Cambodia (/kæmˈboʊdiə/; Khmer: កម្ពុជា, or Kampuchea: IPA: [kam.pu.ciə], French: Cambodge), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia (Khmer: ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា, prĕəh riəciənaacak kampuciə, IPA: [prĕəh riə.ciə.naː.caʔ kam.pu.ciə]; French: Royaume du Cambodge), is asovereign state located in the southern portion of the Indochina peninsula inSoutheast Asia.
Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beatHenry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat withCharlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius forstatesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock atThe Hague next toMilošević. While Henry continues to nibblenori rolls &remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.
Anthony Bourdain,A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal (2001), p. 162
Is a holiday in Cambodia Where people are dressed in black A holiday in Cambodia Where you'll kiss ass or crack It's a holiday in Cambodia Where you'll do what you're told It's a holiday in Cambodia Where the slums got so much soul
In Cambodia, or Indo-China,Buddhism conspired withHinduism to provide the religious framework for one of the richest ages in the history of Oriental art.
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage : India and Her Neighbors.
[Nixon] wants a massivebombing campaign inCambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.
Phone call with Gen.Alexander Haig (9 December 1970) quoted in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123. The quotation was an excerpt from one of several phone conversations in which Kissinger ridiculed Nixon’s views about the war: "When Nixon proposed an escalation in the bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger and Haig felt obliged to humor the president while laughing at him behind his back" (Washington Post, May 27, 2004). Transcript at theNational Security Archive
In Cambodia, the Cambodian people, communists and patriots, have risen against the barbarous government ofPol Pot, which was nothing but a group of provocateurs in the service of theimperialistbourgeoisie and of theChinese revisionists, in particular, which had as its aim to discredit the idea ofsocialism in the international arena... The anti-popular line of that regime is confirmed, also, by the fact that theAlbanian embassy in the Cambodian capital, the embassy of a country which has given the people of Cambodia every possible aid, was kept isolated, indeed, encircled with barbed wire, as if it were in aconcentration camp. The other embassies, too, were in a similar situation. The Albanian diplomats have seen with their own eyes that the Cambodian people were treated inhumanly by the clique of Pol Pot and Yeng Sari. Pnom Pen was turned into a deserted city, empty of people, where food was difficult to secure even for the diplomats, where no doctors or even aspirins could be found. We think that the people and patriots of Cambodia waited too long before overthrowing this clique which was completely linked with Beijing and in its service.
Enver Hoxha,In regard to Cambodia, our Party and state have condemned the bloodthirsty activities of the Pol Pot clique, a tool of the Chinese social-imperialists. We hope that the Cambodian people will surmount the difficulties they are encountering as soon as possible and decide their own fate and future in complete freedom without any 'guardian'., inSelected Works Vol. VI, p. 419
…Cambodia has gotten a damaging reputation as a country of scammers—a “scam-state”, if you like. …Cambodia’s authoritarian political system, which isn’t about to open up, has denied space for ordinary people to express themselves as citizens. The next best thing would be to empower [the ordinary Cambodian nationals] as consumers.
TheNazis burned the works ofJews and other authors of whom they ideologically disapproved, but even more dreadful, it seems to me, was the action of theKhmer Rouge in Cambodia, at the start of the insane destruction of their country (including, in the end, the physical destruction of something like one-seventh of the entire population); in the sack ofPhnom Penh which marked the beginning of theirholocaust they burned every example of the printed word they could lay their hands on, from ancient Buddhist scriptures to hospital record-cards.
On 17 April 1975 the capital finally fell to the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot — ruling with a tiny clique of comrades such asIeng Sary andKhieu Samphan under the anonymous cover of ‘The Organization’ — declared that 1975 was “Year Zero’ and started to purge Cambodia of all non-communist influences. All foreigners were expelled,newspapers were outlawed and large numbers of people with the merest taint of association with the old regime — including all religious leaders, whetherBuddhist,Christian orMuslim — were executed. There were even reports of people being killed because they wore spectacles — a sign of ‘bourgeois intellectuals’.
Pol Pot — now known as ‘Brother Number One’ — then embarked on an insane and doomed attempt to turn Cambodia into an agrarianutopia. Thecities were cleared of their inhabitants, who were forced to live inagricultural communes in the countryside. In terrible conditions, with food shortages and crippling hard labour, these communes soon became known as the ‘Killing Fields’, where several million innocent Cambodians were executed. Despite a massive shortfall in the harvest of 1977 and risingfamine, the regime arrogantly rejected the offer ofoutside aid. The country was now riddled withspies and informers, and evenchildren were encouraged to inform on theirparents. Pol Pot went on to conduct purges within the Khmer Rouge itself, leading to the execution of more than 200,000 members.
Neglect in protecting our heritage of natural resources could prove extremely harmful for the human race and for all species that share common space on planetearth. Indeed, there are many lessons in human history which provide adequate warning about thechaos and destruction that could take place if we remain guilty of myopic indifference to the progressive erosion and decline of nature’s resources. Much has been written, for instance, about theMaya civilization, which flourished during 250–950 AD, but collapsed largely as a result of serious and prolonged drought. Even earlier, some 4000 years ago a number of well-knownBronze Age cultures also crumbled extending from theMediterranean to theIndus Valley, including thecivilizations, which had blossomed inMesopotamia. More recent examples of societies that collapsed or faced chaos on account of depletion or degradation of natural resources include the Khmer Empire inSouth East Asia,Eastern Island, and several others. Changes in climate have historically determined periods of peace as well as conflict. The recent work ofDavid Zhang has, in fact, highlighted the link between temperature fluctuations, reducedagricultural production, and the frequency ofwarfare in EasternChina over the last millennium. Further, in recent years several groups have studied the link between climate and security. These have raised the threat of dramatic population migration, conflict, and war overwater and other resources as well as a realignment of power among nations. Some also highlight the possibility of rising tensions between rich and poor nations, health problems caused particularly bywater shortages, and crop failures as well as concerns overnuclear proliferation.
The arms dealers were of especial interest to me. They commonly operated on street corners (some nights, in certain quarters, there seemed to be one on almost every corner) and offered a wide selection ofhandguns and ammo, the odd assault weapon—hardly surprising in a country where you could, I've been told, blow away a cow with a rocket launcher for a fee of two hundred dollars, less if you were prepared to haggle. I saw in them the future of my own country, where death was celebrated with equal enthusiasm, although candy-coated byTechnicolor andvideo games andtelevision news. When the coating finally wore off, as it threatened to do, there we would all be, in Cambodia.
However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand theVietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination inVietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of theU.S.anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in agenocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convincedpacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?
This bombing went on for five years. The Supreme Court never passed any judgment on it and the military speaks with pride today that five years of the bombing of Cambodia killed 16,000 of the so-called enemy. That's 25% killed, and there's a military ruling that says you cannot kill more than 10% of the enemy without causing irreversible, psychological damage. So, five years of bombing, a diet of bark, bugs, lizards and leaves up in the Cambodian jungles, uh, aneducation inParis environs in a strictMaoist doctrine with a touch ofRousseau, and other things that we will probably never know about in our lifetime -- including, perhaps, an invisible cloud of evil that circles theEarth and lands at random in places likeIran,Beirut,Germany, Cambodia,America -- set theKhymer Rouge out to carry out the worst auto-homeogenocide in modern history.
