Vietnam, 50 Years on.

Kennedy – The Beginning

In 1961 the Kennedy administration came into office and inherited the Eisenhower policy of sending military advisors to South Vietnam in support of the Saigon government. The American presence in Vietnam had reached 800 by the close of the Eisenhower era and by 1963 President Kennedy would increase the number of military advisors to 16,000. The first strikes came in 1961 as the Kennedy administration sent war planes with South Vietnamese markings against rural targets where 80% of the population lived and the Viet Cong insurgency had taken root in South Vietnam. The war planes were manufactured in the United States.

When John F. Kennedy first took his seat in the Oval Office, the Viet Cong numbered 300,000. The insurgency was composed of a broad coalition united in opposition to the Saigon government. Its demands included the ouster of American military advisers and the reunification of Vietnam. The Diem regime had banned public assembly, political parties, and even public dancing; its demolition of pagodas and preferential treatment of Catholics had drawn the ire of the mostly Buddhist population. The US began bombing to defeat the resistance to President Diem as it seemed that the regime was not succeeding in defeating the Viet Cong.

By 1962 the US had begun to establish “strategic hamlets” in the country where peasants were held behind barbed-wire enclosures under the watch of South Vietnamese troops. By 1970 5 million Vietnamese peasants were displaced in this way. The pretext was to protect the peasants from the insurgents. At the same time the first use of the so-called rainbow herbicides - most infamously, Agent Orange - was initiated. The aims of the programme were to rapidly defoliate the forestry and kill crops with the hope of denying the Viet Cong cover and food.

Eventually the repressive rule of the Saigon government provoked protests from Buddhist monks. A catalytic moment came in May 1963 when South Vietnamese armed forces fired upon Buddhist protestors in the city of Hue on Phat Dan. The Buddhists had been protesting against the ban on their flag on a holy day. The armed forces opened fire on the crowd with live ammunition and killed nine people. Yet more demonstrations followed with President Diem denying his forces had any responsibility for the deaths.

The civil unrest would last until November 1963 at which point the generals of South Vietnam plotted a coup against the sitting government. Popular opposition grew over those six months. In one act of defiance Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolated to protest the brutality of the regime. He left a letter reading: “Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organise in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.”

The Kennedy administration understood that this situation was unsustainable and withdrew its aid to the Saigon government in a direct rebuff to President Diem. As the protests continued the US government began to encourage the coup plotters in the South Vietnamese military elite to take action. In November 1963 President Diem was arrested by the army, after an overnight siege of the presidential palace, before being shot and repeatedly stabbed by his bodyguards. His death signalled the end of the Diem government and gave way to direct military rule. The US role is confirmed by the Pentagon Papers: “We maintained clandestine contact with [the plotters] throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans and proposed new government”.

Johnson – Escalation

The end of the Diem regime did not signal the end of US commitments, in fact, according to the Pentagon Papers, “our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities”. Not long after this Kennedy was assassinated on November 22 1963. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the responsibilities of the presidency and would go on to strengthen the war effort even further. Before the shooting President Kennedy spoke at a breakfast held at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce:

 

We have increased the defence budget of the United States by over 20%; increased the programme of acquisition for Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minutemen missile purchase programme by more than 75%; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by over 60%; added five combat ready divisions to the Army of the United States, and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force of the United States; increased counter-insurgency forces which are engaged now in South Vietnam by 600%.

Less than a year later the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place. On August 2, 1964 the USS Maddox was on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam’s coastline. The vessel was allegedly fired upon and retaliated by firing on three North Vietnamese torpedo boats that had been talking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. There were no American casualties. The second incident came on August 4 in which the USS Maddox returned to the coastline and engaged in what were believed to be North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The crew had acted on the basis of sonar evidence that had picked up two vessels. But there was no wreckage or bodies found.

Even though it appeared that there had been no attack the Johnson administration quickly decided to retaliate. The bombing of North Vietnam began immediately and President Johnson began to raise the number of US ground troops. The Tonkin Resolution was fast-tracked and passed on August 7. It would signal a change in US policy as the Johnson administration initiated hostilities with North Vietnam to bypass the congressional restraints on the government. The US government now had free rein in its bombing of the North.

By 1965 South Vietnam had been so devastated that the war correspondent and military historian Bernard Fall claimed that the existence of Vietnam (in particular South Vietnam) was “threatened with extinction”. The US sent 200,000 US troops to South Vietnam that year and in 1966, 200,000 more were sent. By 1968 the US troop presence had exceeded 500,000 soldiers at a cost of $2 billion per month. Up until 1969 the military operations in Vietnam had been conducted by the Democratic administration. Originally President Kennedy had hoped that the US would be able to withdraw from Vietnam in 1965, provided that the war had been won; the change in government would lead to the war being extended further.

Nixon – Enter the Mad Man

By 1968 the Johnson administration was in negotiations with North Vietnam in Paris. Henry Kissinger was an adviser to the US negotiators. The negotiations came in election season. Lyndon B. Johnson had made clear he would not be seeking re-election, a shock to the public; instead his vice president Hubert Humphrey would seek the presidency. Richard Nixon had emerged as the Republican contender. He had pledged “peace with honour” in south east Asia, but secretly he feared that the Democratic government would reach a settlement in Paris and win the election.

Dr. Kissinger was in contact with negotiators as well as the Nixon campaign. He was expecting to work for whoever won the election and ingratiated himself with both campaigns. Henry Kissinger told the Nixon campaign that the US negotiators were close to securing a settlement. The prospect of peace would give Humphrey an advantage over Nixon. The Nixon campaign had opened a secret line with the South Vietnamese regime and persuaded them to withdraw from the negotiations thereby scuppering the possibility of a settlement. Richard Nixon had offered South Vietnam much more support than the Johnson administration and a better deal in the future.

The Nixon administration not only set out to extend the war in North Vietnam they intensified the bombing of Laos and launched an illegal bombing campaign against Cambodia. The Nixon administration claimed that the North Vietnamese were stationing their forces and supplies across the border in Cambodia and pursued the bombing on such grounds. By 1970 President Nixon was growing frustrated that the war showed no sign of coming to an end.

In 1972 Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger flew to China and met with Chairman Mao. The US government aimed to open up relations with China to secure its long-term strategic interests. The Sino-Soviet split had left Maoist China isolated on the world stage and if China aligned itself with the US (which it would eventually do) then the Vietnamese would have to choose the side of the Soviet Union over China. The original pretext of US involvement in Vietnam was to contain China and, as the Pentagon Papers confirm, the decision to bomb North Vietnam only made sense in the context of containing communist China.

As the election approached President Nixon began to look at the war effort as an electoral means once again. “I went them to hit everything,” Mr. Nixon told Henry Kissinger. Dr. Kissinger on the orders to General Alexander Haig: “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves.”

Immediately after re-election was secure the White House sanctioned the Christmas bombing campaign, spanning twelve days, targeting Hanoi and Haiphong. The campaign constituted the heaviest bombing campaign of the entire war and it provoked international outcry. Negotiations resumed soon after and by January 1973 Richard Nixon had announced the end of the war. The terms were settled along the lines that had been negotiated back in 1968. Even still, Henry Kissinger would win the Nobel peace Prize for his efforts and the fighting between North and South Vietnam wouldn’t reach a conclusion for two more years.

The Paris Peace Accords were signed not long after the announcement and the US military withdrew its ground forces in March. The North Vietnamese respected the ceasefire agreement as the US government pledged support to the South Vietnamese and further bombing if the North resumes its operations. The President and Dr. Kissinger were planning a resumption of bombing by April, but the orders for further bombing were rescinded as the Watergate scandal broke out. Richard Nixon could not fight the US Congress and Vietnam at the same time. He would become the first US President to be impeached and Gerald Ford succeeded him in August 1974.

The bombing of Cambodia had not ended with Operation Menu. The bombing continued throughout the early 1970s. This eventuated in the collapse of the delicate balance of social forces and classes in Cambodian society. First this led to the dictatorship of Lon Nol, who seized power in 1970, but this would later be swept aside by then the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. Not long after Phnom Penh fell to Pol Pot the North Vietnamese seized Saigon. The US withdrawal had left little force to resist the offensive and the South Vietnamese army were quickly overwhelmed.

By early 1976 Vietnam was officially reunified and declared a socialist republic. Its main ally was the Soviet Union as China had shifted its allegiance to the Khmer Rouge seeing Cambodia as a counterweight to Soviet influence in South-East Asia. This state of affairs would lead to two more wars in which Vietnam would overthrow Pol Pot and defend itself from Chinese retaliation.

On the Khmer Rouge trial.

I've written about Cambodia and the period of Angkar rule (1975-79) in the past. So I felt it necessary to cover the recent verdicts at the trial of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea. It is an obscenity that the core of the leadership has gotten away with it all. Khieu Samphan may be the biggest prize here, but it would have been a great day to see Saloth Sar (a.k.a. "Pol Pot") in the dock. It would have been even better to have seen Henry Kissinger in the dock with him for his part in sanctioning the illegal bombing of Cambodia which precipitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Here's a snippet:

The Khmer Rouge got off easy. No act of genocide is as misunderstood as the murderous campaign that the Maoist revolutionaries undertook during the second half of the 1970s. Two million Cambodians were murdered in the space of four years. The scale of the killings, and the ruthlessness with which they were conducted, shocked the West, which was still struggling to get its head around the Holocaust, just three decades earlier.


The idea that an anti-colonial conflict, so soon afterwards, had turned so barbarous, was particularly difficult to digest, especially in the context of popular resentment against the war in Vietnam. The people, so to speak, had proven no better than the imperialists, first the French, and then the Americans, who had spent the better part of the post-war period trying to stamp out the threat of socialism in Southeast Asia, killing millions, themselves.

There are many inconvenient truths about the Khmer Rouge. Like the fact that Prince Sihanouk embraced Pol Pot as an ally, along with Ronald Reagan, and George HW Bush, against the Vietnamese forces which removed the Khmer Rouge in 1979. That the Western powers provided food and training as long as they were 'resisting' Vietnam's occupation. John Pilger and Peter Jennings have both covered this.

Obama's Killing Machine.

 

Not even a week into his first term, President Obama sent a clear message to the world when it came to the ‘War on Terror’ re-declared by Bush in 2001. On January 23^th 2009 Obama authorised the first of many military operations conducted within Pakistani territory to take place during his time in office. It was a double-strike carried out by a remotely piloted American aircraft – one of the so-called ‘drones’ – killing at least 15 people in western Pakistan.[1] As far as we know it was the first of more than 300 of these operations to be conducted by the CIA in Pakistan over the last four years. It was as much a sign of things to come as it was the first sign of what looks like continuity between Obama and Bush. Actually the truth is even worse than that.

The policy of drone strikes was initially launched under the shameful first term of President Bush only five months before the 2004 election. Under Bush the campaign of assassination was supplemented, at first, with the kidnapping and torture of ‘terror suspects’ only for this campaign to be upped under Obama. It was Bush who saw the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, rammed through Congress after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Pentagon officials have claimed that the AUMF gives the President the power to wage an endless war anywhere on earth; with one official predicting that the operations against al-Qaeda could go on for 20 years.[2] Even so, the Bush administration only authorised around 50 strikes in Pakistan compared with the more than 300 strikes authorised by Obama.[3] With the passing of the National Defence Authorization act the US can now feel free to murder its own citizens at a whim if they are ‘associated’ with terror. The world remains the battlefield for these airborne death squads and no one appears to be safe.
 

 

Over the next four years Obama would extend the drone operations to a whole new precedent, past Pakistan across West Asia and even onwards to Africa. By the summer of 2011 the White House had given the ‘okay’ to bomb Somalia, the justification being to combat the Islamists in the country who had forged ties to Yemen’s al-Qaeda.[4] The US had been conducting operations against Yemen, where they would later assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki – the American and online face of radical Islamism – only to continue the strikes and kill (as of May 20^th 2013) somewhere between 1,100 and 1,800 people.[5] Then the arms that had flowed readily into the hands of Berbers and Tuareg fighters in Libya’s civil war made it to Northern Mali in 2012. The Tuaregs, now rearmed, carved out Azawad from the African state only for the military junta in Bamako to request French assistance. The Islamist presence in North Africa provided yet another pretext to the ever extending bloodbath from above. Soon the US government had responded in its own way and American troops were deployed in 35 African countries.[6] By January 2013, Niger had agreed to let the US drones swarm into their sovereignty to kill yet more targets.[7]
 

The exact numbers of those killed in these operations are not so much disputed as the precise composition of the slain. At CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair estimates the death toll as more than 3,000 with something like 900 civilian deaths including at least 176 children.[8] That’s if we assume that the muddy distinctions of ‘civilians’ from ‘terror suspects’ or even ‘associated forces’ (of al-Qaeda) can be sustained. At the Brookings Institution, in July of 2009, Daniel L Byman estimated that the body count from the drone strikes came to ten civilians for every militant killed.[9] It’s worth keeping in mind that the US government defines ‘suspected militant’ as all military-age males in a strike zone.[10] There are worthy victims and unworthy victims, those killed by the enemy and those we have killed. Such a distinction is to be maintained through whatever legal wrangling necessary in this bizarre age.
 

Come the second term, President Obama had resorted to using past precedents of American war crimes in Indochina to further legitimise the swarm of Predator drones.[11] Operation Menu was the name for the systematic bombing of selected targets (supposedly Viet Cong strongholds) within neutral Cambodia. This campaign was actually just a worse version than the less intense operations carried out under Lyndon Johnson.[12] It was called Menu because of the order of bombing: first breakfast, then lunch, snack, dinner, supper and dessert. With this flippancy the US effectively invaded Cambodia in 1970 and out of the inferno emerged the Khmer Rouge stronger than ever from the fallout. The example of Operation Menu is useful because international law would rule out extending conflict outside of the battlefield. At the time the State Department lawyer claimed legitimacy in extending the war in Vietnam to its neutral neighbour because there were Vietnamese forces in Cambodian territory.[13]
 

It is a befitting analogy for Obama’s drone wars, given the destabilising effect on Pakistan with the potential for civil war and even nuclear disaster in the country. With this in mind we may add that the assassination of Osama bin Laden, originally named Operation Geronimo, was carried out by US forces with the prior expectation that if the situation gets out of hand with nearby Pakistani soldiers they would have to fight their way out of the country. These unsanctioned actions against a supposedly sovereign country have provoked incredible anger in Pakistan. Let alone the authorised actions to repeatedly bomb villages and towns in Pakistan’s territory. Even if we accept the premises of the ‘War on Terror’ we cannot be blind to the sheer futility of these bloody operations. The latest drone strike in Pakistan was on May 29^th of this year, left Walier ur-Rehman, second-in-command of the Taliban, dead among three others in North Waziristan.[14] The next day the Pakistani Taliban replaced this prominent commander with Khan Said. No doubt the Islamists of Pakistan have plenty of new recruits to hoover up in the wake of drone strikes.
 

The attempts by the White House to find a loophole around the criminal nature of this conduct are especially revealing. Obama is much less comfortable than his predecessor when it comes to disregarding international law. Where the Bush-Cheney gang couldn’t give a damn about international law this lawyer-cum-politician looks for the legal grounds to commit mass-murder. Bush had the audacity to pass the ‘Netherlands invasion act’ in 2002, which gave the US the right to invade to prevent any trial of an American citizen taking place in The Hague.[15] Obama is looking to find a more subtle way out of any possible allegations of crimes against humanity. In short, we find that the Democrats offer a better and more civilised George Bush with his finger on the button.

 

This article was written for the Third Estate and posted on June 4th 2013.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=0

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/astoundingly_disturbing_obama_administration_claims_power

[3] http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/africa/02somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[5] http://yemendrones.newamerica.net/
[6] http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-real-invasion-of-africa-is-not-news-and-a-licence-to-lie-is-hollywoods-gift
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/29/niger-approves-american-surveillance-drones
[8] http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-game-of-drones/
[9] http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman
[10]http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/15453-obama-orders-drone-strikes-killing-of-6-suspected-militants-in-yemen
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/opinion/obamas-nixonian-precedent.html?_r=0
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/29/senior-talibans-killed-us-drone-pakistan
[15] http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law

 

 

War All the Time.

The special place of British troops who fought in the Falklands in this funeral should surprise no one. It was the war that saved Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 General Election, without which the later battles over the mines, privatisation and the poll tax would've never been fought. Since the death of the 'Iron Lady' we have heard little of the truth of Thatcher's foreign policy. Only the snippets have made it through in a collage of sound bites cherry-picked and arranged by the media class as part of the Thatcher hagiography. We're reminded of the Falklands war, as it was her saviour in life, it is now her saviour in death. There has been little to no mention of the full range of Thatcherite foreign policy, only Ireland and South Africa are mentioned as negative examples of the decisions made by the Thatcher government. Little mention of Thatcher's subservience to American power, evident in her decisions to support Reagan's bombing of Libya and Bush's invasion of Panama to kidnap Noriega. No mention of Thatcher's support for violence around the world.

 

 

The Falklands was once adequately summarised by Jorge Luis Borges as a "fight between two bald men over a comb." It was hardly a noble stand for democracy against dictatorship, as the Thatcher government was supporting Pinochet at the same time. In fact the Chilean dictatorship was a major ally in the war with Argentina. It's plausible that the Thatcher government would've had little qualm with the Argentine Generals had the islands not been an issue of dispute. That can hardly be called 'principled' in any sense of the word. It was a convenient way to benefit from the nationalist fervour too often stirred by war. In his bid to displace anger over his economic policies Galtieri gave Thatcher the opportunity needed to distract from the economic crisis in Britain. The sons of the poor were sent to fight and die for even less than the islands themselves. For their victory the Thatcher government rewarded the country with a programme of privatisation and deregulation, the consequences of which we are still living with to this day.

 

A year before the Falklands war was to be waged Margaret Thatcher gave the nod to the KMS to start training and arming the Contras in Nicaragua. It was a part of Washington's policy of stamping out all opposition with death squads. The support for the Contras would later burst out into the open and expose the ugliness under the surface of America's wars for 'liberty' and 'democracy'. The only other foreign policy position that the press have praised has been Thatcher's stance on the invasion of Grenada. Supposedly the 'Iron Lady' was outraged by the operations conducted in a Commonwealth nation without consulting the British. Actually the outrage was rather timid and private, while the UK government stood in line and supported the invasion. It definitely isn't the case that the Thatcherites were making anything more than cold calculated decisions to keep in line with American foreign policy. As we will see, for the most part, Thatcher failed to differentiate herself from the American line on world affairs.

 

 

We are meant to look upon Margaret Thatcher as a strident anti-Communist who brought down the Berlin Wall with the Reaganites. Even the words the Communists tried to use against her were turned against them. The term 'Thatcherism' was originally deployed by the Communist Party of Great Britain, while 'Iron Lady' was a sobriquet of Soviet invention; it was Dennis Healey who dubbed her 'Attila the Hen'. Old Madge delighted in all of this. It was the only and best card to play of course. Unsurprisingly then 'Attila the Hen' was quick to attack the Soviet empire upon taking office in 1979. It was one of Thatcher's first acts to persuade the European Economic Community to put a stop to its shipments of food and powdered milk to the children of Vietnam. After that decision a third of all infants under five deteriorated and many were stunted. Perhaps the only journalist to document this in the West was John Pilger. He also kept an eye on Thatcher's support for the enemies of the enemy in a bid to support one dominion over another in the Cold War.

 

It was not enough that the US war in Indochina had killed maybe more than 3 million people. The children of Vietnam were guilty by virtue of being born into a Communist state that had dared to try and defy the American empire. When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and overthrew Pol Pot it was the US - still bitter over its humiliation in Indochina - led the chorus of international condemnation. Quick to follow the Americans as ever the British were soon on the side of Pol Pot. It was a matter of supporting China's influence in the region over that of Russia. The Khmer Rouge claimed to be the legitimate government of Kampuchea, so the US and the UK supported their bid to hold onto their seat in the UN. The West withheld aid to Cambodia until the Vietnamese occupation came to an end. The argument was that the Vietnamese would not let the aid reach the Cambodian people. Meanwhile, Vietnam sent over 25,000 tonnes of food aid across the border to feed civilians.

Instead the US government piled on the pressure for the World Food Programme to send $12 million in food to the Khmer Rouge sitting across the Thai border under UN protection. As Pilger has noted, the US had been secretly funding Pol Pot in exile since January 1980. The extent of this support - $85m from 1980 to 1986 - was later revealed in correspondence to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Major government would admit in 1991 that the UK had provided the Khmer Rouge with SAS training from 1983. It was in a 1988 interview for Blue Peter of all settings that the 'Iron Lady' clarified her view of the Khmer Rouge "Pol Pot could not go back... but some of the Khmer Rouge of course are very different I think there are probably two parts to the Khmer Rouge there are those who supported Pol Pot and then there is a much much more reasonable grouping within that title 'Khmer Rouge'..." This should not shock the cold-eyed realists of the world.



In the bid to support China mattered more than justice - which was not on the balance sheet of priorities. The deaths of 1.2 million people under Pol Pot were a price worth paying for extending China's reach and rolling back Russian influence. In the surrounding region the Thatcherites were a force of continuity and pledged support for Suharto in Indonesia. This support went as far as arming Suharto's troops to butcher the people of East Timor. The deals were overseen by minister Alan Clark, who had no concern for the consequences of his actions. Again, the justification for America's support for Suharto was to hold-off Communism. Sukarno was too left-ish and had to go, the CIA made sure of that in 1965 with the coup that installed Suharto for the next 33 years. The deaths of 200,000 people in East Timor didn't matter, neither did the deaths of more than a million people in Indonesia itself. It mattered not to Mr Reagan as little as it did to Mrs Thatcher.

 

This was a policy not contained nor unique to East Asia. It was the Thatcher government which violated Britain's neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war and began to sell as many arms as possible to Saddam in 1981. The American government had yet to remove Iraq from the terrorist list at that time. Once Iraq had been taken off the list (and replaced with Cuba) the Reagan administration threw total support behind Saddam. Before the Reaganites could fully align themselves with Hussein in 1982, Thatcher was sending Christmas cards to not just Saddam Hussein but Colonel Gaddafi. Together the Reaganites and the Thatcherites won over Saddam to the American side of the Cold War. That was before the standing of both Saddam and Gaddafi changed. Over 20 years later, as Jonathan Schwarz noted, the Iron Lady penned this line for an article "Saddam must go... It is clear to anyone willing to face reality that the only reason Saddam took the risk of refusing to submit his activities to U.N. inspectors was that he is exerting every muscle to build WMD."

 

We're living with the legacy of Thatcherism abroad and not just at home, it is very much alive and kicking. It's not just that we live with privately owned electric companies and a crippled labour movement. It was Thatcher's foreign policy which stands as the extension of the prescription of austerity, privatisation and deregulation. Financialisation and wars of aggression are not as far from one another as it may appear. Both were just as short-sighted as one another. It was the Thatcher-Reagan support for Iraq in its development of weapons of mass-destruction in the 1980s the Iranians reacted by re-opening the nuclear facilities that had been closed with the era of the Shah. We know how this ended for Iraq and we should be alarmed by the ongoing aggression demonstrated by the US and the UK towards Iran. It could all too easily escalate into a full-blown war and we know whose side we shall be on. And for that we may thank the departed.

Chomsky on Cambodia.

In the late 1970s Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman were following the Western reception of atrocities in Cambodia alongside the case of East Timor. The figure of 2 million killed was repeatedly deployed in US media, it originated in a book review by Jean Lacouture of Ponchaud's work Cambodia: Year Zero which was published in 1978. Lacouture said that the Khmer Rouge boasted of killing 2 million people, yet it was not in Ponchaud's writing which claimed 800,000 people died in the US bombing from 1970 to 1975. Since the emergence of the Khmer Rouge, amidst the devastation of the bombing, an additional 1.2 million had died according to the US embassy in Bangkok. When Chomsky pointed this out to Lacouture he soon published corrections in which he conceded that the killings may have been in the thousands rather than in the millions. American intelligence confirms that the slaughter was in the tens of thousands and may well have ran into the hundreds of thousands. But it was too late and the figure of 2 million remains stuck in the minds of many even three decades later.

Ever since then Chomsky has been tarred as a defender of Pol Pot's atrocities. The charge has become a favourite tool on the Right who have regularly deployed it to bash Chomsky. Yet it was Noam Chomsky who points to the 1978 invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam as perhaps only one of two instances of ' humanitarian interventionism' since the Second World War. The other example he highlighted was in 1971 when India invaded East Pakistan, ending a massive slaughter and did so out of less than benign self-interest. Likewise, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia came just as Pol Pot's crimes were really picking up. By 1979 the capital of the country was in Vietnamese hands and the Khmer Rouge had fled to the Thai border. The Vietnamese would be condemned internationally as "outlaws" and "gangsters" for this invasion, the United Nations would support the Khmer Rouge in its claim to govern Cambodia while the US would lead the international effort to starve Cambodia as long as the Vietnamese occupied the country. Later William Shawcross would bemoan the silence over Pol Pot's crimes, that he imagined, pinning the blame on the scepticism of the Left.

The point that Chomsky made was that the West has never concerned itself with questions of human rights, only when it is convenient to do so. The crimes committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia constitute 'nefarious bloodbaths', which are condemned in the strongest terms because they are committed by the enemy, whereas the crimes of the Indonesians in East Timor were 'constructive bloodbaths' and therefore worth our support and our silence. The US, Canada, Britain and Holland supported the Indonesians all the way, while the West continued to pose as humanitarians over the atrocities in Cambodia. Suharto had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia in the 1960s, but the US supported him because he was open to American influence and investment. This helps to illuminate the "dramatic shift" away from condemnation to outright support of Pol Pot during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. As the Khmer Rouge became a force of opposition to the occupation, thereby becoming an opponent of Russian influence, the US shifted its support as part of its new-found alliance with China.

Near the end of her reign, Margaret Thatcher said in an interview "Most people agree that Pol Pot himself could not go back, nor some of his supporters who were very active in some of the terrible things that happened. Some of the Khmer Rouge, of course, are very different. I think there are probably two parts to the Khmer Rouge, those who supported Pol Pot and then there is a much much more reasonable grouping within the Khmer Rouge." The Iron Lady went on to qualify her statement, that this is what the experts on Cambodia have told her. She didn't go as far as to admit that the British government had been training the Khmer Rouge through the SAS for several years. That would come out in 1991. All of this was later confirmed on the Cambodian side by Ta Mok when he was arrested in 2000. Yet the Right still have the audacity to accuse Noam Chomsky of taking the side of Pol Pot in the midst of 'Year Zero'. It remains the favourite means of vilification for the neoconservatives who describe themselves as "revolutionaries" while they are nothing less than chickenhawks.

For a Few Rice Bowls More.

 

During the appalling crimes of the Khmer Rouge the US remained vocally critical, but effectively stood back in as part of the push to open up China. The subject of human rights was never an issue of policy, not that it has ever been since. Washington postured over Pol Pot and the media moralised, there was a whitewash for who was funding Suharto's genocide in East Timor. It's impossible to understand these events without keeping in mind the American war on Vietnam. Originally the US waged war on South Vietnam after its proxy terror-state slaughtered 70,000 people and aroused an uncontainable resistance. The liberal administration in Washington arranged a "seat change" for President Diem, a man they had put in power, and just before JFK was assassinated Diem was promptly executed. The pretext for all of this was to contain China and the absurdity of this justification didn't become apparent until Nixon went to China years later. Nixon embraced Mao as US planes were dropping the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on Cambodia.

 

 

The US continued to block all attempts at peaceful settlement until 1975, by which time Cambodia and Vietnam had almost been bombed back into the stone age. Washington had failed to achieve its maximal objectives, a ravaged Indochina would live on, but its main objectives were actually fulfilled by 1965 - when the US installed Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Suharto in Indonesia. By then Vietnam was devastated, estimates of the Vietnamese dead ranged from 3 to 4 million. The war had been continued for the sake of US prestige. The aim had been to kill the "virus" of independence in Vietnam, the fear was that the rot might spread to Indonesia and eventually Japan. That would mean the US would lose everything it had fought for in WW2. The common perception of American defeat in Vietnam is not unfounded. This reading lacks subtlety in terms of analysis and exhibits imperial self-pity in conclusion. In short, the US secured its regional objectives though Vietnam survived the onslaught as a outpost of Soviet power in the Far East.

 

The US establishment was left profoundly bitter and sick over Vietnam and remains so to this day. So when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia the US led the chorus of condemnation, even though the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge. In fact, the US and its allies went as far as to support the Khmer Rouge as a government-in-exile of which Sihanouk became a representative. The Khmer Rouge were allowed to hold onto their seat in the UN as the legitimate representatives of Cambodia. And as a guerrilla force against the Vietnamese occupation the Khmer Rouge received training from the SAS, which the British lied about until 1991. Until then Western governments withheld a great deal of aid to starving Cambodia. The argument was that the Vietnamese would not allow food to reach everyone that it should, namely the Khmer Rouge - who were holding 45,000 people hostage at the Thai border with the protection of the UN. In spite of its battle to rebuild itself Vietnam sent over 25,000 tonnes of food aid across the border to feed civilians.

 

 

Upon the invasion Sihanouk was deployed to make a speech damning Vietnam's aggression at the UN, after which he sought refuge in China. He was later anointed as President of the coalition in waiting. As the respectable face of a government, which included many mass-murderers, Sihanouk thanked the US for passing on lists of Cambodian "traitors". In this grubby partnership Sihanouk was constantly aware that his life was in the hands of hardcore Khmer Rouge in his own entourage. In the meantime the Khmer Rouge decided to wage a guerrilla war and wait for the Vietnamese to be driven out of Cambodia as a force condemned as "outlaws" by the international community. The move would then be a forceful takeover of the country and a return to the barbarism of the 1970s. The Vietnamese occupation was not undeserving of criticism given its brutal repression of dissent and racist policies against minorities. In the end Vietnam left the country in the hands of Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge who had defected to Vietnam, who continues to dominate Cambodia.

 

 

With the end of the Vietnamese occupation the transition to a liberal democratic capitalist state began. Yet it was only a formal shift to a multiparty system of representation as Hun Sen remains in power to this day in a sort of dictatorship lite. The old command economy has been blown apart to make way for markets and the forces of capital. Sihanouk was reinstated as King while the Khmer Rouge stood at a far and tried to appear as a modern force by embracing market liberalism. The power-sharing arrangement was between Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh and thankfully not Pol Pot. Once again the conservatives banded around the royal family began to collaborate with the Khmer Rouge. In response Hun Sen orchestrated a coup and purged around 40 royalists. By now King Sihanouk was fixing pardons to rehabilitate the old men who had led the Khmer Rouge in its heyday. It would be another decade until a handfull of these aging killers would even see an indictment.

Who was Sihanouk?

 

Norodom Sihanouk, the self-styled King-Father of Cambodia, has died at the age of 89 in circumstances far more pleasant than the many Cambodians he outlived. He spent his last years in North Korea and China, the appropriate compatriots of a man who took the side of the Khmer Rouge out of his own opportunism. It's true that Sihanouk was just another man clutching at straws in the chaos of the American war on Indochina. He was both a hostage of and accomplice to the Khmer Rouge. Just as Sihanouk had juggled the various powers in the Vietnam war to maintain Cambodia's "neutrality" and hold onto the thrown, the demagogue went on to stand as a voice of opposition during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. To this end Sihanouk took the side of the Khmer Rouge in those years as the respectable face to the international community. And yet Sihanouk began his reign as a playboy and demagogue, it seems he learned quick how to dance to the tune of foreign powers.

That was the case with the French until the old empire was on its last legs. Sihanouk moved to establish an independent state in 1953 and reinvented himself as the father of the nation. Yet the young King continued the alliance with France even after independence. In 1955 Sihanouk stepped down as King, letting his father take his place, only to lead the country on a populist appeal to cultural conservatism, revolutionary nationalism and Buddhist socialism. Though Sihanouk later took up the powers of King as a Prince when his father died. It was a balancing act, Sihanouk was keen to keep Cambodia out of the Indochinese conflict and played leftists against rightists. In the end, his former deputy, Lon Nol seized power in a putsch in 1970 with the approval of the CIA. It was then that Sihanouk forged a coalition with Pol Pot. Meanwhile the reactionary nationalist Lon Nol supported the US campaign to repeatedly bomb Cambodia thereby laying the road to Phnom Penh for the jungle-dwelling guerrillas.

As the Khmer Republic crumbled in 1975 Lon Nol opted for a last stand - it came straight out of Buddhist mysticism - and when the Khmer Rouge surrounded the capital the Marshall had a ring of consecrated sand spread around the entire city. The sand couldn't save Cambodia from what happened next. At first the mood was one of celebration as the youthful troops draped in black and red garb marched into town. The mood soon changed when the thugs started to evacuate the city, dumping the old and the infirmed at the side of the road to die. The rest of the people were marched into the jungle at gun-point. During all of this Sihanouk spent his time between Beijing and Pyongyang, upon his return to Cambodia he would serve briefly as a mascot monarch of the Angkar. He gave a lie-riddled speech at the UN defending Pol Pot, though Sihanouk was just a pawn in a game this was no trivial game. The Chinese supported Pol Pot in order to colonise Cambodia and counter the shift of power as Vietnam realigned itself with the Soviet Union.

For more on this period of Cambodia's history see my latest article.