JUSTICE FOR CAMBODIA!

NEW YORK POST ^ | January 10, 2004

[Tailgunner Joe]

Twenty-five years ago this week, Vietnamese forces rolled into Cambodia, overthrowing the genocidal Khmer Rouge government and ending a four-year reign depicted fairly in the compelling 1984 film, "The Killing Fields."

The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly 2 million people - as much as one-fourth of Cambodia's entire population - between 1975 and 1979. Yet not a single leader of the murderous Marxist regime that called itself Democratic Kampuchea has ever been brought to justice.

[U S Army EOD]

Come on Joe give these poor guys a break, you know they didn't really mean it, they are contempary friends of Jane Fonda, they can't be all bad.

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[U S Army EOD]

Remember how the French stood by and allowed the KR to come on their embassy grounds and drag people off to murder them?

[DTA]

>>>>>A day of reckoning for those responsible for one of the most evil crimes of the 20th century is long overdue<<<<

How true. The murder of gentle Khmer society (peaceful for 500 years) is indeed the crime of the 20th century.

However:

1. The mass murder has not started in 1975 but in 1970 with 'secret" bombing of Cambodia. Who will, if ever be responsible for hundreds of thousands murdered Khmer civilians, turning of Cambodian countryside into Moonscape and opening the doors for mad, genocidal Pol Pot's goons.

2.Gerald Ford has warned what will happen,but American media choose to look the other way. Liberals were quite content with Pol Pot. While genocide was going on, it was non-event for American liberal media.

3. The mass murder of genocidal Pol Pot regime did not end 25 years ago, it continued with Western help several more years (Pol Pot continued attacks on Cambodia from Thailand, with full Western support)

4. UN General Assembly is complicit in crimes coimmitted by Pol Pot AFTER January 1979 because THEY ALLOWED POL POT to keep the seat in UN.

5. The origin of Pol Pot's mad idea need closer look, and his connections with Western and Chicom services must not be overlooked.

The blood of innocent Kmers is not only on Pol Pot's hands.

[DTA]

For in-depth info, see Backhoe's links on FR

[mylife]

Ive never understood the worlds lack of outrage over the genocide in Cambodia or Rawanda for that matter.

I knew a gal, Samrong whose family fled there during Pol Pots reign. All where professionals and educated #1 targets.
They left with their clothes and some money, They left all that they had built just to survive.

Commie bastards

[marron]

The Cambodian genocide taught me a lot. The people who opposed the war in Viet Nam were completely silent during this slaughter. And in the end it was the Vietnamese Army that did the Lord's work in bringing it to an end, which taught me that if you or I refuse to do his work, he'll find someone who will. Even someone you least expect.

Still, the first responsibility for the Khmer Rouge killings were the Khmer Rouge themselves.

The philosophical underpinnings for it was Maoist. Other "maoists" such as the Sendero Luminoso and the Nepalese guerrillas are similarly psychotic but nothing compares to the original, the Chinese Maoists who even managed to make Hitler and Stalin look like frat boys.

And it seems counter-intuitive to blame the US for the slaughter, because the US fought them. The US didn't fight the Chinese maoists, but they were even more deadly than their Cambodian little brothers. We never bombed Peru but the Senderos were positively steeped in blood.

I do blame us for not going back into the region to stop the killing once we knew. We said after Hitler that never again would we stand by, but of course, we did. But having walked away from the sacrifice of 60,000 American soldiers, whats a few million Cambodians?

If the US government was not prepared to fight, who was going to defend Thailand from either the Khmer Rouge or the VietNamese Army if fighting should spill across? The Thais were terrified of both of them, and certainly could not depend on us to fight for them. So while the fact that Pol Pot's men took control of some of the camps, its a reach to say that anyone "permitted" it or that anyone "supported" it. They permitted what they couldn't stop. After the Viet Nam War no US politician was going to countenance sending Americans back there for any reason. Its sad, it means we share in the guilt in an indirect way, but there is a big difference between being Pol Pot and being the people that fought him and then ran away.

[KC_Conspirator]

You must be talking about the bathroom scene where New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (played by Watterson) blames America for the Killing Fields right after he recieves an award for journalism as John Malkovich berates him for leaving his buddie behind.

The movie itself is anti-communist and I think that scene males Schanberg look like a useful idiot.

[swilhelm73]

The blood of innocent Kmers is not only on Pol Pot's hands.

Somehow you seem to miss the person who allowed all this to happen, and after the Khmer Rouge and their Chinese patrons the man most responsibile - Sihanouk.

The North Vietnamese and the VC had were using Cambodia as a convient way to get troops and supplies into the South.

Faced with the virtual occupation of a good chunk of the country, Sihanouk faced a stark choice. His advisors and the military pleaded with him to align with the US and force the invaders out.

He decided to do worse the nothing. Sihanouk went on a begging tour, personally begging the Soviets to stop the NVA. With Sihanouk's regime falling apart around his countrymen, and his craven diplomatic tour obviously doomed to failure from the start, Prince Matark and Lon Nol pulled off a coup d'etat while Sihanouk was still out of the country.

Tired of Sihanouk's duplicity and uselessness the US was happy to see him go - though we had no direct hand in the coup.

Sihanouk then did what was obviously the worst thing he could have done.

He had dithered away the most of the support he had in the country with his incompetent rule domestically, and he could find no allies abroad either.

But there was one group willing to help Sihanouk...the Khmer Rouge, at the time a rag tag group of no hopers. But strangely enough with Sihanouk the puppet at the top they began to be taken seriously. With Chinese support, they quickly became a serious guerrilla threat, and eventually after the US abandoned the region, they were able to come to power.

Not suprisingly, with Sihanouk no longer needed they broke their promises to him and began to unleash the horror of the worst democide in human history.

Sihanouk had managed to both end his own rule, and make sure the worst group of butchers one could imagine would follow by making bad and selfish decision after bad and selfish decision.

[backhoe]

For in-depth info, see Backhoe's links on FR

Thank you, neighbor... anyone who sees a copy of "Murder of a Gentle Land" needs to pick it up and read it. The story was reported- and disbelieved- almost as it happened.

And yes, it was the Usual Suspects of the Left/Hate America crowd who were participating in the denial.

Read, ponder, and learn...

[Grut]

And yes, it was the Usual Suspects of the Left/Hate America crowd who were participating in the denial.

Interestingly, coverage of the Nazi holocaust in the NY Times increased by a factor of seven* in the years 1979-1984. But then, that holocaust was safely over with and nothing needed to be done.

* As determined by the number of columns in The New York Times Index listing articles about it.

[backhoe]

Interestingly, coverage of the Nazi holocaust in the NY Times increased by a factor of seven* in the years 1979-1984. But then, that holocaust was safely over with and nothing needed to be done.

Absolutely. We of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy used to call them "Fellow Travelers..."

[AmericanVictory]

Thanks for the reference.

[U S Army EOD]

I used to help train Cambodians. We used to drop bombs in Cambodia to kill the ones (the ones who you side with) who were already killing the innocent Cambodians.

You jerks have no idea in hell what you are talking about.

[Grut]

We of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy used to call them "Fellow Travelers..."

I think that in this case it was just moral cowardice, not the sort of 'principled neutrality' Fellow Travellers were fond of.

[swilhelm73]

the US was bombing cambodia because the NV were occupying and using their land to supply its troops, correct?

Yes, Sihanouk wouldn't let his army attempt to drive them out, nor would he allow the US or S Vietnamese armies to come in. So, we bombed instead.

After the coup we sent in troops, but Congress, under the leadership of Church, would force a stop to that almost immediately. Church is also notable for basically singlehandedly destroying American intelligence gathering, and is in some measure reasonable for our blindness to the 9/11 attack. who were prince matark and lon nol? who were they assoiciated with? the NV?

Lon Nol had been the Army Chief of Staff and was the Prime Minister at the time of the coup. Matak asked him to lead the new government formed after Sihanouk's ouster.

Matak had been the acting prime minister as Nol had been ill and Sihanouk was busy begging for communist restraint abroad.

Matak and Nol were associated with...Cambodia. They sought close ties with the US *after* the coup because they would need help to kick the North Vietnamese out of the country.

Sihanouk had been king of Cambodia and a key member of the non-aligned nation movement before seilling himself out to the Khmer Rouge and Communist China.

When the country was about to fall to the communists, the US offered to evacuate much of the government. Matak sent a fairly famous letter in response;

Dear Excellency and Friend:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.

You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you

Matak would be captured, shot in the stomach, and allowed to die slowly shortly thereafter. Of course, the Khmer Rouge would murder all those who had worked for the government and their families too. and chinese maoists were supporting the khmer rouge correct? the NV commies didn't like the chinese commies? how are their ideologies different?

By the end of the Vietnam War the USSR and Red China were no longer allies. Remember Nixon's trip to China. The North Vietnamese were clients of the Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge were clients of China.

After the Khmer Rouge came to power they got in a fight with the victorious North Vietnamese, amusingly enough because the NVA refused to leave Cambodia even after they had won.

Eventually the North Vietnamese would win - though not until after the Khmer Rouge had managed to kill between one and three million people.

This would lead to two resistance movements in the country - the pro-western faction under Hun Sen and the pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot.

As for Maoism and Lenin/Stalinism there are a whole host of theoritical differences you can feel free to google for more info if you want. Practically, Maoism is more fanatical and murderous.