Bombs away! Remember Cambodia

Asia Times Online ^ | Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

PART 1 OF ARTICLE: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG09Df01.html PART 2 OF ARTICLE: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG09Df02.html PART 3 OF ARTICLE: http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG09Df03.html

[Pride_of_the_Bluegrass]

Despite key differences, an important similarity links the current conflict in Afghanistan to the 1970-1975 Cambodian war: increasing US reliance on air power against a heterogeneous insurgency. Moreover, in the past few years, as fighting has continued in Afghanistan supported by US air power, Taliban forces have benefited politically, recruiting among an anti-US Afghan constituency that appears to have grown even as the insurgents suffer military casualties.

In Cambodia, it was precisely the harshest, most extreme elements of the insurgency who survived the US bombing, expanded in numbers, and then won the war. The Khmer Rouge grew from a small force of fewer than 10,000 in 1969 to over 200,000 troops and militia in 1973.

During that period, their recruitment propaganda successfully highlighted the casualties and damage caused by US bombing. Within a broader Cambodian insurgency, the radical Khmer Rouge leaders eclipsed their royalist, reformist, and pro-Hanoi allies as well as defeating their enemy, the pro-US Cambodian government of Lon Nol, in 1975.

The Nixon Doctrine had proposed that the United States could supply an allied Asian regime with the materiel to withstand internal or external challenge while the US withdrew its own ground troops or remained at arm's length.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

You Know The Drill
Click the Pic

Hey! FReepers!
Help Fill The Tank!
How About It? Huh?
It Ain't Askin' Too Much
Ya Know....

[Texas Fossil]

Different war totally.

Our Allies in Cambodia were the Hmong and Gen. Vang Pao.

We armed them and supported them, with good effect for a long time. Then we pulled out and abandoned them. Many Hmong made it to the U.S., those that survived the retribution after our pull out. Most exited through Thailand.

Bombing on the Ho Chi Minh trail is another matter.

Our Press in the U.S. defeated us in SE Asia then.

[Libloather]

Wasn’t Effin’ Kerry there?

[Texas Fossil]

Sorry meant Laos not Cambodia.

It is late.

[REDWOOD99]

Christmas in Cambodia. It’s permanently etched in his memory.

[Texas Fossil]

I have a good friend who did 3 tours in SE Asia. He was in the places we said we weren’t. Laos and Cambodia (etc). We discussed this at great length over a span of time. I was never there.

[null and void]

Wasn’t Effin’ Kerry there?

Kerry Lied

Millions Died

[Texas Fossil]

Christmas in Cambodia. It’s permanently etched in his memory.

"Traitor" should be branded on his A$$

[Cyber Liberty]

Seared. Seared.

[Cyber Liberty]

Oh, I forgot...LBJ was President at the moment it was seared. Seared.

[lentulusgracchus]

Most of your statement is good.

Read an interesting article after the war. It said if we'd simply cut Laos in two at the Bolovens Plateau, with Vang Pao and the Hmong to catch our backs and long-range artillery on the plateau (M-107's etc.), we could have severed the Ho Chi Minh trail, and the Khmer Rouge and NVA in the South would have starved ...... the Khmer Rouge would have been fighting Lon Nol's troops, the Montagnards, and the Khmer Serai (Mikes) with pointy sticks.

What might have been.

[montanajoe]

Things like that happened...

[DoorGunner]

Blue:

You appear to imagine that this article has more than a passing resemblance to objective reality. It is propaganda.

In fact, it is recycling stale propaganda from the Vietnam war.

DG

[wally_bert]

Maybe too simple for the whiz kid McNamara and the like to figure out?

[Texas Fossil]

if we'd simply cut Laos in two at the Bolovens Plateau, with Vang Pao and the Hmong to catch our backs and long-range artillery on the plateau (M-107's etc.), we could have severed the Ho Chi Minh trail, and the Khmer Rouge and NVA in the South would have starved ...... the Khmer Rouge would have been fighting Lon Nol's troops, the Montagnards, and the Khmer Serai (Mikes) with pointy sticks.

Vang Pao and the Hmong did a good job on the Plain of Jars holding the Pathet Lao at bay. And the CIA who supported them from Long Chen. Forget the name of the old U.S. farmer who was involved. Then there was a character named Poe.

The issue then was a question of commitment by the Congress and the media. They lost a winable war. We have the same circumstances now. Traitors in Congress and the media. Both must be held accountable by "We the People" after November. Treason is a very serious charge, although many 60's traitors were not punished as they should have been.