Posted on 01/14/2024 5:23:21 PM PST by karpov
Forty-five years ago last Sunday, Vietnamese troops seized Phnom Penh and ended Cambodia's 45-month reign of terror known as the "killing fields." Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge government implemented policies—forced labor, resettlements, torture, starvation—that led to the death of 1.7-to-3 million people, or at least 20 percent of the nation's population. The regime destroyed the country, caused untold suffering, and left permanent scars.
Painful as it is, we should not let these grim anniversaries go unremembered. For context, imagine a "political experiment" that obliterated our society and left a quarter of our 331-million population dead. It's inconceivable. As the son of a Nazi concentration camp survivor and grandson of peasants who fled Russian pogroms, I've always been fascinated by a simple question: What are the conditions that lead to such horrors?
The obvious answer is these horrors always are rooted in ideas, typically radical ones that try to implement some utopian vision. They typically are the work of governments. Large swaths of the population take part—some willingly, others by force. The Cambodian revolution wasn't spontaneous. Its leaders honed their philosophy while studying in Paris. And one usually finds intellectuals behind crazy notions. As the saying goes, "Ideas have consequences"—and they're often tragic.
Cambodia's leaders sought to create an idyllic and classless agrarian society, one that harkened to the Angkor Empire from the 800s. "They wanted all members of society to be rural agricultural workers rather than educated city dwellers, who the Khmer Rouge believed had been corrupted by western capitalist ideas," according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Their philosophy echoed Mao Zedong, whose efforts to remake China led to unimaginable horrors.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
They are copying the Khmer Rouge playbook to a T.
Year Zero. Tear down anything to do with the past.
Pol Pot believed in a false reality and forced others to comply with his delusions at gun point (after disarming them, of course).
Let’s see. Wasn’t it the Vietnamese communists who took them out?
Worst Genocide by percentage.
The Killing Fields were a result of the leftist Democrat abandoning our allies in Southeast Asia. They (the democrats) killed and imprisoned millions, damaged our national security, and never lost a night’s sleep over it.
Pol Pot was on another level than Hitler and Stalin
...and how about we show no tolerance for the Left's importation of millions of military-age men into the US to overwhelm (in Cloward-Piven fashion) voter districts, not to mention the very real potential that those subsidized invaders payback their benefactors by causing violent mayhem against the indigenous citizenry and that the invaders be allowed to seek spoils as part of their 40-acres-and-a-mule benefit)?
Bump
China supported Pol Pot, while Vietnam did not.
Many people are unaware that this dispute caused a short war between Vietnam and China in 1979.
I visited the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia and saw the monument built of human skulls and bones from the mass graves. Worst was the “Killing Tree” where they smashed the heads of the children before throwing them in the pond to drown.
China protected Pol Pot and he died of old age in 1998.
The people still eat rats, snakes, scorpians, worms, and many other odd foods, which are readily available at restaurants and street vendors.
I met with some of the survivors who survived the Pol Pot massacres by playing dead after being wounded. Also visited the prison in Phnom Penh as saw the pictures of all the executed political prisoners.
Pol Pot executed the entire family if one family member opposed him.
Hard to believe that this happened in 1975 to 1979. I have friends that were shot in Cambodia during the Vietnam War and an uncle that worked in Cambodia for the CIA in the 1950’s. I spent some time there in 2020 to better understand what happened. Traveled down the Mekong River from up near the Laos/China border by boat, sleeping in thatched huts.
Was quite an eye opening experience.
The highlight of the trip was meeting up with Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam, our last meeting before he died.
Delayed Justice: How US Actions Paved the Way for the Khmer Rouge and Prevented Justice in Cambodia
Casey Elmhirst
HIST-498 Advanced Research Thesis
May 2, 2023
Excerpt from the thesis:
“The US had a singular focus on restricting and containing communism and, therefore, saw sending special forces to train the Khmer Rouge as a countermeasure against Vietnamese communism but, in
truth, this negatively affected Cambodian civilians. The Khmer Rouge were able to enact genocide on such a large scale in part because of this special training, and while the US surely did not intend for this, the Cambodians were seen as expendable and the US did nothing to remedy the consequences of their actions.
This thesis will address the reasons as to why the United States contributed and escalated the Cambodian genocide for their own gain, hindered justice being realized following the Cambodian genocide, and supported Khmer Rouge leadership because of their common enemy of Vietnam. This thesis is grounded in recently released top secret correspondence from the Digital National Security Archive, and this reveals the US government’s entangled involvement in the Cambodian conflict. The Digital National Security Archives provides access to declassified government documents and offers insights into the inner workings of US foreign policy during the Cold War era. The use of DNSA to demonstrate how US politicians hid their actions in Cambodia from the US public is crucial, as it provides a comprehensive and factual account of the events that transpired, free from biased or incomplete narratives. While the Khmer Rouge regime is widely recognized as the primary perpetrators of this atrocity, the United States’ played a secondary role in perpetuating genocidal conditions.”
The Khmer Rouge seized Pnom Pehn in April 1975.
I testified in July 1974 before the House Committee on International Affairs/Relations on the coming genocide in Cambodia if the communists won, being perhaps the only person to do so specifically about that poor country.
I gave Congress a declassified copy of a Secret report on Khmer Rouge occupation tactics/genocide, which I nicknamed “The Quinn Report”, after its author Ken Quinn.
Nobody listened much and that is why Cambodia suffered a genocide/Holocaust equivalent to that of the Jews (including my whole European side of the family) and the Roma peoples.
Thanks for remembering and warning about what communism is like (The Red Genocide) as we now face the new Green Genocide of extremist Islam.
People need to know ASAP.
its the history of the world and the history of what males do when they get the chance....sorry to say...
You are correct. China supported Pol Pot. The Soviets supported the Vietnamese communists.
Guessing gun control played a big part.
#9 and the leaders that came after him allowed him to live.
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