NIXON’S CAMBODIAN SHOCK TREATMENT
By Howard Lisnoff
CounterPunch
lisnoff12262008.html
Dec 26 2008
CA
"Just Bomb the Hell Out of Them"
I recently stopped in at a Cambodian restaurant that I have been going
to for many years. Although eating the food for which a particular
group is known is perhaps the most superficial of ways to communicate
with people, I found myself involved in small talk with the people who
staffed the restaurant on this particular winter day in Providence,
Rhode Island. The young men and women who staffed the business were
indistinguishable from those of their peer group. They were about
my children’s ages. They spoke of their families, the holiday, and
their dislike for the annoying reality program that played on the
television meant to "entertain" those waiting for take-out orders.
When our conversations ended, I thought of the events of long ago that
propelled me to become a war resister. The incursions of Richard Nixon
into Cambodia in April 1970, purportedly to stop the flow of troops
and armaments traveling down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam
into South Vietnam, unleashed consequences that even Nixon could
not have foreseen, but needed to avoid. National Security Archive
transcripts just released relate interchanges between Richard Nixon
and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Regarding the dropping of
millions of pounds of bombs on Cambodia by the U.S., Nixon responds
to Kissinger: "That shock treatment [is] cracking them. I tell you
the thing to do is pour it in there every place we can…just bomb
the hell out of them."
Mass demonstrations broke out spontaneously on campuses across the
U.S., students were killed at both Kent and Jackson State Universities,
and I decided that I had had enough and became a resister to the
war. The attacks inside Cambodia weakened the government of that
country and hastened the murderous regime of Pol Pot that resulted in
the massacre and torture of over two million people. The governments
of the world, knowing the lessons of Hitler’s Holocaust, did little
or nothing to stop the carnage!
In the early 1990s I asked one of the owners of the same restaurant
about a jar placed next to the cash register in the establishment
that bore a label about an agency working to support relief efforts
in Cambodia. The owner spoke about her family members who had been
killed during the Cambodian genocide.
What is the record of superpowers and world governmental organizations
coming to the aid and stopping holocausts in the contemporary
era? Holocausts and genocide are not to be confused with "traditional"
warfare that kills millions, but rather according to the United Nations
(1948):
"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including:
(a) killing a member of the group (b) causing serious bodily or
mental harm to members of the group (c) deliberately inflicting on
the group on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part (d) imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group (e) forcibly transferring
children of the group to another group."
Few are ever brought to justice for carrying out genocide. The history
of modern holocausts, contemporary with, and just prior to, the Nazi
Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews include:
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995- 200,000 deaths; Rwanda: 1994- 800,000
deaths; Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979- 2 million deaths: Rape of
Nanking: 1937-1938- 300,000 deaths; Stalin’s Forced Famine: 1932-1933-
7 million deaths; Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918- 1.5 million deaths
(The History Place, 2000).
Added to the above are the more than 400,000 deaths in Darfur cited
by the Coalition for International Justice, a nongovernmental agency
working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (The
Washington Post, "Darfur’s Real Death Toll," April 24, 2005). Even
in the present, the fact of a holocaust seems to draw attention for a
short period of time and then fades from consciousness, both personal
and official. The conclusion is that humanity hasn’t become any more
advanced or humane in the 21st century in dealing with international
crises and wars since the barbarian hordes of the ancient world!
For many years I worked with a woman in public schools who was
instrumental in finding housing in Rhode Island for refugees as
they entered the U.S. from Cambodia and resettlement camps outside
of Cambodia. Her work made a lot of sense to me. It seemed more
practical than my resistance to the Vietnam War had been, but people
do what they can given their immediate circumstances. That the world,
governments, international organizations, and international laws have
become little better at preventing mass murder against a particular
group is of grave concern to those who value peace.
Howard Lisnoff teaches writing and is a freelance writer. He can be
reached at [email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
