One of the more cynical rationalizations used by the U.S. government for its use of drones to kill foreigners is the fact that there’s a legal precedent. The official argument goes that it’s okay to target enemies in their own countries because the U.S. did the same thing to Cambodians during the Vietnam War.
True — but not something you’d think a country would want to brag about.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s in what became known as Henry Kissinger’s Secret War, American bombers flew 230,000 separate sorties over Cambodia, dropping more than three million tons of bombs.
It was, as a U.S. General said at the time, “the only war in town” since a temporary truce with Vietnam had been declared. It was also a bit like shooting fish in a barrel; the Cambodians had no air force, no anti-aircraft ordinance — no armed forces to speak of. They were mostly rice farmers. Their great crime was allowing the Viet Cong to use their country as a short cut to South Vietnam.
Not that the Cambodians had much choice. They were as powerless against the Viet Cong as they were against the U.S. bombers. The U.S. military rationale was loopy at best; a bit like bombing Vancouver because it lies between Seattle and Alaska.
Now, the U.S. is arguing that the thousands of innocent Cambodians who died as a result of the U.S. pursuing North Vietnamese were a legal precedent which makes it okay for the U.S. to go after enemies in any neutral territory.
No one knows how many Cambodians died in the bombings, but estimates run as high as 500,000. We do know that Cambodia was devastated, many of its towns reduced to rubble, the infrastructure shredded, its economy ruined.
Which made it easy for the monster known as Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to take over the country and utterly destroy what was left of it.
Pol Pot was Joseph Stalin on steroids. He practiced ‘social engineering’ with a sledge hammer and a meat cleaver. In four devastating years, Pol Pot oversaw the gutting and abandonment of all Cambodian urban centres. Organized religion was abolished, banks were closed, private property, markets and even money was eliminated. The Khmer Rouge tore down 95 percent of the country’s Buddhist temples.
Christians, Muslims, Chinese, ethnic Vietnamese and Thais were murdered on sight, as were government officials, professionals such as doctors or lawyers — indeed, all ‘intellectuals’.
Wearing eyeglasses was enough to get you branded an ‘intellectual’.
Pol Pot’s so-called ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ was in fact a prison-camp state. Twenty-five percent of the population — about two and a half million people — were executed, died of disease or simply starved to death.
The best thing you can say about Pol Pot and his evil horde is that they only lasted for four years.
He died under house arrest, probably a suicide, in 1998. Today, Cambodia has its old name back, a thriving tourist economy and best of all, a young and healthy growing population.
Especially young. Seventy-five percent of living Cambodians are too young to even remember Pol Pot.
But they’ll have no trouble remembering the U.S. bombings; it’s a gift that keeps on giving. Those millions of tons of bombs that were dropped did not all detonate. Some experts estimate that 30 percent of them still lie in the jungle waiting to explode.
And they do, with deadly regularity. There are 40,000 amputees in Cambodia today, almost all of them victims of UXO’s — unexploded ordinance. There will be many more amputees for decades to come.
“History”, as Winston Churchill tartly observed, “is written by the victors.”
How true. That’s why no memorial on the face of the earth marks the passing of Pol Pot.
And Henry Kissinger, the architect of the Cambodian Secret War?
Why, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
