- 21 Mar 2013 04:05
#14197857
Regarding Cambodia, I support what the Vietnamese socialists wanted to do with Cambodia's government.
The United States supported Pol Pot because they knew that Pol Pot would wreck Cambodia and thus advance liberal interests. In collaboration with China the USA thought it necessary to destabilise anything in the region that wasn't either under United States or Chinese influence, and one such place was Cambodia. That is why the Khmer Rouge was funded and used as a counterweight against the Cambodian government and against Vietnam.
The Heritage Foundation in 1984 published a report called "Mandate for Leadership II", in which they called on the United States government to provide even more attention and funding to be directed toward, and I quote, "...employ[ing] paramilitary assets to weaken those communist and noncommunist regimes that may already be facing the early stages of insurgency within their borders and which threaten U.S. interests..."
Amazing. And what paramilitary assets are those?
Vietnam was meanwhile suffering sanctions for its previous efforts to remove the Khmer Rouge:
But hey, facts be damned, just troll me.
The United States supported Pol Pot because they knew that Pol Pot would wreck Cambodia and thus advance liberal interests. In collaboration with China the USA thought it necessary to destabilise anything in the region that wasn't either under United States or Chinese influence, and one such place was Cambodia. That is why the Khmer Rouge was funded and used as a counterweight against the Cambodian government and against Vietnam.
The Heritage Foundation in 1984 published a report called "Mandate for Leadership II", in which they called on the United States government to provide even more attention and funding to be directed toward, and I quote, "...employ[ing] paramilitary assets to weaken those communist and noncommunist regimes that may already be facing the early stages of insurgency within their borders and which threaten U.S. interests..."
Amazing. And what paramilitary assets are those?
TIME Magazine, Monday, Feb. 06, 1989 wrote:"I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot," recalled Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Adviser, in 1981. "Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could." The U.S., he added, "winked semipublicly" as the Chinese funneled arms to the Khmer Rouge, using Thailand as a conduit.
Throughout the Reagan Administration, the Khmer Rouge have been part of a loose and unholy alliance of anti-Vietnamese guerrilla groups that the U.S. helped create. Pol Pot has lurked in the shadows of the Reagan Doctrine.
In the past year the U.S. has grown increasingly concerned that the Khmer Rouge might fill a vacuum left by a Vietnamese retreat from Kampuchea. As part of Mikhail Gorbachev's overall policy of defusing Third World conflicts, Moscow has been pressuring Viet Nam to end its occupation. Hanoi has agreed to pull out all its troops by September. In response, China seems willing to cut off support to the Khmer Rouge once the Vietnamese complete their withdrawal.
But defanging the Khmer Rouge will require more. As Pol Pot's mentor Mao Zedong once said, "Power comes from the barrel of a gun," and thanks to years of Chinese-Thai assistance, with tacit American blessing, the Khmer Rouge have more guns than the two non-Communist guerrilla groups that the U.S. has been aiding directly. The CIA estimates that the Khmer Rouge have enough materiel to fight on for an additional two years against their erstwhile allies.
Vietnam was meanwhile suffering sanctions for its previous efforts to remove the Khmer Rouge:
wiki wrote:In 1978, when Vietnamese leaders launched their invasion of Kampuchea to remove the Khmer Rouge regime, they did not expect a negative reaction from the international community. However, the events that followed the invasion showed that Vietnamese leaders had severely miscalculated international sympathies towards their cause. Instead of backing Vietnam, most member countries of the United Nations denounced the Vietnamese use of force against Kampuchea, and even moved to revive the battered Khmer Rouge organisation that once governed the country with such brutality. [...]
The international community's political stance towards Kampuchea had a severe impact on the Vietnamese economy, already wrecked by decades of continuous conflicts. The United States, which already had sanctions in place against Vietnam, convinced other countries of the United Nations to deprive Vietnam and the People's Republic of Kampuchea of much-needed funds by denying them membership to major international organisations such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
But hey, facts be damned, just troll me.