Killing fields then and now

March 03, 2007
Power Line News

The Times (London) is giving away a DVD of "The Killing Fields" to readers today. It has called on William Shawcross to comment on the film and has published his column "Remember: For Cambodia, read Iraq." Shawcross refers 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.

Shawcross does not take the valuable space afforded him by the Times to note that, as I recall, 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 ("Was Kissinger Right?") of 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 are briefly intimated in today's column, which applies lessons learned to the challenge before us in Iraq. In his column 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." For more, see John Miller's "The Shawcross redemption."