Henry Kissinger, China And Third Indo-China War – Analysis

February 2, 2012
By V. Suryanarayan
SAAG

“Ideology had disappeared from the conflicts. The communist power centres were conducting a balance-of–power contest based not on ideology, but on national interest.” – Kisssinger, On China

“There had been an amazing cynicism and duplicity on the Chinese side. And they preach against imperialism and act themselves in the old imperialist and expansionist way. Altogether their policy seems to be one of unabashed chauvinism.” - Jawaharlal Nehru, Speech in Lok Sabha, December 10, 1962

The much awaited book, On China, written by scholar diplomat Henry Kissinger, not only makes fascinating reading, it is an invaluable reference material for students of international relations. From July 1971, when Kissinger made his first secret visit to China, he has maintained excellent equations with successive generations of Chinese leaders. He views contemporary history of China as a continuation of the past and describes the rationale behind Chinese thinking, diplomacy, strategy and negotiations.

This essay is a re-evaluation of the Third Indo-China War based on the writings of Henry Kissinger. The author has also referred to the Memoirs of Singapore statesman Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000, and the recently published autobiography of former President of Singapore SR Nathan, who was associated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the Third Indo-China War. The book is entitled An Unexpected Journey, Path to Presidency. Few preliminary observations are in order before analyzing the subject under scrutiny.

Significance of Vietnamese Revolution

The revolution in Vietnam, under the inspiring leadership of Ho Chih Minh, is one of the most brilliant chapters in the history of twentieth century. With massive aid from both Soviet Union and China, but with only their reluctant assent and occasionally even against their wishes, the heroic people of Vietnam humbled the United States and struck a death blow to imperialism and neo-colonialism. During the Third Indo-China War there was a vicious attempt to distort the true nature of the Vietnamese revolution, malign and vilify the Vietnamese leaders as war mongers and legitimize, in retrospect, the American military intervention in Vietnam. We must be on our guard against this distortion of history.

Khmer Rouge Trial Takes Shape

The initial hearings in Cambodia’s Case 002 have closed. The lines of defence to be employed by the four accused of involvement in genocide are becoming clear.

July 01, 2011

By Luke Hunt

The Diplomat

The historic Khmer Rouge tribunal wrapped-up its initial hearings in Case 002 this week, winning widespread praise for its conduct, as a legal strategy emerged for defending Pol Pot’s surviving lieutenants against charges relating to the deaths of up to 2.2 million Cambodians.

Absent were the sometimes shrill cries over investigations surrounding potential future trials and allegations of political interference that had dogged recent weeks at the Extraordinary Chambers for the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC).

Instead, a steady and methodical (at times tedious) legal process emerged as a full bench of International and Cambodian judges, the defence, prosecution and civil parties set about trying senior Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity allegedly committed between April 1975 and January 1979.

Peace with Honor? Lessons from Ending the Vietnam War

President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (Bettmann/CORBIS)

November 3, 2010
By Franz-Stefan Gady
Foreign Policy Journal

Despite many critical voices of the overuse of the Vietnam War metaphor when talking about the war in Afghanistan, there are many striking similarities between the last years of the Vietnam War and the Obama administration’s attempt to extract most US combat forces from Afghanistan within the next twelve months.

Recent news from Afghanistan that the Taliban and the Afghan government have started negotiations should be treated with caution. Initial talks may only be the beginning of a long drawn-out negotiation process towards peace, as an examination of the Nixon administration’s effort to win the Vietnam War on the negotiation table and its determination to have, in Nixon’s words, “Peace with Honor” illustrates. The United States will not play as important a role in direct Afghan to Afghan talks that may involve other regional stakeholders (Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan etc.), but ultimately the United States and NATO will cast the decisive vote on Afghanistan’s future by deciding when to withdraw its combat forces and what amounts of foreign aid the Karzai regime will receive in the years to come.

Given the upcoming NATO Summit in Lisbon in November and the already looming withdrawal of most NATO combat forces from the region within the next eighteen months, looking at Nixon’s and Kissinger’s attempt to end the war in Vietnam may be worthwhile.

As a historical precedent to President Obama in 2009, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon came into the White House in 1969 to end the War that had become a “bone to the nation’s throat”, to quote a former White House speech writer. Talks with the North Vietnamese, begun under the Johnson administration in Paris, were stalled. The main objectives of the United States on the negotiation table were the territorial integrity and independence of South Vietnam, a withdrawal of all US combat troops from South East Asia, and a cessation to communist insurgent activity in the South.

Similar to the dilemma of supporting a controversial head of state in Afghanistan today, the Nixon administration reluctantly propped up a largely unpopular leader, Nguyen Van Thie, who was reelected in 1969 after winning a fraudulent election, and whose regime was infamous for its corruption. North Vietnam’s strategy, in a nutshell, was to outlast the Americans, oust the Thieu regime, and take possession of the country once the United States withdrew.

Comparable to President Obama’s surge strategy, Nixon decided to increase military pressure on Vietnam. Henry Kissinger insisted that, “A fourth rate power like North Vietnam must have a breaking point.” Upon taking office in 1969, Nixon secretly conveyed to the North Vietnamese that he was seeking peace and willing to negotiate, but that the United States was willing to escalate the conflict should its demands not be met. Nixon’s first attempt to gain concessions from the Vietnamese on the negotiating table failed. Over a period of fifteen months, the United States Air Force dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. The major stumbling blocks, the integrity of South Vietnam and the preservation of the Thieu regime, obstructed negotiations for the next three years.

The ratchet up strategy of current proponents of escalating US engagement in Afghanistan may be unwise. North Vietnam in 1969 shifted from an offensive to a defensive strategy, limiting offensive operations in the South and even withdrawing troops across the demilitarized zone, not due to military setbacks, but to wait Nixon out until public opinion at home would force a US withdrawal of combat troops — something, as sources in Kabul claim, is precisely the Taliban’s strategy.

Frustrated by North Vietnam’s unwillingness to make any substantial concessions at the secret negotiations in Paris, Nixon ordered the formation of a secret National Security Council Study Group to come up with “savage punishing blows” for the North Vietnamese. Yet the conclusion of the Study Group, chaired by Henry Kissinger, showed that increased military pressure would not yield additional concessions from Hanoi.

The insurgents in Afghanistan, despite being battle weary, will certainly also not be willing to make any major concessions with US troop withdrawal a few months away, despite an increase in drone strikes and special forces operations activities throughout the country. Indeed, we know from the recently instated High Peace Council led by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani that the withdrawal of NATO combat forces is the major Taliban/insurgent condition for any Afghan led peace process.

The North Vietnamese, cleverly manipulating US negotiators, essentially bought time by making vague proposals that amounted to little substance, and complaining about procedural matters such as the size and set up of tables at the negotiations in Paris. Their real goal until 1972 was to buy time for North Vietnam to resupply and strengthen their forces for the final military blow against the Thieu regime. The insurgents in Afghanistan, although in no way comparable in size, equipment, and capabilities to the Vietcong and the regular North Vietnamese Army, will probably employ similar delaying tactics until the withdrawal of US led coalition forces. Any initial “willingness” by Taliban and other insurgent leaders to talk has to be seen in this critical light.

The famous Vietnamization policy was a direct consequence of the United States’ failed attempt to break the deadlock at the negotiating table with military force and domestic pressure to start withdrawing US combat troops. Without consulting his South Vietnamese ally, Nixon unilaterally announced this policy, frustrated by the lack of military progress and mounting US casualties. Within months, the South Vietnamese Military became one of the largest and best equipped armies in the World (by 1974 South Vietnam’s Air Force was the fourth largest in the world). At the same time the United States stepped up its Phoenix program, headed by the CIA, and — just as its modern successor, the Drone strike campaign, targets insurgent leaders — aimed at decapitating the leadership of the Vietcong and destroying Vietcong strongholds in the South. The United States claimed substantive gains and the elimination of over 20,000 Vietcong cadres in South Vietnam. However, the Vietcong’s command structure and ability to conduct operations remained intact. So far, despite successful hits, the same is largely true for Taliban personnel in Pakistan who have been targets of drone strikes.

Indeed, there are also striking similarities between Obama’s decision to step up the drone strikes into Pakistan and Nixon’s controversial decision to invade and bomb Cambodia to buy time for Vietnamization, and destroy North Vietnamese safe havens. At the end, despite having claimed to have killed 2,000 insurgents and substantially disrupted North Vietnamese supply bases and “treasure troves” of intelligence (according to Henry Kissinger), it did not alter the outcome of the conflict, but led to the massive destabilization of Cambodia. Events in Pakistan today illustrate the danger of undermining a government’s authority in their own territory. The strategic military impact of recent drone strikes remains to be seen, but so far have not influenced the Taliban’s offensive capabilities substantially.

In October of 1970, Nixon launched a “major new initiative for peace” which was promptly rejected by Hanoi. More US troops were withdrawn and the process of Vietnamization accelerated. Nixon also expanded the war into Laos in 1971 to disrupt enemy supply lines and to force a military decision. Talks failed over the same fundamental issue: the future of the South Vietnamese government under Thieu.

Later in 1971, Kissinger made yet another secret proposal to the North Vietnamese: Complete US withdrawal in exchange for US POWs held in Hanoi. Again North Vietnam rejected the offer, reluctant to concede one of the few bargaining chips for negotiating with the United States. North Vietnam again insisted on the removal of the Thieu regime, which the US dismissed. North Vietnam proposed open elections in September 1971, on the condition that the United States withdraw support for Thieu. Kissinger and Nixon refused.

In March 1972, North Vietnam launched a large-scale invasion of South Vietnam with conventional forces, having carefully prepared its offensive capabilities the previous two years and having stalled negotiations in Paris. Despite some initial progress, North Vietnam was repelled by massive US air raids in the demilitarized zone, Hanoi, and Haiphong. Kissinger for the first time made secret concessions to North Vietnam that would allow for North Vietnamese Forces in South Vietnam after a cease fire, undermining the sovereignty of South Vietnam, but still insisting on the future existence of the Thieu regime. North Vietnam rejected the deal, and Nixon even further escalated the air war over North Vietnam, and mined Haiphong harbor. In June 1972 alone the US dropped 112,000 tons of bombs.

North Vietnam estimated that it would need three years to recover from the losses incurred during the Easter Offensive (which proved correct) and agreed to shift their war strategy to a “strategy of peace” to buy time and to guarantee the withdrawal of US troops from South Vietnam. A Tripartite electoral commission comprising the Thieu regime, the Vietcong Provisionary Revolutionary Government, and neutralists such as the Buddhists was tasked with formulating a political solution to the conflict after the US withdrawal. Nixon ordered additional bombing raids over North Vietnam over Christmas 1972 to force the Vietnamese to agree to a settlement and to save face vis-à-vis Thieu and the American people. Despite massive air raids, it did not, however, set back North Vietnam’s capacity to conduct war in the South. When the United States and North Vietnam finally came to an agreement in Paris in January and February 1973, Thieu, who had the least interest in an agreement and withdrawal of US troops, did not sign the treaty. The Paris agreement was a compromise agreement securing the return of the majority of US POWs, guaranteeing US troop withdrawal from South Vietnam, and leaving the Thieu regime in power. North Vietnam still had forces in the South, and the large question of the political future of Vietnam was unresolved.

A comparative review of the Nixon administration’s year long struggle to extract the United States from Vietnam holds some valuable lessons for the Obama Administration. First and foremost, it shows that there can be no solution to the conflict if the underlying fundamentals causing the insurgency are not addressed. North Vietnam could not accept the Thieu regime. The Taliban will not accept the Karzai regime, which in their view is illegitimate, corrupt, and foreign imposed. Especially given the looming withdrawal of the majority of NATO led forces and the debility of the Afghan National Army and police force, major political concessions cannot be expected in the near future. The only answer will be unconditional Afghan-led talks between the warring factions with peripheral US participation should any agreement ever be reached.

Second, Afghans have to make peace with Afghans. A chief dissonance in the Vietnam War was that North Vietnam considered the United States to be its prime interlocutor in negotiations, sidestepping South Vietnam’s representatives on many occasions. It is critical that the United States play a role in any peace talks (along with regional players), but in a muted and discreet manner. Afghans have to be able to decide for themselves about their country’s future, a something that was never allowed for the South Vietnamese. However, make no mistake: Despite not playing as prominent of a role as in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States will be the determining factor in any talks.

Third, military escalation of the conflict will not fundamentally influence the negotiation process; it will only prolong the fighting. Temporary military setbacks by either side may delay talks, but the essential issues will remain unchanged: How can the United States extract itself without jeopardizing its core security interests and how can Afghanistan be stabilized?

Fourth, Thieu proved a very difficult partner in negotiations because Nixon and Kissinger never consulted with him on major changes in US foreign policy such as Vietnamization. President Karzai was also presented a fait accompli with the July 2011 withdrawal deadline, and voiced his deep concern that it would empower the Taliban in the long term. A perception of the White House as becoming increasingly insular is gaining a foothold in Kabul and among NATO allies. Whether true or untrue, when it comes to making peace, allies and partners need to be informed of every aspect of US strategy since any reconciliation of warring factions has to be based on consensus. At the end of the day, the United States will be the deciding factor of Afghanistan’s political future.

Fifth, the United States, in any negotiation, should stick to its core national security interests in Afghanistan. The United States made the critical mistake of equating the preservation of the Thieu regime with rolling back communism in Southeast Asia because it lacked a clear perception of its central purpose in the region. Supporting Karzai may or may not guarantee the dismantling of all Al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan (and will most certainly not influence the shifting Al Qaeda activity in Pakistan), but the United States must insist that a future government, which may include insurgent-Taliban representation, disassociate itself completely from Al Qaeda and terrorism. Destroying Al Qaeda is the core national security interest of the United States in Afghanistan and Southwest Asia. Reconciliation, on the other hand, as already pointed out, should be entirely left to the Afghans.

Last, and most important: Afghans, on all sides, know that Western forces will eventually leave. This alone undermines any military credibility sought for the purpose of having a strong negotiating position with the Taliban. Any discussions implying that the current troop surge can influence the Taliban and force them to the negotiation table is wishful thinking. Nixon’s bombing campaigns, as illustrated above, did little to influence North Vietnamese decision making. Vietnamization too had it limits as the United States painfully learned with the fall of Saigon and the defeat of the South Vietnamese Army in 1975. The current capabilities of the Afghan National Army leave little doubt how the tide will turn once US forces have left Afghanistan. Betting on military successes in the next twelve months to obtain concessions on the negotiation table will only lead to increased casualties on both sides without tackling the underlying problems of Afghanistan.

Franz-Stefan Gady is an associate at the EastWest Institute and just recently returned from Afghanistan. The views views expressed in this article reflect those of Franz-Stefan Gady and not those of the EastWest Institute.

Cambodia's empty dock

International justice is a farce while those in the west who sided with Pol Pot's murders escape trial

Saturday 21 February 2009
John Pilger
The Guardian (UK)

At my hotel in Phnom Penh, the women and children sat on one side of the room, palais-style, the men on the other. It was a disco night and a lot of fun; then suddenly people walked to the windows and wept. The DJ had played a song by the much-loved Khmer singer Sin Sisamouth, who had been forced to dig his own grave and to sing the Khmer Rouge anthem before he was beaten to death. I experienced many such reminders.

There was another kind of reminder. In the village of Neak Long I walked with a distraught man through a necklace of bomb craters. His entire family of 13 had been blown to pieces by an American B-52. That had happened almost two years before Pol Pot came to power in 1975. It is estimated more than 600,000 Cambodians were slaughtered that way.

The problem with the UN-backed trial of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders, which has just begun in Phnom Penh, is that it is dealing only with the killers of Sin Sisamouth and not with the killers of the family in Neak Long, and not with their collaborators. There were three stages of Cambodia's holocaust. Pol Pot's genocide was but one of them, yet only it has a place in the official memory.

It is highly unlikely Pot Pot would have come to power had President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, not attacked neutral Cambodia. In 1973, B-52s dropped more bombs on Cambodia's heartland than were dropped on Japan during the second world war: equivalent to five Hiroshimas. Files reveal that the CIA was in little doubt of the effect. "[The Khmer Rouge] are using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda," reported the director of operations on May 2, 1973. "This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of a number of young men [and] has been effective with refugees."

Prior to the bombing, the Khmer Rouge had been a Maoist cult without a popular base. The bombing delivered a catalyst. What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed. Kissinger will not be in the dock in Phnom Penh. He is advising President Obama on geopolitics. Neither will Margaret Thatcher, nor a number of her retired ministers and officials who, in secretly supporting the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese had expelled them, contributed directly to the third stage of Cambodia's holocaust.

In 1979, the US and Britain imposed a devastating embargo on stricken Cambodia because its liberators, Vietnam, had come from the wrong side of the cold war. Few Foreign Office campaigns have been as cynical or as brutal. The British demanded that the now defunct Pol Pot regime retain the "right" to represent its victims at the UN and voted with Pol Pot in the agencies of the UN, including the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from working in Cambodia. To disguise this outrage, Britain, the US and China, Pol Pot's main backer, invented a "non communist" coalition in exile that was, in fact, dominated by the Khmer Rouge. In Thailand, the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency formed direct links with the Khmer Rouge.

In 1983, the Thatcher government sent the SAS to train the "coalition" in landmine technology - in a country more seeded with mines than anywhere except Afghanistan. "I confirm," Thatcher wrote to opposition leader Neil Kinnock, "that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with Khmer Rouge forces or those allied to them." The lie was breathtaking. In 1991, the Major government was forced to admit to parliament that the SAS had been secretly training the "coalition".

Unless international justice is a farce, those who sided with Pol Pot's mass murderers ought to be summoned to the court in Phnom Penh: at the very least their names read into infamy's register.

johnpilger.com

Cambodia's revenge fiasco

Tuesday, March 4, 2008
By GLYN FORD
Special to The Japan Times

"Khieu Samphan was head of state only from 1976, so if he's to be tried, why not "King-Father" Norodom Sihanouk who preceded him?"

BRUSSELS — Cambodia is currently witnessing the commencement of what is likely to become a grotesque farce. In July, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia will try four Khmer Rouge leaders, as well as the commandant of the infamous S21 Tuol Sleng prison, for crimes committed more than 30 years ago. The trials are expected to cost more than 150 million euro, a sixth of the country's annual GDP.

The ECCC has already started taking testimony from witnesses. The former leaders on trial will be Pol Pot's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, his wife Ieng Thirith (social affairs minister), Deputy Secretary Nuon Chea and President Khieu Samphan. The other man in the dock is Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch from the notorious S21.

We've been here before. Eight months after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, the new government tried Pol Pot and Ieng Sary in absentia, sentencing both to death. The trial's pointed references to a Chinese master plan of genocide, however, injected an unpalatable political flavor that Washington found unacceptable, given the Cold War configurations at the time. Retribution was left in limbo until today.

Cambodia's tragic history of more than 60 years culminated in the horrors of the Khmer Rouge's reign from 1975-79, when Pol Pot tried to wipe history and society clean in the ultimate revolution. For him, Kim Il Sung and Mao Zedong might have "socialism as a base but they were not clear of the capitalist framework."

The result was many hundreds of thousands starved, and tens of thousands casually killed by cadres of Angkar (Pol Pot's decision-making organization) in the countryside. This was matched by the torture and killing of a comparable number of cadres in the purges that swept Angkar as failure, incompetence and lying were read as sabotage.

Pol Pot ordered a series of bloody incursions into Vietnam. The Vietnamese counterattacked, invading in December 1978 alongside former Khmer Rouge soldiers who had fled the purges. Phnom Penh was captured in early January. Instead of welcoming the overthrow of the truly awful by those considered merely undesirable, the United States, China, Thailand and Britain all aligned themselves with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Clinging to control in the far western fringes of Cambodia, they continued to hold the country's seat at the United Nations with annual arm-twisting in New York from Washington and Beijing until 1990. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher even sent in the SAS to train, as she put it, the "good" Khmer Rouge. How she distinguished who they were was never entirely clear.

Now almost two generations on, a final accounting is to be enacted. It's as if the Nuremberg Trial of World War II Nazi leaders were being held in 1975. No one has thought to ask the people of Cambodia what they want.

With no secondary mechanism for low-level offenders, there will inevitably be scapegoating of these five survivors at the top. With the exception of Duch, they are old and ill. It is likely that one or more will die before the trial ends.

The ECCC's terms of reference exclude from consideration all crimes against humanity outside of the Khmer Rouge period of power in Phnom Penh. So, former U.S. State Secretary Henry Kissinger won't be on the stand waving his Nobel Peace Prize while defending the illegal and secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia (and Laos) when more tons of high explosives were dropped than during World War II. Nor will other political figures attempt to justify the post-1979 collaboration with this murderous regime.

Asia's equivalent of Nuremberg was the less gentlemanly and more political International War Crimes Tribunal of the Far East. Here the unspoken issue was whether Japan's Emperor Hirohito should be indicted. The decision was made to spare him so that he could act as a conservative rallying point against the threat of communism.

The ECCC faced a similar decision. Khieu Samphan was head of state only from 1976, so if he's to be tried, why not "King-Father" Norodom Sihanouk who preceded him? The process is expected to last until 2012 at least.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, 400 defendants were tried over three years at a total cost of 20 million euro. In Cambodia, it's working out to be 600 times more expensive per defendant.

One of Ieng Sary's lawyers is Jacques Verges, famous for defending Gestapo member Klaus Barbie ("Butcher of Lyon"). In a quixotic twist of fate, Verges was the man who signed up his client, along with Pol Pot, to the French Communist Party in the early 1950s. His grandstanding and histrionics will make the trial entertaining if not elucidating.

In a rethreading of the 1979 "trial," some defense lawyers will argue that Japan's heavy funding of the costs of the ECCC — 17 million euro so far, compared to 750,000 euro from the European Union — is not unconnected to a desire to see Beijing's support of Pol Pot put in the dock.

After decades of refusing to properly apologize (from a Chinese perspective) for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people at Nanking in the 1930s, Japan's neoconservatives could use a Chinese atrocity as a counterweight. The saddest thing about this whole unfolding fiasco is that this might be the best and worst we can hope for.

Member of the European Parliament Glyn Ford has just returned from a visit to Cambodia.

Killing fields then and now

August 23, 2007
PowerLineBlog.com

This past March the Times (London) gave away a DVD of "The Killing Fields" to readers. It called on William Shawcross to comment on the film and published his column "Remember: For Cambodia, read Iraq." Shawcross referred to his own experience researching the events depicted in the film:

At the end of 1975 I went to the Thai-Cambodian border to talk to refugees. Their horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees were being dismissed as CIA propaganda by the antiAmerican Western Left, but it seemed obvious to me that they were true. I wanted to discover how the Khmer Rouge had grown and come to power; I wrote a book called Sideshow, which was very critical of the way in which the United States had brought war to Cambodia while trying to extricate itself from Vietnam.

But horror had engulfed all of Indo-China as a result of the US defeat in 1975. In Vietnam and Laos there was no vast mass murder but the communists created cruel gulags and, from Vietnam in particular, millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US. Given the catastrophe of the communist victories, I have always thought that those like myself who were opposed to the American efforts in Indochina should be very humble.

In Sideshow, Shawcross excoriated the United States for the Cambodian genocide. In the pages of the American Spectator, Peter Rodman memorably dissented from Shawcross's indictment. Shawcross responded, and the Spectator gave Rodman the last word. Shawcross's magnanimity is reflected in his inclusion of the entire Rodman/Shawcross exchange in the Appendix to the most recent edition of Sideshow.

The original Shawcross thesis is presented in undiluted form in "The Killing Fields." It is presented didactically by New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston), one of the film's two heroes. The film shows Schanberg accepting the Pulitzer he received for his reporting on Cambodia. In his acceptance speech, Schanberg blames the United States for the Cambodian genocide.

The ironies are manifold. The Times itself celebrated the assumption of power by the Khmer Rouge and Sydney Schanberg was among those who dismissed doubts about the benign intentions of the Khmer Rouge. Gabriel Schoenfeld writes in his Commentary review/essay ("Was Kissinger Right?") on the third volume of Kissinger's memoirs:

In the beginning, middle, and end of this episode, Kissinger shows to telling effect, the barbaric nature of the Communist Khmer Rouge was painted over in soothing tones by much of the American press. The New York Times was the most flagrant offender. In one dispatch, its correspondent Sydney Schanberg described a ranking Khmer Rouge leader as a "French-educated intellectual" who wanted nothing more than "to fight against feudal privileges and social inequities." A bloodbath was unlikely, Schanberg reported: "since all are Cambodians, an accommodation will be found." As the last Americans were withdrawn, another upbeat article by Schanberg appeared under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." In short order, the Khmer Rouge proceeded to march nearly two million of their fellow Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields. Also in short order, Schanberg went on to greater glory and a Pulitzer prize.

Shawcross's second thoughts about American foreign policy in southeast Asia were briefly intimated in his Times column, which applied lessons learned to the challenge before us in Iraq. In his Boston Globe column "Why we fought," Jeff Jacoby quoted from a 1994 Times column by Shawcross:

Those of us who opposed the American war in Indochina should be extremely humble in the face of the appalling aftermath: a form of genocide in Cambodia and horrific tyranny in both Vietnam and Laos. Looking back on my own coverage for The Sunday Times...,I think I concentrated too easily on the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese and their American allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe that a victory by the Communists would provide a better future. But after the Communist victory came the refugees to Thailand and the floods of boat people desperately seeking to escape the Cambodian killing fields and the Vietnamese gulags. Their eloquent testimony should have put paid to all illusions.

As Jeff commented in a message to us last year: "Whatever else he may believe or advocate, Shawcross seems clearly to be a man of intellectual integrity. That makes his thoughts on the current crisis all the more valuable."

Yesterday President Bush highlighted the column by Shawcross published this past June in the New York Times on the same subject -- this time co-authored with Peter Rodman: "Defeat's killing fields." Both the venue and (as President Bush noted) the joint byline were remarkable. Mr. Shawcross has been a friendly correspondent with us at Power Line over the years. At the time he wrote in response to my request for a few words on the column. His response addressed John Podhoretz's comment on the column at NRO's Corner. Podhoretz had commented:

Twenty-eight years ago, in the pages of the American Spectator, Rodman wrote one of the most authoritative takedowns I (or anybody else) has ever read or written. The subject? William Shawcross's Sideshow — a book that blamed the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia on the United States and on Henry Kissinger. Shawcross, then perhaps England's foremost leftist journalist, has undertaken a singular journey over the past two decades to the view that the United States is the key positive force for good in the world. Today's op-ed completes that journey, and it represents a degree of grace in transformation that is very, very rare.

In his message to us in June Mr. Shawcross wrote:

It's very gracious of him, though I am not sure I agree with everything he says! In particular, I would say that Sideshow did not blame Kissinger and the US for the Cambodian genocide but for creating the conditions in which the KR were able to come to power. But maybe that is splitting hairs after all these years!

I would add only that I have included the full text of my American Spectator exchange with Peter Rodman in every paperback edition of Sideshow that has been published since then.

I finally met Peter only recently, well after the overthrow of Saddam which, as you know, I still think was the proper course of action.

We were introduced by Devon Cross, whom you may know. She is a member of the Defence Policy Board and during the last four years she has been a magnificent unofficial representative of the US in Europe. She has done a terrific job in setting up meetings between US policymakers and European journalists and writers. (She has been far more effective than the State Department in making sure that US policies since 9/11 have been well explained.)

Amongst the many meetings she has arranged in London have been ones with Gen. Petraeus, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, Gen. Jim Jones, Eric Edelman, Gen. Jack Keane...and Peter Rodman. I liked him very much.

And there, I think, you have it.

Mr. Shawcross is the son of Sir Hartley Shawcross, the prominent Labour MP, Nuremberg prosecutor, Attorney-General (he prosecuted Lord Haw-Haw), and attorney for Winston Churchill (he represented Churchill in connection with a defamation claim arising from one volume of Churchill's World War II history). Today Mr. Shawcross writes us: "I think the President made a pretty good speech." He alerts us to his timely, excellent cover story in the current issue of the Spectator (UK): "Now, more than ever, Britain must stay in Iraq." As one can observe through the echoes in his current essay, in addition to his personal example and professional accomplishments, Mr. Shawcross gives us a living link to Sir Winston.

No More Vietnams (or Cambodias)

8.23.2007
Peter Wehner
CommentaryMagazine.com

In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday, President Bush reminded us of the agony and genocide that followed the American retreat in Vietnam:

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea. Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. . . . Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like “boat people,” “re-education camps,” and “killing fields.”

These words summon to mind a powerful passage from the third volume of Henry Kissinger’s memoirs, Years of Renewal, about the horror that befell Cambodia in the wake of Congress’s decision to cut off funding to the governments of Cambodia and South Vietnam.

Kissinger writes that messages were sent to top-level Cambodians offering to evacuate them, but to the astonishment and shame of Americans, the vast majority refused. Responding to one such offer, the former Prime Minister Sirik Matak sent a handwritten note to John Gunther Dean, the U.S. Ambassador, while the evacuation was in progress:

Dear Excellency and Friend:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.

You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].

Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

S/Sirik Matak

Kissinger continues:

On April 13th, the New York Times correspondent [Sydney Schanberg] reported the American departure under the headline, “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life.” The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on April 17th . . . . The 2 million citizens of Phnom Penh were ordered to evacuate the city for the countryside ravaged by war and incapable of supporting urban dwellers unused to fending for themselves. Between 1 and 2 million Khmer were murdered by the Khmer Rouge until Hanoi occupied the country at the end of 1978, after which a civil war raged for another decade. Sirik Matak was shot in the stomach and left without medical help. It took him three days to die.

This is a sober reminder that there are enormous human, as well as geopolitical, consequences when nations that fight for human rights and liberty grow weary and give way to barbaric and bloodthirsty enemies.