The New Republic

That waterboarding was one of the Khmer Rouge's preferred torture techniques.

- armadorsky

August 1, 2007 at 2:14pm

The Khmer Rouge didn't even overthrow the King until 1975. Their popular support came from the domestic view that the King was pro-U.S. and anger at the U.S. bombing of ARVN/Viet Cong positions in Cambodian territory (the U.S. dropped three times the number of explosives that it did on Japan in WWII on Cambodian soil. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge guerrilla war didn't start until 1970. KR attacks on U.S. troops didn't begin until after US and South Vietnamese troops struck at ARVN/VC positions in Cambodia. From 1969 to 1973 (ending after the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam), an estimated 600,000 Cambodian civilians were killed by U.S. bombings and covert operations. The horrific crimes of the Khmer Rouge occurred from 1975-1978, wherein some 2 million Cambodians were killed. In 1978, Soviet armed and supplied Cambodian exiles (both Communist and non-Communist), based in Vietnam, begin waging a war against KR, driving them from Phnom Penh in 1979. Due to Soviet involvement, the Reagan White House aids China in arming and equipping the Khmer Rouge, at the behest of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Through proxies in Thailand, the U.S. funnels food aid to K.R. Historians estimate that almost $85 million in U.S. aid was funnelled to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The U.S. policy of covert aid did not end until 1986. Mr. Peretz has two choices: he's a revisionist idipt who doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's a liar.

- jfelliott

August 1, 2007 at 2:32pm

We should be properly referred to as idiots.

- jfelliott

August 1, 2007 at 2:34pm

The Khmer Rouge horror story is the inevitable result of the Democratic Party's abandonment of our allies in South Vietnam. We should learn from the past and not repeat our mistakes. Voting for the typical self hating American Democrat or liberal Republican only helps our enemies. A vote for one of these fools, for all practical purposes, is a vote on behalf of the terrorists.

- thomsondavid

August 1, 2007 at 2:40pm

You can't handle the past, thomsondavid. Pull the string and listen to him squawk, folks!

- cleavet

August 1, 2007 at 3:03pm

"You can't handle the past, thomsondavid. Pull the string and listen to him squawk, folks!" Democrats hate their own country. It is supposedly a vile and imperialist nation filthing on the dark skinned disspossed of the Earth. I am reminded of James Burnham's Suicide of the West. Our left wingers will not be satisfied until we are destroyed. They subconscious, if not even consciously, harbor a death wish.

- thomsondavid

August 1, 2007 at 3:13pm

Which is why I am not voting for George McGovern this year. What? He isn't running? It is 2007? TD, don't you get tired of typing the same thing over and over again. Can't you number your arguments and just type the number? Please?

- boneill

August 1, 2007 at 3:19pm

I say this as one who values your comments, but it's a little broad to say that "Democrats hate their own country." A few do, but 99% do not. They may have different views on the wisdom of US foreign policy, now and since say 1972, than you do, but that does NOT make them America-haters, or unpatriotic, or any such. Cut it out. Jeez, the flip side of my arguments with tec.

- butchie b

August 1, 2007 at 3:35pm

You are a superb performance artist. My hat's off to your comedic ability to create spur of the moment satire; your parody of a hybrid between Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh is the W.C. Fields of our time.

- jfelliott

August 1, 2007 at 3:59pm

thomsondavid is neither here nor there: how does "abandoning" South Vietnam have anything to do with the fact that Marty Peretz isn't just wrong on the facts, but actually bass-ackwards

- jfelliott

August 1, 2007 at 4:00pm

Got a reading list? Not that I don't believe you, but I just never knew that much about it and it seems worth looking into.

- pjsmmjd

August 1, 2007 at 5:08pm

Well argued. The post bothered me, but I didn't have the facts straight like you do. Thanks for pointing out this incredible idiocy.

- boneill

August 1, 2007 at 5:30pm

"Which is why I am not voting for George McGovern this year. What? He isn't running?" George McGovern's progeny is running. He won the existential battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. The former South Dakota senator is always standing discretely in the back of the room.

- thomsondavid

August 1, 2007 at 5:34pm

That the Khmer Rouge came to power largely as a result of a massive illegal U.S. bombing campaign that killed half-a-million Cambodians?

- wmsberry

August 1, 2007 at 5:44pm

Sorry. I should have read your post before my own "drive-by" posting! And with respect to your last sentence-- Peretz: idiot or liar-- I would submit there may be no choice involved. He has demonstrated repeatedly that he is both an idiot and a liar.

- wmsberry

August 1, 2007 at 5:51pm

Here's a theological question: Christianity allows for forgiveness of signs no matter how egregious given true repentance. Does that mean this animal gets off scot-free or is there still some penalty to pay?

- jwl2672

August 1, 2007 at 6:03pm

Christianity is trumped by the rule of law. Thus, he doesn't get off scot-free. How he is treated in the "after-life" is another question altogether.

- davidsmith192

August 1, 2007 at 6:08pm

He's right. There is no such thing as loving your country while voting for laws/people who seek to bring about its defeat. And what the hell for? The troops? If only they cared so much for them. I bet Republicans who want us to stay the course care 10x more for them. Democrats say they care but what they care about mostly is their worldview that we're a negative force and even moreso because they hate Bush. I'll listen to any Democrat who loves our troops and hurts when they get harmed. The rest of you can just bugger off.

- jwl2672

August 1, 2007 at 6:10pm

Oh I'm more concerned about the after-life. The guy is like 90. Executing him now is no skin off his back.

- jwl2672

August 1, 2007 at 6:13pm

been defeated if Marty didn't fund McGovern, to the tune of $350K, in '68 and instead lead his protege, Al Gore, into combat in Indochina. Could it be that the U.S. lost in Vietnam and is experiencing difficulties in Iraq because the hardcharger neocons and their buddies resort to sending Liberals like Al and John Kerry to fight their wars? Had Dubya, John Bolton (the National Guard dodgers), Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Jon Boehner, George Allen, Ken Adelman, Trent Lott(the list is sooo long) opted not to avail themselves of student and other dubious deferments, the U.S. would have achieved total victory. Jeez. If only we could see the uncompromising, martial rhetoric, proclaimed patriotism and killer instinct of those types translated into fingers on M16 triggers. Instead we had a draft system that allowed Mike Dukakis, Ralph Nader, Victor Navasky, Sandy Berger "receive" draft notices (Marty never received one), obtain low lottery numbers or, worse, "volunteer" (like Al Gore did.) Thank god that system was abolished. Nevertheless, the system we have now still sucks. Sure, the army raise its non-prior service enlistment age to 42 years. But it still has a high barrier to entry: Volunteering. What else could be preventing 30-something Peter Beinart from enlisting?

- tec619

August 1, 2007 at 6:15pm

JF Elliot does not have his history straight. The Khmer Rouge rebellion began in the l960's. Prior to 1970 it was mostly constrained to the northwest part of Cambodia and posed no threat to the government of Sihanouk. Cambodia bad remained neutral throughout the US involvement in Vietnam. King Sihanouk managed to stay out of the war by allowing the Viet Cong to be supplied through Cambodia and looking the other way as the US bombed the North Vietnamese supply lines. In 1970, with the support of the US, Sihanouk was overthrown and replaced by Lon Nol whose government was more friendly to the United States than the previously neutral stance of the King. Two months later the US invaded Cambodia to disrupt the North Vietnamese supply lines. There was considerable protest in the US and the US soldiers were soon withdrawn from Cambodia. After the coup and the US "incursion" the Khmer Rouge got considerable support from the Vietnamese and their rebellion became a threat to the government in Phnom Penh. The war in Cambodia went on for five more years until the Khmer Rouge took over in the spring of 1975. The US never committed ground troops to the defense of Lon Nol's government but it did provide air support until the bombing halt in August 1973 ended all US military activity in Indochina. The bombing halt was mandated by Congressional legislation that was signed into law by Richard Nixon in late June, 1973. The civil war in Cambodia was quite brutal and the US contributed to the mess with its bombing but the figure of 600,000 killed by it is ridiculous by large orders of magnitude. What the bombing contributed to was the creation of vast numbers of refugees from the countryside who moved to the Cambodian capitol to escape the war and in particular to escape the bombing. By 1975 it was estimated that almost half the population of Cambodia was living in and around the capitol city. There were some reports from Cambodia that hinted at the horror that would come about after the Khmer Rouge conquest but these were balanced by more optimistic stories portraying the Khemer Rouge as agrarian reformers. Cambodia was never a major concern of the US and I doubt that there was ever any serious inclination to commit the numbers of ground troops that would have been required to prevent the triumph of the Khmer Rouge. I don't think anybody predicted the extent pf the nightmare that followed the Khmer Rouge's rise to power. In particular, I doubt the North Vietnamese would have given them so much support if they had known what was to happen. The main administration that dealt with the Khmer Rouge was that of Jimmy Carter. Brezinsky was Carter's secretary of state and not Reagan's. The reign of the Khmer Rouge was ended by the Vienamese army that drove out the pol Pot regime in 1979. The genocide that the Pol Pot regime had carried out was particularly vicious against the ethnic Vietnamese in the parts of Cambodia adjoining Vietnam. When the massacres spread across the border into vietnam itself, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia and installed a government sympathetic to Vietnam. The US response was to condemn the invasion. In my opinion this was the most immoral act of any president in my lifetime. I generally liked Jimmy Carter at the time but the decision to in essence take the side of the Khmer Rouge was indefensible. They were some of the worst monsters in history and their removal from power was a humanitarian act. I don't think it is fair to blame the anti war movement for the horrors of the Pol Pot regime but it certainly was naive about the possible consequences of the Khmer Rouge's attainment of power. The reluctance to acknowledge the truth about Cambodia on the part of many in the antiwar movement was particularly shameful.

- Jonathan Cohen

August 1, 2007 at 6:42pm

"Instead we had a draft system that allowed Mike Dukakis, Ralph Nader, Victor Navasky, Sandy Berger "receive" draft notices (Marty never received one), obtain low lottery numbers or, worse, "volunteer" (like Al Gore did.)" The real question still remains: are we confronted by enemies committed to our destruction? If so, they must be defeated. Arguing over who is or is not a draft dodger is a secondary issue.

- thomsondavid

August 1, 2007 at 7:04pm

I see thomsondavid has found time to post his standard drivel on the Spine. This is interesting, because on the Open University blog, Jacob T. Levy (one of TNR's proprietors of the site) was gracious enough to respond to some of thomsondavid's typically ignorant and vitriolic comments about John Rawls yesterday evening. Levy, who no doubt had better things to do, was kind enough to provide some quotes from Friedrich Hayek and Robert Nozick which showed their respect for John Rawls, despite their disagreement with him, and he asked: "thomsondavid, any particular reason to be less generous than Nozick and Hayek, both of whom were pretty carefully attuned to the problem of the relationship of philosophy to socialism?" thomsondavid, who seems to have plenty of time to post on other topics, hasn't responded to Levy's civil, reasonable and direct question. thomsondavid, I'm calling you out. You love to pontificate on these comment threads, but here is a case where a respected TNR writer took the time to respond to (and take apart) your comments, and you haven't had the guts to respond to his direct attempts to engage you in discussion. If you don't respond to him posthaste, you'll have provided even more proof that you are a buffoon, an intellectual coward and a joke.

- myzaguirre

August 1, 2007 at 7:12pm

When, in the past sixty years, was the U.S. not confronted by enemies committed to its destruction? Who is arguing that there isn't an enemy? Yet, accusations of traitor, imputations of being soft on this enemy and that foe, claims that one side lacks resolve and backbone, and the applications of gross generalizations(are you ever guilty of that?)float about. Strangely, though, so many of the scolds, have demonstrated the courage, resolve and backbone, of, well, trembling Jell-O. Doesn't leadership by example or putting one's money (i.e., body)where one's mouth is count for anything? At least then, I could offer some respect for the bellicose, Chicken Little rhetoric and nasty recriminations that so many of the keyboarder brigade traffic in.

- tec619

August 1, 2007 at 7:25pm

"Who is arguing that there isn't an enemy?" A large number of Democrats amd even a few Republicans do not believe we are engaged in a fight to the death against Islamic nihilism. No, this is a con job by Bush and Cheney to enrich Halliburton. The Muslim thugs are actually vctims of American imperialism. We supposedly well deserve the "blow back."

- thomsondavid

August 1, 2007 at 8:26pm

sheesh. a thread about the khmer rouge, and you're all pistols-or-swords about a posting thomson made on an Open U thread to s.o. else? these threads are really going off the deep end. i need some air

- teplukhin

August 2, 2007 at 3:56am

While the figure of 600,000 dead as a result of the bombing may be on the high side, it is by no means off by orders of magnitude. I first saw the totals given as "up to 500,000" years ago and I was as shocked and disbelieving as most would be until I did some research. Here is how just one source among many, PBS, puts it: On March 18, 1969, American B-52s began carpet-bombing eastern Cambodia. "Operation Breakfast" was the first course in a four-year bombing campaign that drew Cambodia headlong into the Vietnam War. The Nixon Administration kept the bombings secret from Congress for several months, insisting they were directed against legitimate Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge targets. However, the raids exacted an enormous cost from the Cambodian people: the US dropped 540,000 tons of bombs , killing anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000 civilians. [End quote] Keep in mind that we are talking about "excess deaths" here-- deaths that resulted from the bombing, directly or indirectly. I don't know what "ridiculous by large orders of magnitude" means-- that is a silly phrase. If you mean that the figure is high literally by orders of magnitude, then you are the one who is being ridiculous. Conservatives always try to rhetorically minimize the scale of criminality of U.S. military adventurism around the world (it can only be done rhetorically: The facts tend not to be tractable). The same down-playing of "collateral damage" is going on with respect to civilian casualties in Iraq. If neo-cons and apologists like you continue to exert influence, we will keep on killing brown (almost always, for some reason) mothers and their babies by the tens of thousands. We're the most powerful nation on earth; who's going to stop us?

- wmsberry

August 2, 2007 at 10:04am

It seems like I spend most of my time arguing with you. But that is because you just throw out these inane, insulting and dangerous statements. And I don't feel like working right now. So here is what you said. "And what the hell for? The troops? If only they cared so much for them. I bet Republicans who want us to stay the course care 10x more for them. Democrats say they care but what they care about mostly is their worldview that we're a negative force and even moreso because they hate Bush." How dare you, sir? Really? Only Republicans care for them, or at least they care 10X more? (also: throwing out a number of something as unquantifiable as "caring" makes your argument absurd, just so you know). Which side boycotted ABC for showing the names and pictures of troops killed? Who got mad when a soldier- a fucking troop!- asked Rusmfeld about why they didn't have proper armor? Who put them in an insane amount of harm's way by not planning for what happened after the invasion- and which side still thinks that Bush did all right there? Under whom was Walter Reed hooribly mismanaged, and not brought into shape until the horrible, wicked media finally uncovered it? Bush and team threw them into Iraq and refused to adapt because that would be admitting mistake. We shouldn't have had this many dead, this many ripped apart, this many legless and armless and broken and ruined. So when the great patriot and defender of troops and all his fawning supporters tell us we don't support the troops it makes me sick. And angry. Goddammit, these 19-yr-olds are being churned up because of a fucked-up plan. Supporting for, caring for the troops is more than slapping some sticker on your goddam SUV- it is holding accountable those who are to blame for destroying our military. Sorry to all those who are getting upset about the vitrole on this site, but this kind of self-serving nonsense infuriates me. I just need to go back to the Plank and relax, I think.

- boneill

August 2, 2007 at 1:41pm

Tephulkin, sorry I haven't responded to your comment, I was at the office all day. I can understand your thoughts over the threadjack, but a little context should be considered. Jacob Levy took the time and effort to provide a civil response, complete with cites, to thomsondavid's vitriolic and ridiculous comments at Open University, and asked for his response. I noticed that not only did thomsondavid not respond, he was posting up a storm on the Spine. That showed that his lack of response wasn't because he was busy doing other things and away from his computer. To me, this seemed like not only a chickenshit (lack of) response, but an act of disrespect for TNR and its writers. I might have my disagreements with Marty or other writers at TNR, but if one of them took the time to write a serious response to my comments (not something just shot off in two seconds or a bit of snark), and asked for my direct response, you can be sure I'd respond. To do anything less is disrespectful to the writers and the magazine itself, which has been gracious enough to provide a great discussion forum for its readers. Since thomsondavid was obviously staying away from that blog, I decided to post where he was hanging out, so as to get a response (which I got in Marty's Saudi posting, and it was lame). Normally, I wouldn't bring up items mentioned in other blogs, but it seemed appropriate in this case. While my comments may have seemed a little hotheaded, they were made in good faith, and as an act of respect for the people who run and write for TNR, who deserve respect, in my book. I hope (and suspect) you feel the same way about TNR. Anyway, more than enough said on that topic.

- myzaguirre

August 2, 2007 at 7:19pm

Should have typed "teplukhin". Didn't double-check, sorry.

- myzaguirre

August 2, 2007 at 10:40pm