asked guests who appeared on an episode of his “Unknown parts“TV show.
The late chef's scathing comments about the foreign policy figure have resurfaced in the wake of Kissinger's death and are being shared across the Internet. Kissinger died on Wednesday; he had 100.
Bourdain traveled to more than 80 countries throughout his career as a celebrity chef and global television personality. He spent time in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and his programs delved into the culture and geopolitics that defined a place's past and present. In these countries, he illuminated the dark legacy of the Vietnam War.
In his 2001 memoir, “A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines,” he wrote: “Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous bastard who sits down for a pleasant chat with Charlie Rose or attends some etiquette meeting for a new fashion magazine without choking up. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia (the fruit of his genius as a statesman) and you will never understand why he is not sitting in the dock in The Hague alongside Milosevic,” referring to Slobodan Milosevic, the former leader Yugoslavian and Serb who was on trial for war crimes when he died in prison in 2006.
In 2018, he retweeted the passage, writing, “I often regret things I have said. This, from 2001, is not one of those times.”
As national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger dominated international relations from 1969 to 1977. He was always a controversial figure, and his most outspoken critics (among them Bourdain) considered him ruthless and accused him of war. crimes, mainly due to the expansion of the Vietnam War to Cambodia and the support that Washington gave to the brutal right-wing dictatorships in Chile and Argentina.
As the architect of American Cold War policy, Kissinger had a packed agenda, much of it consumed by the Vietnam War. He and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for developing a plan to end the war, but the 1973 agreement failed to stop the fighting and the war dragged on for more than two more years until that Saigon finally fell. .
Kissinger accepted the honor but did not appear at the ceremony, blaming the pressure of official duties. Tho declined the award, explaining that he considered the negotiations a failure.
In a 2017 profile in the New Yorker, Bourdain dismissed the idea that his show's focus on social and political issues had turned him into some kind of statesman.
“I'm not going to the White House Correspondents' Dinner,” he joked in response. “I don't need to laugh with Henry Kissinger.” According to the New Yorker, Bourdain went crazy saying that he was disgusted, after traveling through Southeast Asia, to see Kissinger embraced by the “power lunch crowd.”
“Any journalist who has ever been civil to Henry Kissinger, you know, screw that person,” he told the outlet, who noted that he was growing increasingly outraged. “I'm a big believer in moral gray areas, but when it comes to that guy, in my opinion, you shouldn't be able to eat in a restaurant in New York.”
The article noted that Bourdain had made “equally categorical allegations against many people, only to bury the hatchet and join them for dinner.”
Bourdain responded: “Emeril didn't bomb Cambodia!”
Former Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.
