The Downfall of Cambodia
Sihanouk's neutrality and his relationship with the two most powerful groups in
Cambodia, the urban elite and the officer corps, proved to be his downfall. It
also proved to be the downfall of Cambodia as American bombing intensified
under his successor and social order disintegrated. T. D. Allman, in Anatomy of
a Coup, observed that:
.... anti-Sihanouk forces' main complaint-when all the charges boiled down-was
that the prince, during almost three decades of one-man rule, had deprived the
aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the army of their traditional slice of the
financial action and of their accustomed place in the sun. It was an
upper-class coup not a revolution.
Sihanouk's new Prime Minister, General Lon Nol, was not neutral but an enemy of
the Vietnamese Communists and therefore, useful to the United States. The
political and military elites in Cambodia and officer corps including
American-friendly Lon Nol were confident that the overthrow of Sihanouk would
meet with American approval.
The American military and CIA considered Sihanouk an enemy and Green Beret
teams commanded by Americans conducted forays into Cambodian territory on
intelligence-gathering missions which numbered 1,000 in 1969 and 1970 (Seymour
M. Hersh, The Price of Power). A highly secret Special Forces unit was
collecting intelligence on Sihanouk before the coup.
Although there has been controversy about the extent of American involvement in
the coup to overthrow Sihanouk, there is documented evidence that the United
States not only encouraged the coup but offered to support it. Samuel R.
Thorton, an intelligence specialist who had been assigned to the U.S. navy in
Saigon, has written that General Lon Nol was seeking a military and political
commitment from the United States after the overthrow of Sihanouk. Thorton
wrote that the United States offered to actually participate in the coup and
that the plan was code named "Dirty Tricks." The operation involved the hiring
of mercenaries to infiltrate the Cambodian army if military support was needed
and a plan to have Lon Nol declare a national emergency calling for American
military intervention in Cambodia to destroy communist sanctuaries.
In late February or early March of 1969, operation "Dirty Tricks" was approved
by Washington with the message that there was interest in the plan at "the
highest level of government," strongly implying that either President Nixon or
one of his top advisors had personally approved the plan. Nol objected to the
plan on the grounds that neither he nor the Americans would be capable of
quelling the popular uprising that would ensue. He suggested that the coup be
executed when Sihanouk was on one of trips to France. The Americans responded
that their support would be forthcoming but that publicly the United States
would have to tread carefully to avert international criticism.
In March 1970, while Sihanouk was in Paris, Lon Nol exploited anti.. Vietnamese
sentiment by organizing demonstrations to protest Sihanouk's tolerance of
communist sanctuaries in Cambodia in order to discredit his policies. The
cabinet cabled Sihanouk in Paris announcing a radical change in military and
foreign policy. Sihanouk's efforts to escape the imminent coup failed and on
Wednesday, March 18, 1970, the assembly met to terminate an era in the history
of Cambodia by voting Sihanouk out of office.
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