[lbo-talk] More on Wikipedia: Now the US army is whitewashing myarticles

Lance Murdoch lancemurdoch at gmail.com
Sun Jul 17 17:26:26 PDT 2005


On 7/16/05, Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> Why can't there be multiple villains? By bombing the hell out of the
> countryside, the US killed so many people and destabilized the country so
> much that an insane group like the KR could take over and kill many more
> people.
>
> It's true that after the US killed many hundreds of thousands of people,
> they don't have a big moral leg to stand on in talking about others'
> butchery in Cambodia, but that doesn't make the KR any less murderous.

You say the CPK killed many more people than that killed by the US's dropping of hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs, that they were butchers and murderous...yet there is very little evidence to support any of that. Not that there wasn't and isn't a lot of talk about that - then again, there is a lot of talk in the US that POW's are still being held by the Vietnamese. All US post offices are required to fly the POW/MIA flag six times a year. Are you a believer in that too? Is the butchery of the CPK the same as the butchery of the Vietnamese depicted in Chuck Norris "Missing in Action" movies, a butchery of American prisoners supposedly still held by the Vietnamese? I doubt it. Cambodia was aimed at a high-brow audience, POW/MIA at low-brow.

When it comes down to it, the people offering the idea that the Cambodian communists killed people on a massive scale have almost nothing to offer. They offer the last census taken in Cambodia - in 1962 as proof (which wouldn't count people killed by the US bombing of course, but that's best left forgotten). Or the testimony of English or French-speaking Cambodians in Thai refugee camps, chosen to talk to reporters by the Thai authorities. That's the story offered - and when compared to something like the records for the Nazi holocaust, is a joke. The story doesn't add up, so it's best not to talk about the story, and talk about the people saying the emperor wears no clothes as crazed or whatever. Which becomes harder when you ask why the US supported the CPK after 1979, why would the US get behind what you term an "insane group". I mean, this is all nonsense, it's a common heritage of delusion between white American yuppies, like heaven and hell are for those who are a class or two down.

Lance



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