What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition.
Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
French and British tourists discuss
bargainsilk scarf purchases on the Mekong River boat ride from
Chau Duc to Pnom Penh. The mighty Mekong makes the Mississippi
look like a trickle. The river runs from the Tibet south through
China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. It empties into
the ocean at the southern tip of Vietnam.
Streams, estuaries and smaller
rivers flow in and out of it. Alongside these water routes, endless
trails and little roads wander off into the countryside. In 1969,
the great intellectual National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger,
secretly ordered the bombing of Cambodia to stop arms supplies
from North to South Vietnam. This genius thought that B 52 bombers
could "interdict" the infinite streams and estuaries.
Hubris? Ignorance of history and geography?
I saw no signs of bombing, nor effects of dioxin, the poison
contained in Agent Orange, dropped in massive quantities on Vietnam
to defoliate it and reduce enemy hiding places. These toxins
produced horrific diseases, deformities and birth defects
and still do. But tourists on a boat, however, saw only the bucolic
river life and compared the "friendly quality of the Vietnamese,"
as one Sheffield resident phrased it "with the more surly
Koreans."
Cambodian farms replace Vietnamese along the river and the level
of agricultural energy noticeably drops. In place of the diversified
Vietnamese farms, we began to see one-crop farming. Vietnam's
agricultural and industrial economies are booming; Cambodia depends
on tourism and agriculture. The Vietnamese boat guide explained
that the better-off Cambodian farmers tend to do the minimum
amount of upkeep on their land, while living in town or city
homes. Children seeking relief from the heat dove into the river.
Occasional small fishing boats, with men leaning over the side
tending nets, rocked gently in the speed boat's wake.
As the boat nears Pnom Penh, smoke stacks from lumber mills emit
steady streams of pollution. Hotels and restaurants for tourists
adorn the avenue running above Pnom Penh's river bank. Following
a Lonely Planet suggestion, we lunched at the Foreign
Correspondents club.
The waiter made a tent with his hands and bowed gracefully in
greeting. The busboys and even the bartender smiled. We sampled
Fish Amok, a curried white fish wrapped in banana leaf over rice,
and pumpkin soup three stars.
On the street, the level of commerce is clearly lighter than
in the Vietnamese big cities. Pnom Penh lacks the energy of Ho
Chi Min City and Hanoi. Locals move more slowly than in Vietnam
it's a little hotter and appear peaceful and courteous.
Less horns blow. How could such gentle people have engaged in
wanton slaughter during the holocaust?
Before Pol Pot died in 1998, he told a journalist that he had
"a clear conscience." Yet, between 1975 and 1979 he
oversaw the executions, starvation or death by overwork of more
than 1.5 million people who shared a common history, including
one of the eight wonders of the world.
Some of the walls at the AngkorWat temple, built between
the 9th and 14th Centuries, still contain pock marks made by
bullets, residues of Vietnamese and Cambodian "communists"
fighting each other amidst the splendor of palaces built by grandiose
kings.
Located outside the city of Siem Reap, 315 miles north of Pnom
Penh, Angkor Wat now connects with the world. A daily flight
links Seoul with Siem Reap. An Iceland Air plane and a Bangkok
Air jet filled with Europeans landed just after our flight from
Pnom Penh.
The surrounding archeological area contains 100 temples, now
administered by a joint UN and Cambodian government commission.
But they have not figured out how to recover the missing Buddha
heads and other "archeology" pieces that thieves purloined.
Siem Reap's main street, however, has aspects of Las Vegas. Bright
neon flashes from 102 hotels more under construction
and one casino. The tourism rush has transformed this once sleepy
village. Banks and travel agencies that provide guides, cars
and cash for the thousands of Asians, Europeans, Americans and
Australians share the real estate with expensive restaurants
and clubs.
The super friendly, if not overly servile, hotel staff does not
appear to be groveling for tips. Did any of their parents rat-out
their grandparents to Pol Pot's goons for slaughter?
In 1949, Pol Pot received a government scholarship to study in
Paris where he quickly became a communist. By 1953, just after
France granted independence to Cambodia, he established the Khmer
Rouge, the Communist Party. From 1960 to 1963, he led the Party
from a jungle lair where he had fled to escape Prince Norodom
Sihanouk's police. Can we blame his French education France
ruled Cambodia until 1953 for his murderous propensities?
By 1968, the Khmer Rouge emerged as an armed struggle movement,
seemingly typical of the period: Cambodian guerrillas fighting
government troops in the name of poor peasants. Maoism!
Between March 1969 and May 1970, Kissinger ordered some 3,600
B 52 bombing raids on Cambodia. Kissinger later lied to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee saying he had selected only "unpopulated"
areas of Cambodia for bombing.
Somehow, between 600,000 to 800,000 civilians died in these "unpopulated
areas. This carnage occurred before Pol Pot won power. Refugees
from the bombing abounded; others left because of poisonous herbicides
dropped by U.S. military aircraft. Neither Vietnamese nor Cambodians
have recovered from this toxic side of the "the American
War."
Kissinger's undeclared war against Cambodia also included overthrowing
the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. A pro U.S. military
coup produced an ineffective regime and subsequently led to the
seizure of power by the Khmer Rouge. How little Kissinger "the
realist" knew of reality!Or maybe he didn't care!
After a more obedient government let the U.S. do what it wished
in Cambodia, the Prince allied himself with the Khmer Rouge to
resist the coup.
At the time, Washington offered
a domino theory if Vietnam fell to the communists, then
neighboring states would topple like dominoes. But such "theories"
ignored bitter rivalries and hatred in the region. In 1960, the
indissoluble Soviet-Chinese communist marriage, a U.S. axiom,
ended in a rude divorce in 1960. Pol Pot lined up with Beijing;
Vietnam depended on Moscow for arms and supplies.
In 1975, Congress cut the military
operations budget in Southeast Asia. The United States cut and
ran and North Vietnam quickly won the war. The Khmer Rouge grabbed
power from the demoralized army, killed their own people and
staged incursions into Vietnam.
Pol Pot launched an "agrarian communist revolution"
backed by China and, as Vietnam's enemy, Washington also supported
the Khmer Rouge government's "killing fields."
In 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Pol Pot's troops fled into
the jungle. By 1993, the Khmer Rouge had grown sufficiently weak
so that the Vietnamese could withdraw. Conflicting Cambodian
parties signed a peace agreement. In the ensuing UN-supervised
election, boycotted by the Khmer Rouge, the royal party triumphed,
but somehow members of the KR managed to squeeze significant
posts out of the new government.
By 1997, Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's
brother-in-law, threw in the towel, along with some 10,000 other
members of the guerrilla army. Pol Pot ordered subordinates to
murder one of his defecting generals and his family. In June
1997, Pol Pot's own troops took him prisoner. He died a year
later.
The attorney for a French hotel
chain shook his head. "This country is still traumatized,"
he whispered. "Up to 2 million Cambodians died and then
the new government granted amnesty to all warring sides."
He laughed cynically. "It will take time."
Our Cambodian guide, Sam, short for a much longer name, repeatedly
stressed Pol Pot's unspeakable horrors. "But it's over,"
he smiled, as he pointed to a seemingly endless mural etched
into the Angkor Wat walls in sandstone depicting life in the
12th Century. Suryavarman II (1113-1150) initiated the temple
construction, dedicated to Vishnu. In 1177, invading Chams sacked
the Khmer temple, but King Jayavarman VII restored it and built
Angkor Thom a few miles north. Art adorns the walls; the architecture
makes me feel small. At sunset the temple reflects in the moat
in front of it. Tourists gaze in awe.
"Cambodians will recover
from the Pol Pot days," Sam assured me. "History,"
he smiles, "is hard to predict." The construction of
one of theworld's wonders fascinates spectators because
it exemplifies the human imagination. The holocausts perpetrated
by Pol Pot or Adolph Hitler reflect the other side of the human
potential.
UN and some Cambodian leaders
havemade unsuccessful attempts to fashion a court to
try Khmer Rouge leaders. A current UN-Cambodian government tribunal
looms on the horizon. Meanwhile, Pol Pot cronies live in Pnom
Penh; indeed, some serve in high government positions.
In Vietnam, U.S. war crimes have taken a back seat to U.S. business.
But they have not been forgotten. A late March Hanoi conference
explored Agent Orange's impact on Vietnamese health, and opened
up possibilities for investigating U.S. officials' "imagination"
at a war crimes tribunal.
Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.