Vietnam's real lessons »

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  rimbaud

  Aug. 25, 2007, 6:22 p.m.

  It was the Vietnamese who went in and rescued the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge, after we left. Who knows if it wasn't our incursion into Cambodia that brought the Khmer Rouge to power? In any case, that domino fell in the right direction, and now Vietnam has preferred-nation trading status with us. Many died, but at least the conflict did not go on idefinitely, after we left.
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  rimbaud

  Aug. 25, 2007, 6:23 p.m.

  From Wikipedia...

  Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge. Kiernan and Owen argue that "Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began,[3]. In his study of Pol Pot's rise to power, Kiernan argues that "Pol Pot's revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia" and that the U.S. carpet bombing "was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot's rise."
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  rimbaud

  Aug. 25, 2007, 6:23 p.m.

  ...By December 1978, because of several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Cambodia, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam deteriorated. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. Despite American and Chinese aid, these Cambodian forces were repulsed by the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese forces then invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists assisted the Vietnamese, and, with Vietnam's approval, became the core of the new puppet government.

  At the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west, and it continued to control an area near the Thai border for the next decade. It was unofficially protected by elements of the Thai Army and the United States Special Forces, and was funded by diamond and timber smuggling.
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  rimbaud

  Aug. 25, 2007, 6:23 p.m.

  We supported the Khmer Rouge simply because they were the enemy of our former enemy???! Looks like we might be making the same mistake with Iraq and Iran!
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  rimbaud

  Aug. 25, 2007, 6:24 p.m.

  From the article... Radical Islamists like Osama bin Laden do subscribe to a hateful ideology. But to imagine that Bin Laden and others of his ilk have the capability to control the Middle East, restoring the so-called Caliphate, is absurd, as silly as the vaunted domino theory of the 1950s and 1960s.

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