It was both. Or do you suggest that the vacuum in power left behind after our departure didn't allow more of a free run in that area?
Imagine had we followed the constitution and never entered without a declaration....
*sigh*
Bush Co.'s new spin on the war.
- Thread starter Jarod
- Start date
Imagine had we followed the constitution and never entered without a declaration....
*sigh*
ummm, yeah. Because the Khmer Rouge were virulent anti-Soviets. We supported them for that reason.
Remember who is was that finally ended the killing and removed pol pots regime? The communist vietnamese army. lol
What vacuum of power? It was the communist regime in N Vietnam who eventually intervened to stop the genocide in Camodia, over the objections of the United States.
Yes, we should never have entered, but to state that it was our withdrawal that allowed the rise of the Khmer Rouge, rather than the fact that we bombed and murdered hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and supported a succesful coup against their leader, who had to be overthrown for a more US compliant leader, read; weak, who was then himself overthrown by Pol Pot, is to buy straight into the bush regime's rewriting of history.
Don't forget, we have to fight them there or they will follow us home like they did in Vietnam. A statement that our moron in chief also made, which I have not seen replayed in the MSM. did you know that the Vietnamese followed us home Damo??? I mean, other than opening some Vietnamese restaurants on the West coast I'm not sure what they did once they got here, but your boy says that they did follow us home.
You dont think our being there is adding to the slaughter of innocents?
Bush tried this whole line of reasoning the other day, and historians were jumping out of the woodwork to refute that claim. Our departure is NOT responsible for the slaughter in Cambodia.
It's a bogus analogy, anyway. Iraq is an entirely different situation, and YES, it can easily be argued that our presence there is & has been as much a catalyst for violence against innocents as anything that our departure may or may not cause. There is no question that our presence there is a cause celebre (remember that term?) for terrorists both in that region & elsewhere.
It's a bogus analogy, anyway. Iraq is an entirely different situation, and YES, it can easily be argued that our presence there is & has been as much a catalyst for violence against innocents as anything that our departure may or may not cause. There is no question that our presence there is a cause celebre (remember that term?) for terrorists both in that region & elsewhere.
You go sister.
Totally nailed it. NeoCons have been trying to rewrite the history of the vietnam war for years: to somehow tie liberals and our withdrawl from Nam, to the atrocities of Pol Pot. Its total bullshit, as you point out so well.
I quite well remember, that in a move of realpolitick, the United States actually nominally supported the khmer rouge because they were so anti-soviet. And it was the vietnamese that ended pol pot.
What a freakin' lame excuse to claim that we should have stayed in vietnam.
We must take responsibility for our destablization of the region. We must learn from our mistakes or we will again repeat them in the future. We must take back our constitutional protections and not allow another foray into a War Power Act debacle.
Whether we leave or not we are responsible for the result.
Lies, Lies, and More Lies, in History-Illiterate America
Larry Beinhardt
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:
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.
huffingtonpost.com
Larry Beinhardt
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:
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.
huffingtonpost.com
Keep dreaming. Both dems and repubs are trying to pin the whole thing on Malaki right now, and the repubs are also gearing up to blame the whole thing on "the liberals" and "the defeatocrats".
I agree we are responsable for the result... Not me personally as I did not vote for Bush and fought to prevent the war... But the collective we.
The most responsability lies with he who campaigned for the war and who rallied, using carefully chosen words, to trick the American People into supporting an invasion.
Also responsable is Congress for not standing up to Bush and his war cheerleading when they had the power. You can not include the 1/2 of the Democrats who voted against the war resolution.!
Lastly I hold responsable those who were dumb enough to vote for a sham of a man like GWB.
Now there is plenty of responsability to go around... what are we going to do about it. I used to think we owed it to the people of Iraq to stay and try to stabilize the nation, now I think we are only hurting the situation and we owe it to them to ask the UN to take over and get our asses out!
The man wouldn't matter if our leaders did as they swore and upheld the constitution, especially when considering the War Powers Act.
No matter how many ways I frame it, it is a protection that is being end-run, and neither party suggests to simply go back to what they swear to uphold.
No matter how many ways I frame it, it is a protection that is being end-run, and neither party suggests to simply go back to what they swear to uphold.
If you blame a group as a whole it would be REPUBLICANS. CONGRESS was REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED... 1/2 of the Democrats voted against it and 100% of the REPUBLICANS voted for it!
The President is a REPUBLICAN.
I blame every one of them that didn't argue against it based on the unconstutionality of the war powers act. Those who swore to uphold the constitution. Every republican except one, every democrat in office at the time, and those currently in office republican and democrat that do not argue getting rid of that insane act that only brings idiocy as it bypasses one of the protections wisely added by our forefathers.
Again there is plenty of blame to go around... what are we going to do about it?
I used to think we owed it to the people of Iraq to stay and try to stabilize the nation, now I think we are only hurting the situation and we owe it to them to ask the UN to take over and get our asses out!
I used to think we owed it to the people of Iraq to stay and try to stabilize the nation, now I think we are only hurting the situation and we owe it to them to ask the UN to take over and get our asses out!
I think we owe it to them to recognize our mistake, speak on it, and simply ask for some help. Until that help arrives we shouldn't leave. I believe if we did all of those things that the international community, who don't want destabilization of the region, will help us.
