Sunday, July 29, 2007

Cambodia - The Invasion of Kampuchea



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very good information.

Anonymous said...

A quote from Sihanouk, “I was blinded and behaved like an idiot.”

We knew along that China and Hanoi were conspired to commit atrocity on Cambodia, but we could not do anything about it because our so-called "leaders" were pretty much spending time bickering at one another's head. We did not have intelligence and if we did, we could not do anything about it because Sihanouk had already proclaimed "Cambodia is Sihanouk, and Sihanouk is Cambodia - the father of everything about Kampuchea"

2L

Anonymous said...

Sihanouk himself quotes a diplomat as saying that he was walking a tightrope. The biggest and first mistake Sihanouk made was trying play the big powers off against each other, on the one hand he allowed the VN access to Cambodia with the Ho Chi Minh Trail and on the other he tried to accommodate the U. S. at the same time. That couldn't go well. Cambodia already had that Communist insurgency - the Khmer Rouge - run by Pol Pot. He might have avoided his demise if he had gone along with the Americans and closed the HCM Trail. But, of course, it will never be known what would have happened after 1975 if he had helped the U. S. and if the U. S. then would have helped fight and eliminate the Khmer Rouge at that time. They probably would not. Sihanouk certainly did not show good moral fortitude when he coalesced with the Khmer Rouge twice. That was the greatest disservice he did his Khmer people, despite the fact that the Pol Pot regime was recognized as the legitimate Cambodian government by most of world.