Obama's Texas girls gather under the Cuban flag and their other hero - Che - to advance the cause of stupidity. I mean Change.
Posted on 04/10/2008 8:01:03 AM PDT by Interesting Times
The death of Pol Pot, 23 years to the day after he and the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia, occasioned long backward glances at one of the 20th century's most horrific genocides. It was noted everywhere that the communist reign of terror in Cambodia lasted nearly four years and that at least 1 million human beings -- by some estimates as many as 2 1/2 million -- were murdered in an orgy of executions, torture, and starvation.
"In the name of a radical utopia," The New York Times recalled in its long obituary, "the Khmer Rouge regime had turned most of the people into slaves.... Dictatorial village leaders and soldiers told the people whom to marry and how to live, and those who disobeyed were killed. [Those] who did not bend to the political mania were buried alive, or tossed into the air and speared on bayonets. Some were fed to crocodiles." Nearby was a photograph of human skulls -- emblem of the dreadful "killing fields" in which the communists butchered a quarter of Cambodia's people.
But nowhere in the Times story was there a reminder that the Khmer Rouge was able to seize power only after the US Congress in 1975 cut off all aid to the embattled pro-American government of Lon Nol -- and that it did so despite frantic warnings of the bloodbath that would ensue. President Ford warned of "horror and tragedy" if Cambodia was abandoned to the Khmer Rouge and pleaded with Congress to supply Lon Nol's army with the tools it needed to defend itself.
To no avail. US troops had come home two years earlier, but American antiwar activists were still intent on effecting the "liberation" of Southeast Asia. Radicals like Jane Fonda, David Dellinger, and Tom Hayden stormed the country...
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
This one is worth a bookmark.
Liberals don’t need to be reminded of their past mistakes because they’re perfectly willing to do the same thing again... and again... and again. After all, they know what’s best for all of us - and the world.
To no avail. US troops had come home two years earlier, but American antiwar activists were still intent on effecting the ``liberation'' of Southeast Asia. Radicals like Jane Fonda, David Dellinger, and Tom Hayden stormed the country, denouncing anyone who opposed communist victory in Cambodia and Vietnam. On the campuses, in the media, and in Congress, it was taken on faith that a Khmer Rouge victory would bring peace and enlightened leadership to Cambodia.
....and newspapers like the Boston Globe.
Just another article proving that liberals have always been on the wrong side of history.
The American Left, and interestingly, Putin, say the same thing today.
Perhaps these morons thought that the Cambodians being dead was in their best interests. After all, if they were dead they would no longer be subject to the horrors of war /sarc
When one stops to comtemplate taking the statements of say... Al Gore or Ted Turner to their logical conclusion, how different would their “utopia” of a no-CO2 world differ from the Khmer Rouge? Large portions of the world’s population would be doomed to poverty and famine... and of course the “select” (like Al & Ted) among us would be exempt from the laws the rest of us must live by!
I’m amazed how many leftists like the NY Slimes (et al) at first praised the great socialist “experiment” in Cambodia till it became undeniable that a slaughter was taking place... then their convienent amnesia takes place... and they act as if they were outraged by the genocide all along!!!! And somehow(?) still manged to blame the U.S. for it!!!! Go figure?
Has any news organization or intelligence agency seriously investigated the “death” of Pol Pot?
His death, as I recall, was reported by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge through the Chinese Communist Party media.
A grainy photo of some old Asian guy, lying motionless on a cot with his eyes closed, was supposed to be the proof.
At the time, no one in the West seemed seriously concerned that the death of one of history’s greatest mass murderers might have been staged.
Has anyone ever sought DNA samples?
Why are we so certain that Pol Pot is not living in quiet and invisible retirement in China or some other sympathetic country?
Take careful note of what these people consider "enlightened leadership". They would do it here if they could.
Two million dead out of a seven million population is no problem to them, whether they consider it acceptable collateral damage or, more likely, a necessary sacrifice to build their "enlightened" order.
Another one of their heroes - Che Rivera (sp). As we all know, liberalism is definitely a disease. What's the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results or something like that.
Agreed, except that their support of the communist genocide was hardly a mistake. Our goal shouldn't be to shame the unshameable leftists, but to inform the moderates about their criminal history.
Yes. I was amazed that they printed Jacoby's article.
Hollywood salved its itchy conscience 10 years later with the movie “The killing Fields” and the tragedy was brought home to main stream America, just like 10 years after the events in Sierra Leone, they do “The Blood Diamond” and let themselves off the hook. Looks like a 10 year lead time is needed befor these heinous events can be made into “entertainment” which is pretty much the way most Americans learn history. How long before vanguardist progressive Hollywood does Tibet or Sharia or Chavez or Chechnaya?
Two million dead out of a seven million population is no problem to them, whether they consider it acceptable collateral damage or, more likely, a necessary sacrifice to build their "enlightened" order.
Omelets... eggs...
Pol Pot was a monster, but he didn't kill two million people with his own hands. You have to have a cadre of fanatics eager to slaughter for the cause to accomplish that...
BTTT
This is why I said on another thread that although "The Killing Fields" is a great movie, it made me sick at the time to watch it. Because that poor American reporter who felt so sorry for the suffering of his Cambodian assistant was one of the people RESPONSIBLE for that atrocity.
It wasn't Richard Nixon who was responsible, as the media have made everyone believe through their rewrite of history. It was the leftist news reporters and the leftist politicians and the leftist students and faculty who were responsible.
The blood of millions was on their hands, yet the movie tries to make it look as if they were entirely innocent of it.
Unfortunately, that last sentence may be the one thing in this article that Jacoby got wrong.
It's starting already. Look at how ethanol mandates have changed the price of food in just one short year, and the riots in Haiti have saved 5 people from death by starvation by making sure they are already dead.
It amazing how liberals can feel guilty about things they had nothing to do with like slavery, but can’t take responsibility for things which they directly caused, like Cambodia.
That remains to be seen.
It's hard to hold onto that virtuous and morally superior feeling if you admit to yourself that you helped enable a genocide... so they just think about other things.
Exactly. The film was a pre-emptive move to confuse the public and deflect criticism of the American left.
Let us also recall Noam Chomsky’s support for this murderous regime. True to form, he at first denied the slaughter, then made excuses for it, then denied that he ever denied it in the first place.
Chomsky’s a towering monument to the intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy of the Left.
The blood of millions is on their hands.
Such people are unfit to live in a free society.
Thanks for the ping.
While it is true that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, these guys broke 120 million with no omelette to show for it.
Time to rethink the recipe? Nothing doing! They wanna keep trying!
They, the same leftists, are doing the same now concerning Iraq. Are they shamed by their past actions? Absolutely not!
Do we ever see pictures or reminders of 09/11/01? No! That would remind us why we oppose them and their insanity.
This same tedious Schanberg won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the horrors that followed—which his columns in the Times had been instrumental in bringing about. A Cambodian stringer who had befriended him, Dith Pran, spent years in Pol Pot's torture prisons and reeducation collectives. He survived and escaped, no thanks to Schanberg, who wrote a book about him (later a movie) called The Killing Fields—a phrase coined by Dith.
Dith survived and became a news photog. He died the other day at 65 of cancer. Schanberg spoke at the Buddhist service. I think it would have been justice at last if Schanberg had thrown himself on the funeral pyre.
Liberals are communists as demonstrated by both their ideas and by the communist leaders they support; Pol-Pot, Stalin, etc.
In 1949, Pol Pot went to study in Paris on a government scholarship. It was here that he got his introduction to Communism, joining the French Communist Party. After four years of exposure to Stalinist Communism he returned to Cambodia in 1953. Within a month he had joined the Communist resistance, becoming a member of the Indochina Communist Party (IHC) which was dominated by the Viet Minh.
Source: http://www.essortment.com/all/polpotbiograp_rxdy.htm Source:
I'll settle for "discredited." Equally effective, and much less messy.
ping for later
And the media still scoffs at the "Domino Theory." Sickening. Opponents of surrender only erred in underestimating the resulting horrors.
Obama's Texas girls gather under the Cuban flag and their other hero - Che - to advance the cause of stupidity. I mean Change.
I had to laugh...I saw this, then saw it was from the Boston Globe and thought “Huh?”
My next thought was “This has to be Jeff Jacoby...”
Sure enough...:)
And of course the same was true of Ho Chi Minh. From page 111 of Dr. Robert Turner's excellent 2004 paper, The Boston Manifesto:
Numerous biographies of Ho written and translated into English by Vietnamese Communists— material that was readily available to any American who bothered to do a bit of research during the war— openly discussed Ho’s role as a cofounder of the French Communist Party in 1920, his subsequent training in Moscow, and his three decades of employment outside Indochina as an agent of the Communist International (COMINTERN) promoting revolution around the world.
‘Discredited’ would be neater and far less messy, no doubt. But history has shown us over and over again that such people won’t just shrug their shoulders and walk away. They believe that their sick dreams or utopia and the power required to make it happen are all the justification they need. They don’t give a rat’s ass what sane people think. Behind their lust for power is a murderous hatred and contempt of humankind. History is my witness.
The only way that the Left will ever “give up” is when we’re all in chains or they’re all dead.
Not to mention their half-baked ban of DDT. Millions of people have died of malaria because of this, and many millions more have suffered needlessly as well.
All because of their half baked opinions about DDT. (Liberals and environwhackos)
(Guevara}
Thanks. I was way off. But the facts are still there - liberals are crazy!
Elsewhere in the news, Mugabe has declared the election results a state secret; Obama’s cousin is engaged in an effort to overthrow the gov’t of Obama’s real native land...
I have to disagree.
It would appear to me that the vast majority of americans have no idea of the leftist culpability for yet another 20th century communist genocide they cheered on.
Nope. You just need your average person for it. Look around you. More than half the people you meet on any given day would willingly participate.
The truth is that it was the KR who imposed an alien way of life on the Cambodians -- one learned on the left bank in Paris by Pol Pot. In the process of imposing a Marxist "utopia" on the Cambodians, the Khmer Civilization was largely destroyed and the damage lingers today.
I think you're off by a couple of decimal places.
The way my one (and only) conservative college professor described the typical liberal was "Okay, so my first twenty-six ideas didn't work. But you really owe it to yourself to listen to number twenty-seven..."
No sir. You are. Studies have been done on this, though not nearly enough due to the importance of the subject matter. Someone had to man the ovens, or work the killing fields, or kill millions in 'cultural revolutions'.
The mistake most leftists make is in believing that they have good intentions, and that therefore they’re going to get their rationally-willed social changes right, sooner or later, unlike stuck-in-the-mud conservatives, who clearly happily settle for yesterday’s mistaken ideas.
Why does the left believe this?
The main purpose of government-controlled public schools is to train and condition children to believe , no matter how unpleasant reality seems to be, that the authorities know best and it’s really all for your own good. Essentially, they’ve been successful.
After 12 years under government supervision, most of the youngsters believe this party line, not just the ‘left’. Why wouldn’t they? Only a relative handful of freaks, dissidents and disruptive elements act out against the system. That’s just the sad truth.
Frankly, the visible signs of teenage rebellion are useful to the system, as limited tolerance of properly-chanelled grievances can be useful to the basic party program of social “improvement”.
Get ready to be improved, or liquidated, one way or another. That’s the socialist program - finally, it’s all about who gets to kill.
Ear, Sophal. "The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia". Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, May 1995.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.