[NYTr] Bush Gets Away with Lies, Lies and More Lies in History-Illiterate America

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Alternet - Aug 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/60764/

Bush Gets Away with Lies, Lies and More Lies 
in History-Illiterate America 

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet

George Bush -- and other Iraq War supporters -- have argued that if we
withdraw from Iraq the result will be like the slaughters -- the
killing fields -- in Cambodia.

Here are the facts:

    * The killing fields were real. The genocide against their own
people was committed by the Khmer Rouge.

    * The Vietnamese -- the Communist Vietnamese -- were the people who
went in and put a stop to it.

    * The United States then supported the Khmer Rouge.

Here's how that came to happen.

The United States got involved in the war in Vietnam in an attempt to
keep South Vietnam from going communist. Which it would have if
nationwide elections had been held as promised.

Cambodia is next to Vietnam. It was ruled by Prince Sihanouk. He
attempted to be neutral. Both sides abused that neutrality.

The North Vietnamese send arms, support and men through Cambodia on the
"Ho Chi Minh Trail" to go around South Vietnamese and American forces.
They also used Cambodian ports.

The United States, which was not at war with Cambodia, officially or
unofficially, secretly sent armed forces into Cambodia to interrupt
North Vietnamese use of that route. In 1969, Nixon began a campaign of
carpet bombing sections of Cambodia. Ultimately about 750,000
Cambodians were killed by the bombings (though the numbers are hard to
verify.)

In 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country, visiting Europe, the
USSR and China, Lon Nol took over the country in a right wing coup.

There are two stories about American involvement. The first is that we
supported the coup, the second (in Tom Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, The
History of the CIA) is that it took the CIA and the United States by
surprise. Recently declassified documents support Weiner's view.

In either case, once Lon Nol took power, the US supported him. In
return, Lon Nol ended the neutrality, closed the ports to the
communists and demanded that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leave
the country, and let US forces openly, though secretly, operate in
Cambodia.

There was resistance to Lon Nol. Some of it was certainly a spontaneous
matter of national sentiment. Some of it was certainly fomented by
various communist interests.

Sihanouk, in China, then allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia
communists, which conferred new legitimacy on them.

Civil War broke out. Lon Nol was both corrupt and inept. In spite of
American financial and military support, he lost.

America left Vietnam in 1973.

The Khmer Rouge took the capital of Cambodia in 1975. They were one of
the most horrendous regimes in history. They practiced a kind of class
genocide, "re-educating" and murdering anyone who educated or
Westernized, as well as minority groups.

In 1978, Vietnam, by then fully Communist, invaded Cambodia to put a
stop to the Khmer Rouge and drive them out. They installed a more
moderate and sane regime.

The United States, the UK, and China then supported the remnants of the
Khmer Rouge. With their help the conflict continued for another ten
years.

When George Bush, or anyone else, uses the Cambodian holocaust as a
warning of what might happen if America withdraws from Iraq, remember
the facts.

1. Part of the holocaust in Cambodia is directly attributable to
American bombing. The 750,000 dead. (Comparable to the number of Iraqis
killed by American forces in this war.)

2. The civil war that led to the victory of the Khmer Rouge came about,
at least in part, because of America's support of Lon Nol.

3. The "enemy," the Vietnamese Communists, were the ones who put a stop
to the Khmer Rouge.

4. The United States supported the Khmer Rouge -- after their murders,
after the genocide. That support helped a civil war continue for
another decade. More death, more destruction.

[Larry Beinhart is the author of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the
Land of Spin. His novels include Wag the Dog, on which the film was
based, and The Librarian which Rolling Stone described as "John Grisham
meets Jon Stewart."]

 © 2007 Independent Media Institute.