In addition, a small group that is able to take power (out of the power vacuum created by US bombing and the collapse of the Lon Nol government) can find itself desperate to keep that power when there's hardly any majority support, hardly any popular legitimacy. Having little or no "soft power," it resorts to using "hard power" (brutality).
After all, the Bushwhackers are "a highly ideological group that came to power without having their brutality tempered by reality" but they do have a political base in the U.S. (many evangelical Christians, hard-core Zionists, ideological businesspeople, etc.), and thus some soft power or legitimacy. Their brutality is directed outward, toward Iraqis, Afghanis, etc. -- Jim Devine "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" -- Richard Feynman