Remembrance of 50 Years Ago Today

[PeterRS]

Most of us grew up with it. For some it had been a long drawn out ghastly struggle. For many it would result in even longer bitter memories of the death of colleagues and loved ones. For others it was a mere tangent to history in a part of the world we knew precious little about. For 3 million Vietnamese, they had died where they fought or lived, victims of an illegal war waged as we now know on the mere pretence of enemy action against a US warship.

Although the Vietnam War officially ended with a Peace Deal between Vietnam and the USA in January 1973, one party broke the deal. North Vietnam kept up its activities in the South until it fully united the country. Liberation Day was April 30 1975.

For Americans it had all started in 1954 with the humiliating defeat of the France colonial army at Điện Biên Phủ. The French general in charge committed suicide and France finally pulled out of its Indo-Chinese colonies quickly thereafter. President Truman had tried to stop the French from returning after WWII only to be met with a firm "Non!" by French leader General De Gaulle. De Gaulle then tried to persuade America to enter the war on its side. This time it was President Eisenhower who said "No". On April 27 he wrote to his good friend Edward ‘Swede’ Hazlett, “Any nation that intervenes in a civil war can scarcely expect to win unless the side in whose favor it intervenes possesses a high morale based upon a war purpose or cause in which it believes. The French have used weasel words in promising independence and through this one reason, as much as anything else, have suffered reverses that have been really inexcusable.”

Yet despite Eisenhower's reluctance, with the French finally out of South East Asia the spectre of the "domino theory" had started to raise its ugly head in the corridors of Washington. At the end of his administration in January 1961, Eisenhower’s thoughts about Vietnam being a "civil war" had evaporated and the "domino theory" had gained the upper hand. By this time the United States was providing unwavering support and power to the unstable, utterly corrupt and unpredictable anti-communist government of South Vietnam led by the President Ngô Đình Diệm. Virtually no-one in the USA voiced any criticism of the incompetence of the cigar-chomping Diệm. A staunch Catholic, he promoted Catholic values and permitted that Church exemptions in property acquisition. When in protest Buddhist monks started self-immolating the the streets, Diệm's wife virtually encouraged this by saying, "If Budhists want to have another barbecue, I will be gad to supply the gasoline!" 

By this time, though, he United States had begun its long effort to prop up the south by financing an increase in the South Vietnam army by over 150,000 troops. Following a coup on November 1 that year, Diệm was deposed. On the following day he was assassinated. The coup had been backed by America’s CIA, the first of the CIA’s many actions during the ensuing Vietnam War, although far from the first of such operations in the region - as the peoples of Laos were well aware.

What happened thereafter is less important for we now know so many of the facts. None have been more revealing than those written by Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of Defense and one of the primary architects of the Vietnam War. In 1995 he wrote an astonishing mea culpa in his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." He writes, " We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated on the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

[vinapu]

13 hours ago, PeterRS said:

- as the peoples of Laos were well aware.

 

too bad that American people weren't 

[PeterRS]

With its wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the United States murdered amost 5 million Asians and left generations and countries scarred for life. And all one Secretary of Defense can say is, "We were wrong, terribly wrong." Is that an apology? If so, it is a disgrace! What has the USA done to clear up the unexploded bombs it rained down over officially neutra Laos every 8 minutes of every single day for 9 whole years? The cost to the US Treasury? Around US$44 billion. Let's never forget: this was an illegal war, one kept secret from Congress and never approved by Congress. That war is still not taught in American schools! Is that because the war was against the law in the United States? Were any US officials held to account, court martialed, jailed? Not that I know of. And Laos still suffers today from the estimated 80 million unexploded US ordinance which stil today kills mostly children. A bomb that cost $3 to manufacture now costs $1,000 to locate and destroy.

The view in Washington is eerily similar to some other of its other secret wars (i.e. Cambodia): Sorry guys, we bombed the hell out of you with cluster-fuck bombs for 9 years and now you can clear up all the mess we left behind. From 1993 the US has contributed a paltry $200 million towards that clearance in Laos (set against the $44 billion that secret war cost, this is more than a disgrace - it is evil). Now Trump and his acolyte Musk have even halted this aid.

As of today, only 1 percent of the uneploded bombs have been cleared. And McNamara has the gall to write, "we acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation." War should never be undertaken on the basis of "thought". Had the USA power brokers had any real clue about South East Asia, had they any experts with real knowledge of the desires of nations to run their own affairs, the wars in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia would probably never have happened - certainly to the extent they did. As Washington continues to shirk from its responsibility for the weapons it rained over Laos, the USA has never been called to account for these disasters.

Yet quite a few US Lao vets are doing their thing in helping make amends. When one named Super realised the enormity of what the US had done, he claimed, "I am appalled. I was ashamed." At least that was more than McNamara had admitted.

https://whyy.org/segments/vietnam-veteran-reflects-on-cia-bombing-campaign-in-laos/

[vinapu]

I'd add that cold war politics contributed to another fuck-up w e in the West should be forever ashamed for. Even if Khmer  Rouge atrocities become well known and proven,  their government of so called Democratic Kampuchea kept UN seat for many years thanks to Western support. 

[PeterRS]

Let's also not forget that Hun Sen, the long time Prime Minister of Cambodia following the Vietnam invasion of 1979 had been a member of the Khmer Rouge fighting under its banner for 7 years. It was only in 1977 during internal purges in the Khmer Rouge leadership and long after the atrocites had resulted in the murder of well over a million of its own citizens that Hun Sen defected to the Vietnamese. After the success of the invasion 2 years later, he was appointed Foreign Minister, later becoming Prime Minister in 1985. Refusing to accept the result of the UN backed elections in 1993 in which the opposition party won the majorty of seats, the coalition he out together finally broke down after he orchestrated a coup in 1997. After rigged election followed rigged election he only resigned in 2023 - putting his son in his place. Through violence and corruption he gained considerable wealth and retained power.

I suppose that at least he brought the country a degree of stability after the ghastly Pol Pot years. In the year 2000, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew described him as "utterly merciless and ruthless, and without humane feelings."

[vinapu]

18 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I suppose that at least he brought the country a degree of stability after the ghastly Pol Pot years. In the year 2000, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew described him as "utterly merciless and ruthless, and without humane feelings."

that Hun Sen was stabilizing force can't be denied and it was not easy task  because foreign support for  Khmer  Rouge leftovers as well as  some support they retained in the countryside. It's hard to believe but Ta Mok's house  , one of chief KR butchers ,  is still preserved and can be viewed in Anlong Veng. The same with cremation site of Pot Pot.

In early 80-ties I attended lecture of diplomat and  scholar in the SE Asia history and politics.  Two things he told us about the source of KR sort of popularity I memorized  to this day - bone breaking work in he fields  people  chased out from the cities were forced to do,  for majority of rural population was what they did day after day anyways.  And second - that  beneficial side effect of mass murder and extermination was that finally peasants did not need to work to pay off debts their grandparents took to finance their own wedding.

World often marvels as why Cambodia did not bring to the justice those who subjected her population to such horrors from own hands. This may be,  in some part , reason. At end of day there was no justice for victims but at least peace and some form of prosperity for survivors. 

as for Lee, I'd be interested what Hun Sen had to say about him , just to keep things even handed

 

[PeterRS]

I arrived in Hong Kong just as the boat people were fleeing in large numbers from Vietnam and a few from Cambodia. From my apartment window I could see one of the first Vietnamese boats grounded off Lamma island to the west of Hong Kong. No one wanted to go near it until some aid agencies took relief supplies to these poor people who had suffered so much. From then on the Hong Kong government opened its doors to those fleeing these countries, initially in pretty awful refugee camps but later allowing the inhabitants out to work in the Hong Kong community. 

1979 was also the first year that the world became aware of the horrors that Pol Pot's government of now renamed Kampuchea had inflicted on its own people. A book I bought that year remains on my shelves and I still refer to it - William Shawcross' shocking and horrific "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia." For to the power brokers in Washington, Camdodia had been just that - a sideshow to the main war in Vietnam. Just as in Laos, authority from Congress had never been sought or approved, and so it was an illegal series of masive bombings in that blighted country. These so destablised the country and left a power vacuum that Pol Pot's small group and his growing numbers of executioners were quick to fill. 

Not that Cambodia had been a haven of peace before the American bombers destroyed a good part of it. It was a faction riven country with Prince Norodom Sihanouk as its titular head. What went on prior to the Pol Pot years (my guide always referred to them as such, never to the "war") is of less consquence in this thread; more, as @vinapu writes, it should be about what happened thereafter.

Under Sihanouk, Cambodia had been a member of the United Nations since 1955, two years after gaining independence from France. To become a member, a vote of two thirds of the General Assenbly is needed. As its legal government during the Pol Pot years, it retained membership. But being kicked out of a UN seat is no easy matter. It requires a vote of at least 9 out of the 15 members of the Security Council. Perhaps (and this is my guess) because its government following Pol Pot's regime was technically one obtained by an illegal incursion by the Vietnamese, Security Council voting never reached 9 against. In 1979 India did table a proposal that Cambodia's seat should remain vacant. This was voted down.Thus the stain on the United Nations that it retained the Khmer Rouge as the UN representative until 1989. No doubt Mao and China played a role in the machinations of the Security Council as it had backed the Khmer Rouge.

But we must remember the United Nations role in stabilising the country. On March 15 1992 it became the first body ever to become the ruler of a UN sovereign territory. From that date, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)  became the sovereign government of Cambodia. Its achievements during that time were more than significant. 46  UN countries contributed 22,000 personnel incuding 16,000 soldiers to demilitarise the various factions and set in motion the apparatus to enable the country to operate as a nation state. One group that refused to disarm was the Khmer Rouge. The UN also put constraints on the Vietnamese. Strangely perhaps, the ruler of the country during these next 18 months was a Japanese diplomat!

Cambodians as a whole were traditionally monarchists and nothing that had happened in their recent history changed that. So in the general election in 1993 with a 90% turnout a new government involving Hun Sen's party and the royalists formed a coalition. The Khmer Rouge had refusd to take part. It was the last free election the country experienced. in 1998 the royalists mounted a coup. They were defeated. Thereafter nothing was left to hinder power-grabbing Hun Sen from taking over 100%. The UN had vertainly failed to tackle corruption with the result that it has become rampant. In 2010 Hun Sen's government passed a law making whistleblowers illegal. He calls a free press "anarchy" and civil society "an agent iof US-backed change".

[PeterRS]

6 hours ago, vinapu said:

Two things he told us about the source of KR sort of popularity I memorized  to this day - bone breaking work in he fields  people  chased out from the cities were forced to do,  for majority of rural population was what they did day after day anyways.  And second - that  beneficial side effect of mass murder and extermination was that finally peasants did not need to work to pay off debts their grandparents took to finance their own wedding.

With all respect, I think those reasons are absolute nonsense! They represent propaganda of the worst kind by someone who knew little about what actually happened!

I thoroughly recommend you read the harrowing and horrific book "The Gate" by a French ethnologist Francois Bizot who was taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge. Apart from describing the evils of the Khmer Rouge activities in the fields - would you consider peasants having to murder their babies by battering them against a tree an activity peasants did every day of the week? - he manages to befriend one of his KR captors, a man named Duch. He had been a teacher before joining the KR. Soon he became Chairman of the Tuol Sleng prison camp and was thus responsible for up to 20,000 murders of men, women and children. It is said that only 12 emerged from that prison alive. Mercifully he was unable to destroy the prison's records before fleeing from the advancing Vietnamese. Anyone visiting that former school can now see photos of many of those executed for no reason. Duch was the first member of the KR to be tried and sentenced to 30 years in jail, a term later extended. But he died in 2020.

John Le Carre wrote the briliant forward to "The Gate". This short book is indeed worthy of any Le Carre novel and a true picture of what really happened in the killing fields - not someone's guess.

Photos of the Tuol Sleng Prison formerly a school and now a museum to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge

[Raposa]

1 hour ago, PeterRS said:

Anyone visiting that former school can now see photos of many of those executed for no reason. Duch was the first member of the KR to be tried and sentenced to 30 years in jail, a term later extended. But he died in 2020.

What the museum is not so explicit about is the fact that the Tuol Sleng prison was created to purge the KR of enemies within the party itself. The majority of prisoners were KR cadres. This adds a moral complication to the pictures you see in the museum. It is not simply all completely innocent victims but guards and interrogators who found their roles reversed during one of the many purges of the angka.