Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short

I've only just begun it and I'm totally haunted by it. I've never taken a very close look at the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. It always seemed too horrible to get too close to. But this is, so far, a very lucid, fair-minded account, and it's gripping.

Cambodia is a strange and tragic case of an ancient feudal society caught up in colonialism and the Cold War, and caught between an aggressivley modernizing Thailand and revolutionary Vietnam and, even more profoundly, between India and China. According to Short, it was a recipe for chaos.

I'm recommending the book to anyone interested in the tragedy of Indochina in the 20th Century, or to anyone like me who's interested in revolutionary politics.

I think I will check it out once I read the stack I already have.

it. I couldn't wait (read a rave review in the NY Times) so I bought it. I'm glad I did.

I just double checked online and it's the same one you are talking about and what I was looking at yesterday. It says there are 11 copies of this book in whatever "system" my library belongs to. I will have to read it.

If you're interested in Asian communism, there's a fascinating book about Mao, a memoir by his personal doctor that I read a few years ago: The Private Life of Chairman Mao, by Zhisui Li.

I am going through a fiction phase right now...thanks for the info.

These turds -- the War Party -- and the BFEE arelikethis.

The Long Secret Alliance:
Uncle Sam and Pol Pot

by John Pilger
Covert Action Quarterly Fall 1997

The US not only helped create conditions that brought Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January 1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pots exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support-$85 million from 1980 to 1986-was revealed six years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Winer said the information had come from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). When copies of his letter were circulated, the Reagan administration was furious. Then, without adequately explaining why, Winer repudiated the statistics, while not disputing that they had come from the CRS. In a second letter to Noam Chomsky, however, Winer repeated the original charge, which, he confirmed to me, was "absolutely correct.''

Washington also backed the Khmer Rouge through the United Nations, which provided Pol Pot's vehicle of return. Although the Khmer Rouge government ceased to exist in January 1979, when the Vietnamese army drove it out, its representatives continued to occupy Cambodia's UN seat. Their right to do so was defended and promoted by Washington as an extension of the Cold War, as a mechanism for US revenge on Vietnam, and as part of its new alliance with China (Pol Pot's principal underwriter and Vietnam's ancient foe). In 1981, President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot." The US, he added, "winked publicly" as China sent arms to the Khmer Rouge through Thailand.

As a cover for its secret war against Cambodia, Washington set up the Kampuchean Emergency Group (KEG) in the US embassy in Bangkok and on the Thai-Cambodian border. KEG's job was to "monitor" the distribution of Western humanitarian supplies sent to the refugee camps in Thai land and to ensure that Khmer Rouge bases were fed. Working through "Task Force 80" of the Thai Army, which had liaison officers with the Khmer Rouge, the Americans ensured a constant flow of UN supplies. Two US relief aid workers, Linda Mason and Roger Brown, later wrote, "The US Government insisted that the Khmer Rouge be fed ... the US preferred that the Khmer Rouge operation benefit from the credibility of an internationally known relief operation."

In 1980, under US pressure, the World Food Program handed over food worth $12 million to the Thai army to pass on to the Khmer Rouge. According to former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke "20,000 to 40 000 Pol Pot guerrillas benefited." This aid helped restore the Khmer Rouge to a fighting force, based in Thailand, from which it de stabilized Cambodia for more than a decade.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/UncleSam_PolPot.html

There are no other words for it.

All they care for is power and profit. Capitalist, communist, fascist -- They'll do anything to anyone to get their way.

:eyes:

(It used to be called Machivellianism and was considered immoral.)