Posted on 07/31/2007 11:18:55 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
That does seem appropriate.
That’s exactly what I meant - it went from worse to just bad. The situation became better than what it was under the Khmer Rouge, but it was still bad. It was actually a good thing what Vietnam did. First time I saw a communist regime with a semblance of compassion.
Ping
BUMP
One of the very, very few prosecutions for murder in the entire 90-year, 100+ million corpse history of Communism in power.
Has any other official, functionary, secret policeman, or camp guard been proecuted, ever? I think maybe a few in East Germany, but I don’t know for certain.
I don’t recall a single protest here in the US against the Khmer Rouge murderers nor any sympathy for the victims from the leftists.
An ounce of justice might be possible if Kerry, Fonda and a host of other leftists could be dragged into the public square and a sort of Khmer Rouge scarlet letter be pinned to their chests for all to see for all time.
Not even the punishment of God in some afterlife seems adequate. Kerry and his ilk will go through life cheered by millions of American useful idiots. To think he nearly won the presidency disgusts me.
During the election I nearly got into a fight with a Vietnam vet over the traitor Kerry. Nice guy, would give you the shirt off his back, blah, blah, blah...But his support for Kerry was unshakable and the Khmer Rouge massacre never registered with him.
I have never understood this support for the traitor Kerry and never will.
Perhaps this is some kind of unfathomable joke that God plays on us, and one day He will wake us up and shout “April fools!” Or maybe the Buddhists have it right and life is an illusion.
I agree with you 100 percent.
To be cynical you could say it was because of the repeated border attacks on Vietnamese border towns, and it wasn't compassion but just revenge. But I don't buy that.
Like Thailand, Vietnam was receiving thousands of refugees and defectors (from the KR), and they began to realize rather quickly what madness was going on in Cambodia.
Also there had been a very long period of Hanoi supporting the KR (at least in spirit) as fellow commies. So the conversion from "comradeship" to "let's kick their butts" was monumental and took longer than it might have otherwise.
Unfortunately the Khmer and the Vietnamese are two separate and distinct ethnicities, and there remains a great deal of bad blood and violent history and flagrant racism between them to this day. I somewhat blame the Khmer, because in all my time there I never once heard a single syllable of gratitude that the Vietnamese had saved them from Pol Pot. But I did hear all too many complaints about the "lying yuon" ("barbarians from the north") aka the Vietnamese.
The Khmer also retain a lust for the Mekong Delta, which as mentioned they still call "Kampuchea Krom" (Little Cambodia).
The main street from the center of Phomn Penh to the airport is named..... Kampuchea Krom.
Good point. I think you're right.
They also have Ta Mok ("The Butcher") still in jail, but who knows whether he'll ever go to trial.
The problem with the KR leadership - as with many, if not all commie regimes - is that (a) they know where all the bodies are buried, and (b) they became very wealthy through their occupation of the Thai border town of Pailin which is rich in emeralds and rubies and now has big gambling operations, and they cut amnesty deals with the legitimate government about 10 years ago ("Leave us alone to be rich in Pailin, and we'll leave you alone").
There also was a demonstrable longtime association with the heroin business which insulated them from prosecution.
It's been documented that the Bolsheviks and Stalinists (including Beriya and Stalin himself) were just one small step away from being nothing more than a degenerate cabal of violent organized criminals, and this is the way of all commie regimes.
It's the money, the penchant for violence, and the blackmail that keep them away from the firing squad.
You are in good company. During the election all the Vietnamese language newspapers here in Northern Virginia - and there are many of them - frequently referred to the Great Hero Kerry as "phan boi".
Yep, it means what you think: "traitor".
By the way, the lying POS Kerry claimed to have learned fluent Vietnamese. He said that he had great relationships with the Vietnamese people. Blah blah blah. More lies.
I assert that (a) it would have been impossible for Kerry to learn anything more than a few phrases duing his very brief 4 1/2 months in Vietnam, and (b) of the 1+ million South Vietnamese refugees now in America, many of them former RSVN officers and senior government officials, John Kerry had not one single South Vietnamese person in his "Vietnam Hero" dog and pony show. It's as if the Vietnamese people didn't actually even exist in John Kerry's Vietnam.
The fact is that John Kerry's "good relationship with the Vietnamese people" existed only in Hanoi and Paris and among the southern Vietcong.
But it would have been odd for Kerry to have cited his friendships with Le Duc Tho and Vo Nguyen Giap in his run for the presidency.
Cambodia was going to be the PROOF that a TRUE Communist society, REBORN in TRUE Communism would be a sucess. That is why ALL intellectuals or others with even a hint of education had to be eliminated.
That is also why NO western intellectuals CRITICIZED the KR when they took power, even though the westerners knew what was taking place in Cambodia. This was Communisms big chance to start with a clean slate and show what a true “workers paradise” Marxist society could be.
Cities were emptied to get the people back to the root of collectivism on farms. The only way to get rid of the seeds of capitalism was to wipe out and entire generation of those infected by capitalism. This was an expression of “The Cultural Revolution” in full bloom, with the blessing of Peking.
Seeing as this was a China inspired government, that was the REAL reason that Vietnam, as a client of the USSR, went on the attack. Russian communism was slightly more humane than Mao’s version of the filth of Marxist/Leninist Stalin-ism.
>To be cynical you could say it was because of the repeated >border attacks on Vietnamese border towns, and it wasn’t >compassion but just revenge. But I don’t buy that.
Actually, I think that it was several reasons. Compassion, revenge for those border attacks, a desire to put a client government in Phnom Penh, and the realization that a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs and mad dogs in power next door was not a ver good idea.
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