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American leftists were Pol Pot's cheerleaders
Boston Globe ^ | April 30, 1998 | Jeff Jacoby

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: 1975; cambodia; cambodiangenocide; communism; congress; daviddellinger; deathmarch; dellinger; democrats; fonda; ford; geraldford; hayden; janefonda; journalists; khmerrouge; leftistenablers; leftists; lewis; lonnol; media; peaceniks; phnompenh; polpot; southeastasia; tomhayden
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To: Interesting Times

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.


21 posted on 04/10/2008 8:34:49 AM PDT by Random Access
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To: safeasthebanks
Unfortunately, that last sentence may be the one thing in this article that Jacoby got wrong.

That remains to be seen.

22 posted on 04/10/2008 8:36:20 AM PDT by Interesting Times (Swiftboating, you say? Check out ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: Random Access
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.

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.

23 posted on 04/10/2008 8:38:30 AM PDT by Interesting Times (Swiftboating, you say? Check out ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: Cicero
The blood of millions was on their hands, yet the movie tries to make it look as if they were entirely innocent of it.

Exactly. The film was a pre-emptive move to confuse the public and deflect criticism of the American left.

24 posted on 04/10/2008 8:39:58 AM PDT by Interesting Times (Swiftboating, you say? Check out ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: Interesting Times

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.


25 posted on 04/10/2008 8:43:15 AM PDT by Noumenon (The only thing that prevents liberals from loading us all into cattle cars is the power to do it)
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To: Interesting Times

Thanks for the ping.


26 posted on 04/10/2008 8:44:44 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: Interesting Times
Omelets... eggs...

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!

27 posted on 04/10/2008 8:44:48 AM PDT by thulldud (Insanity: Electing John McCain again and expecting a different result.)
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To: Interesting Times

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.


28 posted on 04/10/2008 8:44:56 AM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all that needs to be done, needs to be done by the government.)
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To: Interesting Times
[In The New York Times,] the celebrated Sydney Schanberg wrote of Cambodians that ``it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.'' He dismissed predictions of mass executions in the wake of a Khmer Rouge victory: ``It would be tendentious to forecast such abnormal behavior as national policy under a Communist government once the war is over.'''

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.

29 posted on 04/10/2008 8:45:41 AM PDT by SamuraiScot
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To: SoldierDad
The Left is demonstrating in word and deed that their being dead is in the best interests of a free society. Time they got a dose of the medicine that they've been excusing and prescribing for for the rest of us. The Tree of Liberty is powerfully thirsty these days.
30 posted on 04/10/2008 8:48:06 AM PDT by Noumenon (The only thing that prevents liberals from loading us all into cattle cars is the power to do it)
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To: Interesting Times

Liberals are communists as demonstrated by both their ideas and by the communist leaders they support; Pol-Pot, Stalin, etc.


31 posted on 04/10/2008 8:48:15 AM PDT by CodeToad
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To: Interesting Times
Why did the leftist academics support Pol Pot? Simple. He was one of their creations. He came by Communism the 'old fashioned way' -- in Paris.

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:

32 posted on 04/10/2008 8:55:48 AM PDT by Ditto (Global Warming: The 21st Century's Snake Oil)
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To: Noumenon
The Left is demonstrating in word and deed that their being dead is in the best interests of a free society.

I'll settle for "discredited." Equally effective, and much less messy.

33 posted on 04/10/2008 8:55:53 AM PDT by Interesting Times (Swiftboating, you say? Check out ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: Interesting Times

ping for later


34 posted on 04/10/2008 8:58:13 AM PDT by kb2614 (Hell hath no fury than a bureaucrat scorned)
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To: Interesting Times
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.

And the media still scoffs at the "Domino Theory." Sickening. Opponents of surrender only erred in underestimating the resulting horrors.

35 posted on 04/10/2008 9:00:57 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (When you find "Sola Scriptura" in the Bible, let me know)
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To: Bitsy
Another one of their heroes - Che Rivera (sp). As we all know, liberalism is definitely a disease. {Guevara}

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Obama's Texas girls gather under the Cuban flag and their other hero - Che - to advance the cause of stupidity. I mean Change.

36 posted on 04/10/2008 9:03:01 AM PDT by RoadKingSE (How do you know that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a muzzle flash?)
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To: Interesting Times

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...:)


37 posted on 04/10/2008 9:03:03 AM PDT by rlmorel (Liberals: If the Truth would help them, they would use it.)
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To: Ditto
Why did the leftist academics support Pol Pot? Simple. He was one of their creations. He came by Communism the 'old fashioned way' -- in Paris.

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.

38 posted on 04/10/2008 9:04:03 AM PDT by Interesting Times (Swiftboating, you say? Check out ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: Interesting Times

‘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.


39 posted on 04/10/2008 9:05:32 AM PDT by Noumenon (The only thing that prevents liberals from loading us all into cattle cars is the power to do it)
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To: FiddlePig; All

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)


40 posted on 04/10/2008 9:08:01 AM PDT by rlmorel (Liberals: If the Truth would help them, they would use it.)
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