So again, you just have no idea? — Tzeentch

I know something about the history in South East Asia. Do you?

Pol Pot was supported by Mao and finally the Vietnamese kicked him out and into the jungles of Cambodia until even his supporters got enough of him. Vietnam retreated from Cambodia I think in 1989. And as usual, the US fucked up it's inconsistent Machiavellian policies and operations starting first with the Sihanouk regime and then with the fear of the Soviet backed Vietnamese. What else is new? Giving a list of literature on the US involvement doesn't refute in any way the fact that the major supporter of the Khmer Rouge was Mao's China.

Just to put into context the pathetic actions of the US in South-East Asia after the withdrawal from South Vietnam, here's a factoid from WIKILEAKS:

A WikiLeaks dump of 500,000 U.S. diplomatic cables from 1978 shows that the administration of President Jimmy Carter was torn between revulsion at the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and concern with the possibility of growing Vietnamese influence should the Khmer Rouge collapse.

But did they give aid, just like the US gave intel to Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war? CIA did many stupid things, but then one has to look at the real military supporter of the Khmer Rouge.

Yet this doesn't seem to get through. Of course, again everything, EVERYTHING has to happen because of and only by the Americans, as there are no other actors, only proxies or victims. Would you even know or notice the Cambodian–Vietnamese War that actually put the end to the Khmer Rouge? And that this resulted in the Sino-Vietnamese border war? Unimportant because the US wasn't involved and hence something that the American historians won't look so hard into.

Anything without the Americans seems to be totally meaningless for you. That's your biggest problem. And this is the insane navel-grazing that either some Americans and anti-Americans fall into where they cannot see any other actors than their hated USA.

I can only speak for myself, but my own paranoia is the compression of space, that distant events and people can influence local and regional affairs. — NOS4A2

That's the inevitable result of modern technology. Would you prefer that we return to a pre-industrialization society?

Biden’s final “fuck you” to the world was the crossing of “red-lines” and the possibility (50% possibility, according to US intelligence) of all out nuclear war. — NOS4A2

Looks like a response to North Korea's involvement.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

The Trump/Musk backed judge in Wisconsin lost. First real test of voter sentiment.

The Trump/Musk backed judge in Wisconsin lost. First real test of voter sentiment. — Mikie

Wow. Even handing out money didn't work. Which is totally disgusting and I'm really happy of the outcome.



Seems the time for Musk to quietly leave the arena and stop making it worse for his companies.

Anything without the Americans seems to be totally meaningless for you. That's your biggest problem. And this is the insane navel-grazing that either some Americans and anti-Americans fall into where they cannot see any other actors than their hated USA. — ssu

I think quite the opposite is the case, actually.

Every time I point out what kind of an awful country the United States is, people look for ways to twist the facts so they don't have to acknowledge its long list of transgressions.

Anything not to have to face the fact that the US can compete with the absolute worst humanity has had to offer.

The US commited genocide in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, in all three cases murdering large percentages of their peasant populations through indiscriminate carpet bombing and chemical warfare - each several orders of magnitude above what Israel is doing is Gaza, I remind you. The total destruction of the Cambodian societal structure was a direct cause for Pol Pot's power grab, which the US then supported in full knowledge of what Pol Pot was about.

The reason you feel the need to shift the topic away from America's role is because you are unable to accept it.

Every time I point out what kind of an awful country the United States is, people look for ways to twist the facts so they don't have to acknowledge its long list of transgressions. — Tzeentch

Then we could have a conversation of the Bush policies and the response after 9/11. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is quite different from Korea and even from Vietnam, or the retaking of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

Pol Pot's power grab, which the US then supported in full knowledge of what Pol Pot was about. — Tzeentch

Is that really so?

During the 1970–1975 war, the United States provided $1.18 billion in military assistance to the Khmer National Armed Forces in their fight against the Khmer Rouge

It was Lon Nol, that the US backed up in the fight against Pol Pot. And Sihanouk claims (likely correctly) that the coup against him by Lon Nol was backed up by the CIA.



Only for the US to then, far later, to be in good terms with Sihanouk again. Which just shows how clueless the US can be in it's machinations. The US is simply one actor, even if important, that is one among many and often doesn't get it's agenda through. Here's Sihanouk with Reagan later.



So get your history and historical perspective correct, Tzeentch.

Is that really so? — ssu

So get your history and historical perspective correct, Tzeentch. — ssu

The United States was instrumental in creating the pretenses necessary for the Khmer Rouge takeover and the genocide that followed. The United States bombed the Cambodian countryside comprehensively in the beginning of the 1970s to disrupt supply routes of the
communist Viet Cong along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

In actuality, the bombings destabilized the relative economic stability of Cambodia and radicalized shell-shocked Cambodian peasants to join the Khmer Rouge to avenge their dead relatives and friends. Not only did the United States inadvertently provoke the Khmer Rouge coming to power, they also shielded Pol Pot and his lieutenants from prosecution during the 1980s, massively contributing to impunity for crimes against the people of Cambodia. According to Ben Kiernan, a leading scholar in the Cambodian genocide, the United States had two main reasons for delaying justice for Cambodia.

The first reason being that, due to the Cold War, the United States provided military and financial support to the Khmer Rouge during the 1980s in order to undermine the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, which demonstrated that they saw Cambodia as a dispensable pawn in a larger ideological struggle between the dominant nations of the day. The United States waited until “1997…to condemn the Khmer Rouge” because then they no longer posed a military threat to the Vietnamese and, therefore, their role to the US was over.6

The second reason that the United States delayed justice in Cambodia was because of their muddy involvement in the genocide. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was limited to prosecuting Khmer Rouge crimes from 1975-1979 because the United States could have been culpable for their contribution to the genocide with the bombing campaigns and the aid they provided to the Khmer Rouge after the official genocide ended. — Elmhirst, 2023

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You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. — Henry Kissinger

I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” According to Brzezinski, the USA “winked, semi-publicly” at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

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That Kissinger quote is from 1975, by the way. If you know your dates, you'll know exactly what that means.

What you're inadvertently engaged in is the denial of responsibility for genocide - apparently not something that only Likud-sympathizers are guilty of.

I'm closing this thread as this dumpster fire has raged on for long enough. I will restart it in the Politics category with a new OP and from now on I will start moderating it stringently so it will befit a philosophy forum. No more flaming, no more crackpot theories, no more sharing of other people's opinions as a substitute for thinking for yourself and making an actual argument. I won't hesitate sinking that new thread into The Lounge again if it goes sideways. Please try to waste as little time of the moderators as possible.