Laser Scans Unveil a Network of Ancient Cities in Cambodia
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Anyone who hasn't visited Cambodia (or SE Asia in general) should go. At least once in your life. It's cheap, the people are kind (do not insult the king of Thailand though) and the incredible diversity of people streaming in from India, China, and later France has left behind an amazing cultural chronicle. Cambodia will, for better or worse, forcibly remind you of both the heights (Angkor) and the depths (the Khmer Rouge) of humanity.
Note that the KR almost certainly would not have come to power and killed 1/3rd of the population if we hadn't bombed the shit out of eastern Cambodia during the Vietnam war. (Henry Kissinger received the Nobel peace prize for these antics) Almost exactly like Isis, except the KR didn't see the point of destroying their own heritage. So in spite of the odd bullet hole, Angkor and surrounding sites are as awesome as they were when Mouhot stumbled upon them in ~1855. (The Frenchman could not believe that "savages" built such incredible temples and attributed them to the Romans.)
Amazingly resilient people with a glorious legacy that continues to grow as we learn more about it.
KR almost certainly would
not have come to power
The KR would certainly not have come to power if not
1. The French communist party had radicalised Pol Pot.
2. The Soviet and Yugoslav communist parties had further schooled Pol Pot in how to overthrow a regime.
3. The Soviet, Chinese and North Vietnamese communist parties had supported the KR with weapons and other forms of logistics with the explicit aim of instituting a communist regime in Cambodia.
There's direct causes, and there's indirect causes. Kissinger directly created the circumstances that let 1, 2, and 3 create the KR.
While it is true that the Vietnamese and Cambodians didn't want to be colonies, the KR were vastly worse than being colonised.
KR were following the classic communist script that we have seen played out in many developing countries. The KR were created by communists, lead from Moscow and Beijing.
The classic communist script hasn't always resulted in genocide. Much like how the classic imperialist script hasn't always resulted in genocide.
Besides, Moscow hardly had a monopoly on sponsoring and/or training political death squads.
Moscow hardly had a monopoly
The fact of the matter remains: the KR and Pol Pot were created following the standard communist script for "liberation movements" in the developing world (i.e. thinly veilded preparations for communist takeover). All the ideological training was provided by the Soviets and their allies, as were all the many weapons and other logistics. The US was in East Asia primarily to counter the communist threat, not to prop up French colonies.
All responsibility for the KR and their actions is with the communists leadership in Moscow (and Beijing and Paris and Belgrade and Hanoi).
I believe he is generally respected among those who study foreign policy. I'm still learning more about the history myself. I don't think he is as evil as Hitchens would have you believe.
To put that in more concrete terms, the US dropped more 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia. I spoke not too long ago with some Cambodian men in Kompong Thom, which is a central province, who related how as children they would disassemble unexploded ordnance and sell the scrap materials. This particular village didn't have much awareness of or contact with the KR regime as I understand it, but after the bombing they resorted to eating tree bark and leaves for a period of multiple years.
I didn't realize it until recently, but Laos was bombed even more heavily than Cambodia. Apparently, there are still 80 million unexploded US bombs littered across Laos. It's hard to even imagine that.
Just as a sort of random aside for scale: that's a little under 1/2 ton of bombs per person in Cambodia, based on the 1970 population.