"Sideshow - Nixon, Kissinger and the Secret Bombing of Cambodia", by William Shawcross, is an excellent source. "In Sideshow, journalist Shawcross presents the first full-scale investigation of the secret and illegal war the United States fought with Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, paving the way for the Khmer Rouge massacres of the mid-70s." 467 pages, Simon & Schuster (May 15, 1979), ISBN: 0671230700
The Chinese pledged to support the Khmer Rouge's rivalry with the Vietnamese but recommended against all-out war, knowing full well that Vietnam was in a much better position to win the fight. The meeting probably delayed an impending Cambodian assault on Vietnam, but the Vietnamese interpreted it as another sign of China's military support of an increasingly dangerous Cambodia. "
"My enemy's enemy is my friend." Truly a morally bankrupt policy, and (thus?) a major plank in world realpolitik. There's no need to have any ideology or philosophy or anything else in common other than a shared enmity.
For another view of China, try "Fanshen - A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village" by William Hinton. On his return to the US Hinton's copious notes and documentation for the book were impounded for 18 years, by the US Customs and then by Senator Eastland's Committee on Internal Security. This is an extraordinary book, there's nothing else quite like it. Highly recommended by Joseph Needham and many others. 637 pages, Monthly Review Press (1966), ASIN: B0006DEZZW
Best wishes Keith
Hi Hakan ; I admit that I don't really know the whole story, so anyone please feel free to correct me. I have many Khmer friends, and I discuss this with them often. >From what I understand there were weekly flights to Beijing for supplies and military strategists. However (CS), this was only after a decade of secret bombing by the US had smashed the country and killed countless people.. Pol Pot And Kissinger - On war criminality and impunity http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/hermansept97.htm and The death of Pol Pot http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/apr1998/plpt-a18.shtml "It was here that Pol Pot, heavily influenced by the Chinese Stalinists, devised the political perspective of what was to become the Khmer Rouge--an extreme form of Mao Zedong's eclectic mixture of Stalinism, nationalism and peasant radicalism. It is characteristic of the ideological falsification produced by Stalinism that the label of Marxism has been placed upon social and political phenomena which have nothing whatsoever to do with the ideas of Marx, Engels or Lenin. Classical Marxism envisioned a new society, democratically controlled by the working class, which would take as its point of departure the highest level of the productive forces developed under capitalism. This presupposed the widest possible scope for the development of industry, science and technique, all of them bound up with the growth of cities, the urban proletariat and the cultural life of the population as a whole. No more grotesque distortion can be imagined than to categorize as "Marxist" the ideas of Pol Pot and his cohorts. As early as the 1950s Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot's closest aide, had outlined a perspective of creating a primitive peasant-based society in which money, culture and all other facets of urban life would be abolished." and http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/faq/polpot2.html "The Khmer Rouge regime reached a climax in September 1977 when Pol Pot took to the airwaves and spoke for nearly five hours on Cambodian radio. For the first time, Pol Pot acknowledged to the world that Cambodia was now run by a communist government. The day after the speech he flew to Beijing to meet with Hua Guofeng, who had just become leader of the People's Republic of China following the death of Mao Ze Dong. The Chinese pledged to support the Khmer Rouge's rivalry with the Vietnamese but recommended against all-out war, knowing full well that Vietnam was in a much better position to win the fight. The meeting probably delayed an impending Cambodian assault on Vietnam, but the Vietnamese interpreted it as another sign of China's military support of an increasingly dangerous Cambodia. " I guess this validates what we have all been saying. The average American wouldn't support secret bombing of Cambodia, yet there was secret bombing. The average Chinese wouldn't support Pol Port, yet there was Pol Pot. It is the shysters at the top that seem to screw things up for everybody. Will the average person ever see? I still have hope. Best Regards and Happy New Year!!, Peter G. Thailand --- Hakan Falk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Peter, > > You live closer to it, but I have large difficulties > to see that China > was behind the Cambodian Pol Pot philosophies. It > was in its > essence an onslaught on education and knowledge, > something > that is very difficult to identify with the policies > of China. > > China have during the last 50 years had a very > active support of > education and knowledge. They have gone to extremes > to build > a solid base of professionals in all sciences. I > have seen and > experienced this, since the early 1960's, in their > student programs > for foreign studies and their willingness to send > students to other > countries. > > Hakan
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