George Bush - and other Iraq War supporters - have argued that if we withdraw from Iraq the result will be like the slaughters - the killing fields -in Cambodia.
Here are the facts:
· The killing fields were real. The genocide against their own people was committed by the Khmer Rouge.
· The Vietnamese - the Communist Vietnamese - were the people who went in and put a stop to it.
· The United States then supported the Khmer Rouge.
Here's how that came to happen.
The United States got involved in the war in Vietnam in an attempt to keep South Vietnam from going communist. Which it would have if nationwide elections had been held as promised.
Cambodia is next to Vietnam. It was ruled by Prince Sihanouk. He attempted to be neutral. Both sides abused that neutrality.
The North Vietnamese send arms, support and men through Cambodia on the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" to go around South Vietnamese and American forces. They also used Cambodian ports.
The United States, which was not at war with Cambodia, officially or unofficially, secretly sent armed forces into Cambodia to interrupt North Vietnamese use of that route. In 1969, Nixon began a campaign of carpet bombing sections of Cambodia. Ultimately about 750,000 Cambodians were killed by the bombings (though the numbers are hard to verify.)
In 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country, visiting Europe, the USSR and China, Lon Nol took over the country in a right wing coup.
There are two stories about American involvement. The first is that we supported the coup, the second (in Tom Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA) is that it took the CIA and the United States by surprise. Recently declassified documents support Weiner's view.
In either case, once Lon Nol took power, the US supported him. In return, Lon Nol ended the neutrality, closed the ports to the communists and demanded that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leave the country, and let US forces openly, though secretly, operate in Cambodia.
There was resistance to Lon Nol. Some of it was certainly a spontaneous matter of national sentiment. Some of it was certainly fomented by various communist interests.
Sihanouk, in China, then allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia communists, which conferred new legitimacy on them.
Civil War broke out. Lon Nol was both corrupt and inept. In spite of American financial and military support, he lost.
America left Vietnam in 1973.
The Khmer Rouge took the capital of Cambodia in 1975. They were one of the most horrendous regimes in history. They practiced a kind of class genocide, "re-educating" and murdering anyone who educated or Westernized, as well as minority groups.
In 1978, Vietnam, by then fully Communist, invaded Cambodia to put a stop to the Khmer Rouge and drive them out. They installed a more moderate and sane regime.
The United States, the UK, and China then supported the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. With their help the conflict continued for another ten years.
When George Bush, or anyone else, uses the Cambodian holocaust as a warning of what might happen if America withdraws from Iraq, remember the facts.
1. Part of the holocaust in Cambodia is directly attributable to American bombing. The 750,000 dead. (Comparable to the number of Iraqis killed by American forces in this war.)
2. The civil war that led to the victory of the Khmer Rouge came about, at least in part, because of America's support of Lon Nol.
3. The "enemy," the Vietnamese Communists, were the ones who put a stop to the Khmer Rouge.
4. The United States supported the Khmer Rouge - after their murders, after the genocide. That support helped a civil war continue for another decade. More death, more destruction.
I don't even pretend to know as much about Viet Nam than you, but wasn't the Khmer Rouge communist as well? And in what way did we support them? If you are going to say something inflammatory like that please back it up because that just fuels the Huffposters hatred of their own country.
Rather than debating which slaughtering communists we like best let's just say that President Bush's analogy is right because like Iraq, Viet Nam was a war where the U.S.'s objective was not to win but to buy time until the war could be won by civilian social programs.
A better analogy is of Bush #1 leaving Iraq early the first time and letting Saddam keep power. That was a real cut and run and leave behind the people who trusted you. Did we think Saddam would take that ass kicking and betrayal lightly?
I believe in "exporting freedom." It, to me, is the whole "teaching a man to fish" philosophy. I also believe in giving people the ability to create a free market society and not a far away welfare state like JFK/LBJ and now GWB tried to create.
2. Alger Hiss was a Communist spy.
3. Julius Rosenberg was a Communist spy.
4. Joseph McCarthy was right.
It was year "0" in Kampuchea.
The U.S.A. has little need (perhaps at this point) to kill its citizens but we are at year "0 + 7" (it might be since television, in fact). The citizenry relinquishing its' rights and responsibilities.
What we've done; the horror we created will not be undone. When an innocent human dies they don't come back consecrated. They rot like all dead rots.
The Vietnamese will not bail us out this time.
Why do they hate us? BECAUSE WE'RE ALWAYS F**KING WITH THEM! Funding the opposition of our enemies, regardless of their ideology. Invading, bombing, undermining or interfering, all in pursuit of the agenda of the moment. Time after time after time it comes back around and cold cocks us like a drunk throwing a boomerang.
This is not a chess game -- it is an order of magnitude more complex than that. As we're seeing in Iraq, millions of lives and billions of dollars are at stake, yet our government -- and others -- continue to play at this.
It has to stop.
Too Bad that George Bush does not practice telling people the truth instead of distorting it so badly that the truth is lost in the process.
I don't really think it's a shock to anyone that American administrations past and present have done more harm to the world than good.
That's not to say that they have all been bad.... but there is no question alot have been. The current one just lies about it more.
Yes.
Possibly.
Yes.
Uh, they just DID.
Ooops. Damn, you caught me. Good one. [g]
If shrub wonders why he cant get any respect on the world stage, well it might be that the average farmer in Europe has a better grasp of history than the "leader" of the free world.
If we don't withdraw from Iraq, the result will be mass killing, maybe even like Cambodia.
The difference is, in the second instance our own soldiers die. In the first, they're home.
I prefer Plan # 1.
I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach.
Thanks for shining the cold hard light of reality on a dark part of our history.
Why do we keep doing these things, and why did so many Democrats go along with the latest one?