quote:

---

He had a job to do, and he did it supremely well, under threat of death, within earshot of screams of torture: methodically photographing Khmer Rouge prisoners and producing a haunting collection of mug shots that has become the visual symbol of Cambodia’s mass killings.

“I’m just a photographer; I don’t know anything,” he said he told the newly arrived prisoners as he removed their blindfolds and adjusted the angles of their heads. But he knew, as they did not, that every one of them would be killed.

“I had my job, and I had to take care of my job,” he said in a recent interview. “Each of us had our own responsibilities. I wasn’t allowed to speak with prisoners.”

That was three decades ago, when the photographer, Nhem En, now 47, was on the staff of Tuol Sleng prison, the most notorious torture house of the Khmer Rouge regime, which caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.

---

Particularly creepy - who would be proud of this?

quote:

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In the interview, Mr. Nhem En spoke with pride of living up to the exacting standards of a boss who was a master of negative reinforcement.

“It was really hard, my job,” he said. “I had to clean, develop and dry the pictures on my own and take them to Duch by my own hand. I couldn’t make a mistake. If one of the pictures was lost I would be killed.”

But he said: “Duch liked me because I’m clean and I’m organized. He gave me a Rolex watch.”

---

Apparently his pictures are a big tourist draw, though.

quote:

---

The grisly memories translate into income. "Tourist dollars and capitalism are helping me come to terms with my country's history—and my own," says a Cambodian guide at the killing fields who didn't want to give his name. He lost his grandfather and uncle to the Khmer Rouge.

Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide

"It's good tourists are coming here interested in Cambodia's past," says Stephen Bognar, a liaison officer for WildAid Cambodia, a nonprofit conservation organization. "They're boosting the country's economy and helping out the people."

Another notorious site is the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide in Phnom Penh. Once a high school, Tuol Sleng became a torture camp, prison and execution center.

Today the place looks benign, with palm trees and grass lawns in a suburban setting. From the outside, Tuol Sleng could be a school anywhere in the world. But inside are weapons of torture, skulls, blood stains and photographs of thousands of people who were murdered.

---

[ 28 October 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

About time.

Having had the dubious pleasure of talking to many Khmer Rouge leaders during the years I lived in Cambodia I wish the accused long lives, to better enjoy their hopefully Spartan prison cells.

In the previous thread on this subject there were a lot of errors. I haven't checked into Babble for a while, so I missed commenting at that time.

1. Not all bad things are the fault of the US.

While I'd be happy to see Henry Kissinger join Ieng in the same prison, the role of the US in creating the Khmer Rouge is often overplayed.

While the US war against Vietnam created conditions of great regional instability the US bombings of Cambodia were concentrated on the sparsely inhabited jungles of the east. There was not much concern in Cambodia about the bombings as this part of the country was dominated by non-Khmer ethnic groups, who continue to suffer serious racial discrimination.

There were no US bombing raids on Phnom Penh; the US backed the Cambodian government throughout the period of the American raids against the country, it had a large embassy and military presence, so bombing the capital would have been an odd.

The Khmer Rouge did use the threat of American air-raids to frighten the residents of Phnom Penh and other cities during the forcible evacuation of urban areas in April and May, 1975.

2. The Khmer Rouge were Maoists, and Maoism ranks with the Divine Right of Kings in terms of really dumb ideologies.

Inspired by a combination of theory picked up by the movement's leaders during studies in France (having a KR leader mock my New Brunswick French was an odd moment), and admiration for the practice of the CPC revolution, the KR wanted to 'out-Mao Mao'- a goal the Cambodian leaders discussed at length.

The KR leaders weren't insane, they weren't shell-locked loons emerging from the woods. They were highly intelligent, highly educated men with control of an ill-educated and traumatised country. What killed Cambodia was their application of ideas to a country that couldn't stop them, and their own unwillingness to change their policies despite failure.

While there were many executions immediately after the KR takeover, and more thereafter (around 17,000 were killed at the killing field that served Tuol Sleng, the prison referred to in Michelle's post), the death toll exploded because of the political dynamics of the regime.

The leadership believed their agricultural policies were correct. But they weren't - collectivization and forced labour did not replicate the miracles of Angkorian civilization. Instead, the efforts to get three or even four rice harvests per year depleted the land and the people, and the latter began to die.

At this point most governments would have changed course, as Lenin changed course with the New Economic Plan shortly before his death, and as Deng changed course as soon as Mao's corpse was cold.

But KR regional leaders, knowing the penalty for failing to meet ever more unrealistic rice-production targets was death, sent whatever tiny amount of rice they produced to Phnom Penh, showing off their 'surpluses'. The revolution must be right.

So people died and, as the central leaders began to realize things weren't going well they decided - given their ideas were scientific/infaillable - that failure was caused by treason or laziness.

Purges within the party began; most of those processed at Tuol Sleng were party cadres. Whole regional commands came under suspicion, and regional leaders played off their comrades, in an effort to curry favour with the top.

When the Vietnamese invaded their army was headed by a corps of former KR soldiers, mostly low and mid-level, who had fled to Vietnam as the KR started to eat itself.

Following the government's collapse the KR began to turn itself into a nastier version of Columbia's FARC; drug, timber and gem smuggling replaced Maoism as their chief exports.

No disagreement in re the disgrace of US and UK support for the government following its collapse; rather like suggesting Himmler should have asked to run Germany after the Soviet occupation in 1945.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

I know that the Khmer Rouge makes the 'Vive la revolucion" crowd squirm because they are so indefensible - tough.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
The Americans always backed rightwing military dictator Lon Nol. They only started turning a blind eye to the Khmer Rouge after they went to war with the pro-Soviet Vietnamese in 1977.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
Fidel, haven't you had your quota of fun on the old thread?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
Bush had very little to do with Cambodia considering he was AWOL in 1972 and didn't even do a single bombing run over anywhere close to Indochina.

---

George HW Bush's government was funneling millions of dollars worth of aid to the Khmer Rouge in Thailand as late as 1990.

On the Side of Pol Pot: U.S. Supports Khmer Rouge

quote:

---

But there are indications of direct U.S. Iinks to the Khmer Rouge. Former Deputy Director of the CIA, Ray Cline, visited a Khmer Rouge camp inside Cambodia in November 1980. When asked about the visit, the Thai Foreign Ministry denied that Cline had illegally crossed into Cambodian territory. However, privately, the Thai government admitted that the trip had occurred. Cline's trip to the Pol Pot camp was originally revealed in a press statement released by Khmer Rouge diplomats at the United Nations

---

Yes, the US supported the Khmer Rouge after the regime was defeated by the Vietnamese, and continued that support for several years.

But the US was not responsible for the Khmer Rouge coming to power, or for what they did while in power.

From this point of the world, in between the next superpowers, the weird obsession with the US by some people here seems quaint. You know, folks, some things can and do happen without Washington directing them. Some good things, some bad.

The Khmer Rouge were Maoists, an ideology that owes nothing to the United States, and they did what they did to their country while the US, and Canada, and many other countries, stood by.

The Vietnamese didn't invade for altruistic reasons: the KR killed many Vietnamese within Cambodia, and started raiding border towns, so the Vietnamese removed them from power.

Rather like the countries involved in freeing Afghanistan (or parts of it, at least) from the Taliban did so largely from self-interest. But I'm thankful Hanoi did what it did in 1978, and that the US and its allies did what they did in Kabul, starting in 2001.

The Vietnamese weren't angels in Cambodia, but they were better what went before, and the same applies to the current regime in Afghanistan.

Of course I'm making this case with some people here who have twisted themselves in knots in an effort not to acknowledge any crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, so I'm sure this post will wash over them...

quote:

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Of course I'm making this case with some people here who have twisted themselves in knots in an effort not to acknowledge any crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, so I'm sure this post will wash over them...

---

Actually, I don't see anyone trying to avoid acknowledging any crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. I think that the dyed in the wool Communist apologists have given up on that. Instead they just try to create some fantasy where the Khmer Rouge had nothing to do with communism and were instead controlled by the Americans.

quote:

---

But the US was not responsible for the Khmer Rouge coming to power, or for what they did while in power.

---

Cambodia was determined to remain neutral during the Vietnam war. The US deliberately bombed Cambodia and helped to weaken the Cambodian government and bring about instability. That directly led to the success of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent mass murders. And when the Khmer took power, the US supported them.

To argue the US is not responsible is to argue the that opening the windows of your neighbours home and killing his dog does not make you responsible for burglars coming in and looting it.

It is preposterous.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

---

The still-incomplete database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that
from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far
more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941
tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent
of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as
having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed
at all. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier
than is widely believed — not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson.
The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past
three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia
drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that
had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting
in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a
coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately
the Cambodian genocide

---

http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

Frustrated Mess: your facts are mixed up. The sort-of neutralist Sihanouk government (describing the twists and turns of Sihanouk's politics would take pages) was overthrown by the US backed (and crazy) Lon Nol in 1970. The US bombing, against North Vietnamese supply lines that wove in and out of Cambodia's eastern border, took place while a US-backed regime was in power in Phnom Penh.

The US bombing was against a part of Cambodia that didn't contain many Cambodians. The KR weren't the target of the US, who were after the Vietnamese communists.

The "enraged Cambodians" thesis, of maddened people driven into the arms of the KR, is just wrong, and dismissed by serious scholars of the war - not to mention Cambodians. We can talk more about this, if you want, but don't be so condescending to people of a brave country. The victims of other bombing campaigns in the last hundred years didn't turned into vicious ideological monsters, the Cambodian people weren't any different. Don't slander people in pursuit of scoring your ideological points.

Finally "Khmer" is not shorthand for Khmer Rouge, but the word Cambodians use to describe themselves. In addition to your point being completely wrong, that the US supported the KR when they took power, which they did not (have you heard of the Mayaguez Incident?) your sentence is akin to writing "helped the Canadians when they took power in Ottawa."

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Cardy ]

quote:

---

Cambodia was determined to remain neutral during the Vietnam war. The US deliberately bombed Cambodia and helped to weaken the Cambodian government and bring about instability. That directly led to the success of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent mass murders. And when the Khmer took power, the US supported them.

---

Do you also blame North Vietnam for disregarding Cambodian neutrality and setting up bases in Cambodia?

The idea that the US supported the Khmer Rouge when they took power is 100% preposterous. The US's ally in Cambodia was Lon Nol - the rightwing military dictator. The Americans were bombing Cambodia to try to PREVENT the Khmer Rouge from capturing Phnom Penh and taking power. The Nixon and Ford governments fought tooth and nail to stop congress from imposing a halt to the bombing of the Khmer Rouge. When the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, it was regarded as a total military defeat for the US which had bet all its chips on Lon Nol. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese had been allies of the Khmer Rouge and had given them vast amounts of military help.

It was only years later, AFTER the Khmer Rouge gencide had killed millions that the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam became enemies and a proxy for the Sino-Soviet conflict.

There is no getting away from the fact that the Khmer Rouge was a MAOIST movement that tried to impose a particularly horrific, violent and merciless form of revolutionary communism on Cambodia.

I think the US and China and Thailand were wrong to give any assistance to the remnants of the KR after it was deposed by the Vietnamese in 1979 - but that doesn't change the fact that Pol Pot and company were maoist ideologues.

You're just going to have to accept the fact that SOMETIMES horrible crimes against humanity occur that cannot be blamed on the US and that SOMETIMES horrific crimes against humanity can be committed by people who were inspired by Marxist/Maoist/Stalinist ideology.

There is plenty of bad that the US IS responsible for - but the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is a black mark something that the revolutionary left will have to wear forever.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Stockholm ]

quote:

---

The sort-of neutralist Sihanouk government (describing the twists and turns of Sihanouk's politics would take pages) was overthrown by the US backed (and crazy) Lon Nol in 1970. The US bombing, against North Vietnamese supply lines that wove in and out of Cambodia's eastern border, took place while a US-backed regime was in power in Phnom Penh.

---

Yes, the US staged a coup against a national, neutralist leader to impose one of their own. Did that or did that not destabilize Cambodia?

And then they began a secret and illegal bombing campaign.

quote:

---

The US bombing was against a part of Cambodia that didn't contain many Cambodians. The KR weren't the target of the US, who were after the Vietnamese communists.

The "enraged Cambodians" thesis, of maddened people driven into the arms of the KR, is just wrong, and dismissed by serious scholars of the war

---

By that you mean scholars with whom you agree? Please ...

So let's deal with when the secret bombings began, under what government, and what were the results on the civilian population:

quote:

---

Cambodia was an island of relative tranquility prior to the American invasion of 1970, though it had been repeatedly attacked by American and U.S.-backed forces from 1957 on. There was limited local insurgency, aroused by government repression, even by the 1960s. As Vietnamese were driven to a narrow border strip by the savage American military operations of early 1967, direct U.S. attacks on Cambodia escalated. By May 1967, the Pentagon was concerned that Cambodia was "becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later," an obvious consequence of U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos. In March 1969. shortly after the "secret bombings" began, Sihanouk vainly called upon the Western press to publicize his government's protest over the "criminal attacks" on Khmer peasants. The 1970 invasion helped organize the Khmer Rouge rebellion as thousands of peasants rallied to the resistance under the impact of the vicious bombing and ground attacks of the U.S. military and the Vietnamese forces it organized. Charles Meyer, who had long been close to ruling forces in Cambodia, warned then that "it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred (of the peasants) for those who destroyed their villages and their possessions" (Derriere le sourir khmer). This was well before the murderous American bombings of the 1970s, which surely inflamed peasant hatred and desire for revenge.

---

That is Chomsky. And while many imperial apologists hate Chomsky, his scholastic credentials and painstaking sourcing is never in question.

The one being condescending is you in pretending to speak for the Cambodian people. History speaks clearly and the history of Imperialism in South East Asia from the invasion of the Phillipines onward is one of barbarism and unmitigated cruelty.

quote:

---

Do you also blame North Vietnam for disregarding Cambodian neutrality and setting up bases in Cambodia?

---

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

---

Stockholm, do you ask why the Vietnames were in Cambodia? Or do such things not interest you?

---

Its pretty obvious why the North Vietnamese were in Cambodia. It was a convenient base from which to attack South Vietnam. Cambodia was supposed to be neutral. The North Vietnamese were just as guilty of violating Cambodian neutrality as the Americans were - maybe more so since they did it first.

Do you ever ask yourself why the Americans were in Cambodia? or do such things not interest you?

quote:

---

Its pretty obvious why the North Vietnamese were in Cambodia. It was a convenient base from which to attack South Vietnam. Cambodia was supposed to be neutral. The North Vietnamese were just as guilty of violating Cambodian neutrality as the Americans were - maybe more so since they did it first.

---

At no time have I or anyone here defended the Khmer Rouge or their acts of violence. But I demand that history be viewed in context and that realities not be painted red, white, and blue with the simple-minded lies and justifications (such as the US invaded and killed more Vietnamese than Pol Pot killed Cambodians for freedom and liberty).

You however appear to have the intellectual and emotional age of an adolescent who can never accept that perhaps the "truths" on which he was raised are based on untruths hiding darker facts.

And a lot of ways I feel bad for you. You hold onto lies and believe them in spite of all realities and facts. The crimes against humanity committed by the US in the last century in South East Asia rival that of anything in Europe and even Mao himself.

And yet you can't help but to buy the simplistic, ideological nonsense that gave way to such genocide.

The Khmer Rouge curried favour in the west by referring to themselves as advocating Liberal capitalism, anything to please the west. And that's because the US and Britain as well as post-Mao China were supplying the biggest mass murderers since Hitler with weapons and aid. Cambodia was a neutral country. The doctor and the madman's massive aerial bombing of Cambodia in the early 1970's, which killed anywhere from 600K-750, 000 human beings, was strictly off the books and in gross violation of international law.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
Was it also a gross violation of international law when North Vietnam invaded Cambodia and Laos in the late 60s?

---

If the NVA were committing border incursions into Cambodia, a neutral country, it was to avoid the massive aerial bombing of their own country by the US Air Force. The US military's plan was to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail to smithereens in order to cutoff North from South Vietnam. The Yanks didn't realize that the trail took on a life of its own and was re-routed through impassible jungle and mountain terrain to feed the resistance.

quote:

---

If the NVA were committing border incursions into Cambodia, a neutral country, it was to avoid the massive aerial bombing of their own country by the US Air Force.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

But is it not still a clear violation of international law for a country to invade another country - regardless of the pretext?

---

Cambodians were actually angry with the U.S. for bombing their country to smithereens. And they were angry with their U.S. puppet government for what was gross incompetence and dereliction of governmental duties for running the country. Peasants of Phnom Phen would flee the north half of the city to the south in the morning to avoid US bombs and then back to the North to escape afternoon bombing of the south half. Many joined the Khmer Rouge believing they were anti-American revolutionaries.

Is it not illegal to commit saturation bombing and mass murder in two countries simultaneously? The Vietnamese were simply exercising their right to live. What were they supposed to do, stay there and be bombed to kingdom come? The Yanks even bombed the rice paddies, even though rice paddies couldn't launch counter-offensives. It was the scene of a crime for a long time after, and the whole world knows who was the guilty party. The doctor and the madman should have been arraigned on charges of crimes against humanity.

And the NVA actually invaded Cambodia to get rid of a criminal regime led by the biggest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler. The US and allies were all prepared to accept the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of "democratic Kampuchea" The Khmer Rouge were US-British-French-Chinese proxies in the continued war on Viet Nam after the US evacuation of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. The US and allies were trying to murder an idea.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

BTW: The Khmer Rouge fought to overthrow the US-backed Lon Nol military dictatorship and they got tons of help from the Chinese and the North Vietnamese in doing so.

You can contort yourself all you want but the fact remains that the Khmer Rouge were a revolutionary COMMUNIST movement.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
I'm talking about the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos and Cambodia in the late 60s BEFORE the Americans were doing anything in either country. They violated the neutrality of those countries and the rest is history

---

Well for one thing, the Yanks were interfering in Viet Nam as early as the 1950's and supplying the French invaders with 85 percent of small arms, machine guns and ammunition. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed in 1964 by Johnson, and the US carpet bombing of Laos and Vietnam had begun. The American people were lied to constantly by a succession of presidential and military leaders, bureaucrats, and corporate-sponsored news media about the illegal bombing of IndoChina

King Sihanouk, who wanted neutrality for Cambodia, was overthrown by the CIA-backed Lon Nol's forces in 1970. The CIA and Uncle Sam backed Pol Pot as did Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the end. Green Berets and British SAS trained and armed the Khmer Rouge after they came to the conclusion that Lon Nol wasn't getting the job done for them. It was the US military that decided, illegally of course, to use Cambodia as a base to wage an illegal war on Vietnam. The U.S. government and friends were actually more guilty than the mass murdering Khmer Rouge.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cardy:
The US bombing was against a part of Cambodia that didn't contain many Cambodians. The KR weren't the target of the US, who were after the Vietnamese communists.

---

He keeps repeating - and inflating - completely baseless figures in re casualty figures, and talking about things, such as the US bombing of Phnom Penh, which simply didn't happen. A very Maoist technique: just keep repeating inaccuracies and they magically become true.

Chomsky is reviled in Cambodia for his denial of the Khmer Rouge's crimes, and his work is dismissed by the scholars, from left to right, who study the country. The fact he stomped on Cambodia as part of his endless, world-wide, "America the Evil" waltz, is only of interest to his acolytes.

Of course my years of living in the country, and having read all the books - Chomsky and other loons included - in English and French that have been written on the KR, that's all meaningless because my studying didn't lead me to think like some of our babble comrades.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cardy:

A very Maoist technique: just keep repeating inaccuracies and they magically become true.

---

Alas too true...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cardy:

The US bombing was against a part of Cambodia that didn't contain many Cambodians. The KR weren't the target of the US, who were after the Vietnamese communists.

---

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
...and how many Cambodians were killed when the North Vietnamese decided to walk into Cambodia in the late 60s and use it was their base of operations for an invasion of South Vietnam?

---

I think you're whacky. And you're a menace to the truth at the same time.

The NVA "invaded" Cambodia in 1979 in order to abate a problem they were experiencing at the source. Their problem was a criminal, U.S.-backed Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot which sent raiding parties marauding into Vietnam, which was illegal of course. For many of the Khmer who survived Pol Pot's murderous regime after 1979, the NVA were a god-send. For those people, without the NVA's entrance into Cambodia, they and their families might have been victims of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal policy. Many Cambodians viewed the Vietnamese as Liberators in a similar sense that prisoners and those slated for extermination at Auschwitz and Birkenau were liberated by the Soviet Red Army.

The doctor and the madman support Pol Pot:The beginnings of Watergate - by John Pilger

It's either that Pilger and dozens of other journalists from that era are not telling the truth about the secret bombing and US support of a murderous regime in Cambodia, or it's Stockholmer, Cardy, and the doctor and the madman themselves. A fair trial at the Hague or a World Court dealing in war crimes would sort this all out for the rest of the world. There's still time, because Henry Kissinger is still around. He could also answer for his role in the genocide of East Timor and kill two birds with one stone.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

The NVA "invaded" Cambodia in 1979 in order to abate a problem they were experiencing at the source.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the 1960s when North Vietnam waltzed into Cambodia and set up bases and sanctuaries there without ever being given permission by anyone. I call that an invasion. They did the same thing in Laos.

---

For starters, everything the Yanks pulled in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam was illegal. They basically waged war on democracy itself and committed crimes against humanity in the process. This is the result of the US military's illegal use of chemical weapons in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos over 30 years after the original crime was committed. And that's pretty benign compared to some of the photos showing birth defects caused by Monsanto's Agent Orange. Cocksuckers is too tame a noun to describe scum of the earth who approved the use of those weapons as well as massacres of whole villages killing innocent women and children. The doctor and the madman knew it was all illegal, and that's why Kissinger refuses to accept the opportunity to stand trial in an international court of law and defend his guilt for all the world to know and understand. What the Nazis did was wrong, and it was necessary justice that they were made to answer for and admit their crimes to the world at Nuremberg. So why is Henry Kissinger(and so many US-backed butchers and mass murdering scumbags) immune from what are international laws of humanity and decency? May the bad doctor's blood scream for all eternity.

enemies of freedumb and hypocrisy

American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
Say A,
Say M,
Say E,
Say R,
Say I,
C,
Say A,
N,

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

For starters, everything the Yanks pulled in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam was illegal. They basically waged war on democracy itself and committed crimes against humanity in the process.

---

quote:

---

Between 1957 and 1965, Laotian governments came and went at a frantic pace, with the CIA sponsoring at least one coup a year. The problem was a leftist group called the Pathet Lao which kept getting enough votes to be included in coalition governments.

If the Pathet Lao or other leftists were voted into office, there'd either be a right-wing coup or the legislature would be dissolved, with future elections canceled if possible. If there was an election, the CIA would stuff ballot boxes, run propaganda campaigns and bribe legislators to try to get their candidates elected.

But the CIA didn't rely primarily on such namby-pamby techniques. Starting in the late 1950s, they recruited a mercenary force of some 40,000 men to attack Pathet Lao forces. Known as the Armee Clandestine ("secret army"), about half its members were from Thailand; the rest came from Taiwan, South Korea and other US client states. Despite the size of the Armee Clandestine, the Pathet Lao had enough support in the countryside to withstand it.

---

Democracy has always been the right's most hated institution. The Yanks made sure none of those countries were neutral, Stockholmer. The Vietnamese were defending their basic human right to live.

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

The Vietnamese were defending their basic human right to live.

---

What about the right of Cambodians and Laotians not to have their territory trampled over the the North Vietnamese? What right did the North Vietnamese have to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Lao and Cambodian territory? Were they ever given permission to do this by the governments of those countries?

quote:

---

What about the right of Cambodians and Laotians not to have their territory trampled over the the North Vietnamese?

---

This is imbecilic. The degree of Vietnamese intrusion in Laos and Cambodia was but a drop in the water compared to the illegal and genocidal US involvement in all three nations.

To focus on the Vietnamese is to ignore the cancer to complain about a wart.

Only an ideologue could engage in such stupidity.

And speaking of ideologues, war crimes, and trials, when does the great UN demand that Kissinger be turned over?

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

What about the right of Cambodians and Laotians not to have their territory trampled over the the North Vietnamese? What right did the North Vietnamese have to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Lao and Cambodian territory? Were they ever given permission to do this by the governments of those countries?

If, not they broke international law.

---

King Sihanouk knew about but did not protest the NVA's border incursions, which were nil next to non-existent compared with the USA's illegal and immoral saturation bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia. Cambdodia was still, at least officially, a neutral country. So the CIA toppled Sihanouk to install a very incompetent and corrupt Lon Nol puppet regime. Everything the Yanks pulled in Cambodia from that point on was illegal and immoral.

Excerpt from: US intervention in Cambodia
from bombs to ballots

quote:

---

In mid-l990, Americans who penetrated the mist of media propaganda demanded that President Bush stop aid to the monsters of Pol Pot's creation. But while many Americans joined cause with the Cambodian people, Washington embraced the demon of revenge. US cynicism to ward Cambodia and its own people ironically parallels that of the Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot regime to the Khmer innocents: "Preserve them, no profit. Kill them, no loss.'

---

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

This is imbecilic. The degree of Vietnamese intrusion in Laos and Cambodia was but a drop in the water compared to the illegal and genocidal US involvement in all three nations.

---

If you call MILLIONS of North Vietnamese troops stomping through Laos and Cambodian and terrorizing the locals - a drop in the bucket. Cambodians historically hate Vietnam - I can assure you that no one in Cambodia was welcoming the North Vietnamese with open arms.
and who elected Sihanouk? He was just some stooge installed by the French who never faced an election.

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: Stockholm ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

If you call MILLIONS of North Vietnamese troops stomping through Laos and Cambodian and terrorizing the locals - a drop in the bucket.

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Are you out of your mind? If there were millions of NVA in Cambodia, who was fighting the Americans in Vietnam? I'm talking about the official fascist invasion and US military occupation of Vietnam not the doctor and the madman's off the books carpet bombing of Cambodia, officially a neutral country at the time.

I wonder if the people of Belgium had as soft a spot in their hearts when German decided that the best way to invade France in 1914 was via Belgium. Countries like Belgium, Laos and Cambodia were just "collateral" damage.

And after causing massive destruction and loss of life in South-East Asia and gross violations of Geneva settlements for French settlement, the Yanks installed a brutally repressive puppet regime in South Vietnam in order to maintain imperialist division among what Pentagon capitalists condidered to be nothing more than sunjects of the empire and mere barbarians. Not one thin American dime in reparations was paid to Vietnam or Cambodia for what were crimes against humanity committed by French and U.S. imperialists.

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Does the Communist party run some weekend indoctrination camp where they deprive you of protein and use brainwashing techniques to make you into some automaton that just parrots the party like no matter how absurd?

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And what was the response of the Great(racist and imperialist) Society when those victims of Agent Orange sought compensation? It told them to go to hell.

If the Victims of Indonesia, China, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, the Phillipines, Korea, and Latin America are added to the total, the US has been as brutal and bloody as Hitler, Mao, or Stalin.

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What bothers him is that people from an interesting and exotic culture several thousand years-old were compromising political boundaries established in imperial-colonial times.

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Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians are TOTALLY different peoples. They have totally different languages, foods and cultural traditions. Cambodians and Vietnamese have a history of enmity going back hundreds of years before any European had ever set foot in Indochina.

In summary:

The Americans had no right to set foot in Indochina
The North Vietnamese had no right to invade Laos and Cambodia because it was a more "convenient" way for them to attack South Vietnam
The Khmer Rouge were a totally COMMUNIST organization that was funded by the Communist Chinese and they were also one of the most murderous regimes in history - which only proves that murderous regimes that have no redeeming features can be communist or fascist or "islamist" or whatever.

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The US not only helped create conditions that brought Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January 1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pots exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support-$85 million from 1980 to 1986-was revealed six years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Winer said the information had come from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). When copies of his letter were circulated, the Reagan administration was furious. Then, without adequately explaining why, Winer repudiated the statistics, while not disputing that they had come from the CRS. In a second letter to Noam Chomsky, however, Winer repeated the original charge, which, he confirmed to me, was "absolutely correct.''

Washington also backed the Khmer Rouge through the United Nations, which provided Pol Pot's vehicle of return. Although the Khmer Rouge government ceased to exist in January 1979, when the Vietnamese army drove it out, its representatives continued to occupy Cambodia's UN seat. Their right to do so was defended and promoted by Washington as an extension of the Cold War, as a mechanism for US revenge on Vietnam, and as part of its new alliance with China (Pol Pot's principal underwriter and Vietnam's ancient foe).

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The road to power for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was opened by the events of January 1970 in Cambodia. Sihanouk, while out of the country, ordered the government to stage anti-Vietnamese protests in the capital. The protesters quickly went out of control and wrecked the embassies of both North Vietnam and the South Vietnam. Sihanouk, who had ordered the protests, then denounced them from Paris and blamed unnamed individuals in Cambodia for them. These actions, along with intrigues by Sihanouk's followers in Cambodia, convinced the government that he should be removed as head of state. The National Assembly voted to remove Sihanouk from office. Afterward, the government closed Cambodia's ports to Vietnamese weapons traffic and demanded that the Vietnamese leave Cambodia.

The North Vietnamese reacted to the political changes in Cambodia by sending Premier Phạm Văn Đồng to meet Sihanouk in China and recruit him into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was also contacted by the Vietnamese who now offered him whatever resources he wanted for his insurgency against the Cambodian government. Pol Pot and Sihanouk were actually in Beijing at the same time but the Vietnamese and Chinese leaders never informed Sihanouk of the presence of Pol Pot or allowed the two men to meet. Shortly after, Sihanouk issued an appeal by radio to the people of Cambodia to rise up against the government and support the Khmer Rouge. In May 1970, Pol Pot finally returned to Cambodia and the pace of the insurgency greatly increased.

Earlier, on March 29, 1970, the Vietnamese had taken matters into their own hands and launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. A force of 40,000 Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 miles of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. In these battles the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot played a very small role.

In October 1970, Pol Pot issued a resolution in the name of the Central Committee. The resolution stated the principle of independence mastery which was a call for Cambodia to decide its own future independent of the influence of any other country. The resolution also included statements describing the betrayal of the Cambodian Communist movement in the 1950s by the Viet Minh. This was the first statement of the anti-Vietnamese/self sufficiency at all costs ideology that would be a part of the Pol Pot regime when it took power years later.

Through 1971, the Vietnamese (North Vietnamese and Viet Cong) did most of the fighting against the Cambodian government while Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge functioned almost as auxiliaries to their forces. Pol Pot took advantage of the situation to gather in new recruits and to train them to a higher standard than previously was possible. Pol Pot also put resources of Khmer Rouge organizations into political education and indoctrination. While accepting anyone regardless of background into the Khmer Rouge army at this time, Pol Pot greatly increased the requirements for membership in the party. Students and so-called middle peasants were now rejected by the party. Those with clear peasant backgrounds were the preferred recruits for party membership. These restrictions were ironic in that most of the senior party leadership including Pol Pot came from student and middle peasant backgrounds. They also created an intellectual split between the educated old guard party members and the uneducated peasant new party members.

In early 1972, Pol Pot toured the insurgent/Vietnamese controlled areas and Cambodia. He saw a regular Khmer Rouge army of 35,000 men taking shape supported by around 100,000 irregulars. China was supplying five million dollars a year in weapons and Pol Pot had organized an independent revenue source for the party in the form of rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia using forced labor.

After a central committee meeting in May 1972, the party under the direction of Pol Pot began to enforce new levels of discipline and conformity in areas under their control. Minorities such as the Chams were forced to conform to Cambodian styles of dress and appearance. These policies, such as forbidding the Chams from wearing jewelry, were soon extended to the whole population. A haphazard version of land reform was undertaken by Pol Pot. Its basis was that all land holdings should be of uniform size. The party also confiscated all private means of transportation at this time. The 1972 policies were aimed at reducing the peoples of the liberated areas to a sort of feudal peasant equality. These policies were generally favorable at the time to poor peasants and extremely unfavorable to refugees from towns who had fled to the countryside.

In 1972, the Vietnamese army forces began to withdraw from the fighting against the Cambodian government. Pol Pot issued a new set of decrees in May 1973 which started the process of reorganizing peasant villages into cooperatives where property was jointly owned and individual possessions banned.
Pol Pot in 1975
Pol Pot in 1975

The Khmer Rouge advanced during 1973. After they reached the edges of Phnom Penh, Pol Pot issued orders during the peak of the rainy season that the city be taken. The orders led to futile attacks and wasted lives among the Khmer Rouge army. By the middle of 1973, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot controlled almost two-thirds of the country and half the population. Vietnam realized that it no longer controlled the situation and began to treat Pol Pot as more of an equal leader than a junior partner.

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In late 1978, in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. While Vietnam could justify the invasion on the basis of self-defense, it quickly became clear that Vietnam intended to stay in Cambodia and turn it into a dependent state similar to Laos.

The Cambodian army was defeated, the regime was toppled and Pol Pot fled to the Thai border area. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a new government under Heng Samrin, composed of Khmer Rouge who had fled to Vietnam to avoid the purges. Pol Pot eventually regrouped with his core supporters in the Thai border area where he received shelter and assistance. At different times during this period, he was located on both sides of the border. The military government of Thailand used the Khmer Rouge as a buffer force to keep the Vietnamese away from the border. The Thai military also made money from the shipment of weapons from China to the Khmer Rouge. Eventually Pol Pot was able to rebuild a small military force in the west of the country with the help of the People's Republic of China. The PRC also initiated the Sino-Vietnamese War around this time.

In the following years, the Vietnamese made attempts to suppress Pol Pot's remaining forces, but never sought to destroy them. Vietnam used the existence of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge forces to justify their continued military occupation of the country. They had no interest in destroying the Khmer Rouge because they were useful to Vietnam's overall plans for Cambodia.

After the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by the Vietnamese in 1979, the United States and other Western powers[specify] refused to allow the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government to take the seat of Cambodia at the United Nations. The seat, by default, remained in the hands of the Khmer Rouge. These countries considered that however negative allowing the Khmer Rouge to hold on to the seat was, recognizing Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was worse. Also, representatives of these countries argued[citation needed] that both claimants to the seat were Khmer Rouge governments, due to the fact that Vietnam's Cambodian government was formed from ex-Khmer Rouge cadres.

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How Margaret Thatcher gave Pol Pot a helping hand

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After two and a half years in power, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese on Christmas Day, 1978. In the months and years that followed, the US and China and their allies, notably the Thatcher government, backed Pol Pot in exile in Thailand. He was the enemy of their enemy: Vietnam, whose liberation of Cambodia could never be recognised because it had come from the wrong side of the cold war. For the Americans, now backing Beijing against Moscow, there was also a score to be settled for their humiliation on the rooftops of Saigon.

To this end, the United Nations was abused by the powerful. Although the Khmer Rouge government ("Democratic Kampuchea") had ceased to exist in January 1979, its representatives were allowed to continue occupying Cambodia's seat at the UN; indeed, the US, China and Britain insisted on it. Meanwhile, a Security Council embargo on Cambodia compounded the suffering of a traumatised nation, while the Khmer Rouge in exile got almost everything it wanted.

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If it wasn't for the doctor and madman bombing Cambodia to kingdom come, and without western support, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge could not have risen to power and murdered as many people. There were so many bodies that they couldn't hide them anymore.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
On the other hand...I see a lot about the Chinese and the North Vietnamese working to bring Pol Pot to power - nothing about the US - who were the enemy of the Khmer Rouge and were supporting the Lon Nol military dictatorship.

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You're forgetting(again) that Lon Nol was trotted in to replace Sihanouk who was allowing the NVA to use his territories to carry supplies to S. Vietnam, and coincidentally, around the same time the doctor and the madman lied about not bombing Cambodia, for which there is plenty of evidence that they were lying to the American people and the world. Lon Nol's government was weak and had control over barely the roads and small towns of Cambodia. He just wasn't getting the job done. So the U.S. shadow government decided to back a much more vicious group they'd been arming and training since the 1960's in the same way the US government(shadow government) funded and trained only the most vicious of death squad generals in Latin America to the most ruthless of mujahideen leaders and Gulbeddin Hekmatyar and OBL in 1980s Afghanistan. In "Democratic Kampuchea", Nol was out and Pot was in.

U.S. presidential candidate and Vietnam war veteran John Kerry said during a Meet the Press interview in 2005:

"We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia."

I believe senator Kerry said that he was involved in a special ops with the CIA to deliver weapons to the Khmer Rouge in the first weeks of 1969. That puts United States government support for Pol Pot as early as 1968 forward to American citizens protesting against their government's support of Khmer Rouge in 1990 during herr Bushler I's regime.

That means the United States of America(and Britain too apparently) aided and abetted the biggest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler for at least 21 years, including before and after the Cambodian holocaust! There's another one that needs a trading card of his very own and prolly numbered somewhere between Diem and Park Chung Hee...hee My-my, friendly dictators everywhere we look tsk tsk

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
The only guarantee against genocide and mass murder is liberal democracy where the death penalty is banned, the military is kept as small as possible, there is freedom of speech, free elections, people can criticize the government without fear of going to jail and there is total equality for women and sexual minorities.

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The only guarantee against genocide and mass murder is liberal democracy where the death penalty is banned

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Funny, Chiles liberal democracy did nothing to prevent the US imperialists from fomenting a coup and then handing over lists of "leftists" to be executed.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
If you say...what do they tell you at meetings of the Flat Earth Society?

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Khieu is possibly the most interesting of those going on trial: very intelligent and famously well-educated (a bit like the Maoist second in command in Nepal, Baburam Bhattarai, who came first in a national exam), very well-liked in the sixties when he was seen as being honest and tough in the face of repression by the Sihanouk government. After being tarred and feathered by government thugs he disappeared underground, and many assumed he was either dead or the man in charge of the KR.

Even after the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975 many assumed he was the head of the shadowy new government, which didn't reveal its name or that of its leaders for some time - it was just known as the 'Angka' or 'The 'Organization'.

Today the former commander of the Tuol Sleng prison, Deuch, is making a request for bail, given that he's been in jail for eight years and his trial isn't likely to start until sometime in 2009.

Is it possible to talk about the Tribunal without the conversation being exclusively about the United States and its (in this context, of the KR period in power, completely made-up)?

I know talking about living and dead white guys is much more fun to many here than the problems of a small SE Asian country, and clearly those white guys played an awful role, at different points. But the story of Cambodia is not just a footnote to American history.

There are a lot of places on Babble where the US is discussed at length, would it be possible to talk about Cambodia, and the KR, and the Tribunal, here? The Tribunal is only concerned with crimes committed between 1975 and 1978.

There are interesting questions for leftists arising from this failed revolution; how did this aberration come about?

I assume most here dismiss the racist 'crazed Cambodians' argument, that says Cambodians were driven mad by American bombing. Beyond the condescension of this theory to the coping abilities of Cambodians, and ignoring the simple fact that not many Cambodians were in the areas bombed by the Americans, and those who did live there, from the various so-called Montagnard hill-tribes, were heavily recruited by the US to fight against the Vietnamese and, later, the CIA.

So, if it wasn't poor coping skills, what led the KR to make the mistakes they did? For 1975 and 1976 they had relatively free reign, they hadn't begun to provoke the Vietnamese yet*, and they were left largely alone. So, given that position, what happened?

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Originally posted by Cardy:
I assume most here dismiss the racist 'crazed Cambodians' argument, that says Cambodians were driven mad by American bombing. Beyond the condescension of this theory to the coping abilities of Cambodians, and ignoring the simple fact that not many Cambodians were in the areas bombed by the Americans

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Yes, it is simple. And very many people would not accept it as fact.

“They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way” -- Henry "the doctor" Kissinger to Thailand’s foreign minister on November 26, 1975

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Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.

A single B-52d “Big Belly” payload consists of up to 108 225-kilogram or 42 340-kilogram bombs, which are dropped on a target area of approximately 500 by 1,500 metres. In many cases, Cambodian villages were hit with dozens of payloads over the course of several hours. The result was near-total destruction. One US official stated at the time, “We had been told, as had everybody . . . that those carpetbombing attacks by B-52s were totally devastating, that nothing could survive.” Previously, it was estimated that between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians were killed by the bombing. Given the fivefold increase in tonnage revealed by the database, the number of casualties is surely higher.

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Anyone interested in the topic of the thread?

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: Cardy ]

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Benedict F. Kiernan (born 1953 in Melbourne, Australia) is the Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. He is a prolific writer on the Cambodian genocide.

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USAF bombing data plotted to map of Cambodia

"Shock and awe" was minor compared to the doctor and the madman's blitzkrieg over Cambodia. It's not a secret anymore, Henry. Try dropping that many bombs on a country the size of the State of Missouri, and then see if they can manage three crops a year. Aside from the Soviet Union and Vietnam, the rest of the "democratic" first world turned their backs on Cambodia after the crime was committed.

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]