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YEAR ZERO + 30
It’s three decades this month since Cambodia’s Year Zero:
Nai Oeurn had reason to celebrate.Cambodia’s civil war was over, and as the 14-year-old Khmer Rouge guerrilla marched into the capital,Phnom Penh, he truly believed his country’s rural poor had triumphed.
Thirty years later, after the “killing fields” and the death of one-sixth of the Cambodian population, his dream has come to this: collecting cow dung for a living, earning 3,500 riel (90 U.S. cents; 70 euro cents) for a 3-foot-high (90-centimeter-high) pile that takes five days to collect.
For him, as for many other Cambodians, the 30th anniversary of the fall ofPhnom PenhonApril 17, 1975, is an occasion to remember the thrill of victory while ruing its horrifying aftermath.
“The ideology we were taught was to clean up the rich and the corrupt, who used to drive cars and look down on peasants, and to send them to work in the rice fields,” Nai Oeurn says.
It became a failed effort to demolish and rebuild the nation from scratch, and resulted in 1.7 million deaths by execution, starvation, overwork or lack of medical care.
John Kerry did his best to help, delivering weapons and all. Hey, servicemen in Iraq! Got any Magic Hat stories? The junior senator from Mekong, Massachusetts, wants to hear ‘em. You might also ask about that Form 180 deal.
(Via Joel Goldberg and Richard McEnroe)
UPDATE. Rebecca H. writes:
My story was 35 years ago, 1970, when new enlisted men were paid $110 a month. My husband moonlighted in a second job so we could eat, as I had just borne a baby and couldn’t work. Service families couldn’t get welfare or food stamps then, because the head of household was “employed”. That was just a little while before Mr. Kerry went to Paris and told stories about America’s babykillers in uniform.
It doesn’t surprise me that young service men and women are still struggling 35 years later. And where has Mr. Kerry been all that time? In politics, in the Senate, I believe. He is so eager to help, so anxious for the wellbeing of our young people in uniform, and yet nothing has changed in 35 years.
He can kiss my ass.
Before we conduct the Truth and Conciliation hearings in which all notable anti-war antagonists are brought forth to admit to their stupidity and beg for forgiveness, we might want to hold a similar hearing for those who supported the Khmer Rouge.
As penace, they should be made to look at photos of all 1.7 million innocent Cambodians who died after the Khmer Rouge took over.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 04 13 at 12:01 PM • permalinkBefore we conduct the Truth and Conciliation hearings in which all notable anti-war antagonists are brought forth to admit to their stupidity and beg for forgiveness, we might want to hold a similar hearing for those who supported the Khmer Rouge.
Might as well do both at once, at least for today’s 45+ year old anti-waristas; they’re pretty much the same people who supported horrors like the Khmer Rouge, I suspect.
This was my response to Mr. Kerry’s request:
My story was 35 years ago, 1970, when new enlisted men were paid $110 a month. My husband moonlighted in a second job so we could eat, as I had just borne a baby and couldn’t work. Service families couldn’t get welfare or food stamps then, because the head of household was “employed”. That was just a little while before Mr. Kerry went to Paris and told stories about America’s babykillers in uniform.
It doesn’t surprise me that young service men and women are still struggling 35 years later. And where has Mr. Kerry been all that time? In politics, in the Senate, I believe. He is so eager to help, so anxious for the wellbeing of our young people in uniform, and yet nothing has changed in 35 years.
He can kiss my ass.
Outstanding, RebeccaH!
That was truly righteous! :-D
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2005 04 13 at 01:26 PM • permalinkRight you are, Rebecca. John Kerry is the biggest do-nothing in the US Senate. During the 2004 campaign, he couldn’t cite a single major initiative that he’s sponsored in his 20-odd years of “service” in the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.” Not one. Of course, he rarely shows up for work, so should we be surprised? Given the cracked-brained issues he does support, perhaps we should be grateful.
John “I have a plan. See my Web site” Kerry is a lazy, hypocritical, duplicitous, traitorous, gold digging, social climbing, absentee senator manqué who actually came close to becoming the most powerful man in the world during wartime.
[Butch shudders with revulsion.]
I began college at the age of 17 and by the end of my second year I was involved in the anti war movement.
I tell people today that I am not proud of that anymore. I really am not.
I remember the leftists on campus telling us that when the US left all the fighting would end, like magic.
They were wrong then and they are wrong now.
Sometimes I wonder if some young idiot sitting in one of Ward Churchill’s classes will look back one day and say “God, was I an asshole”.
Pol Pot’s warped vision was that the Communist ideal could only succeed after all traces of the preceding civilisation was removed. His belief was that Communism failed elsewhere because the people remembered and clung to their former condition. Accordingly, anyone who was a former bueracrat, soldier, banker, lawyer, doctor, teacher, Budhist monk or intellectual (anyone with glasses which indicates an ability to read) was killed along with their family.
Having spent a couple of weeks in Cambodia last year I can see that his big mistake (other than being a physco sick murderer) was not to kill the chefs. It is amazing how French cullinary influence lives on.
Also striking is the gender and age imbalance caused by his slaughter. I noted that very few people wore glasses. Possibly because there are few old people, possibly because Cambodia is an incredibly poor country. I don’t know if it is possible to remove a genetic predisposition to vision disorder by culling the population but I sure as hell hope not.
Noir, I visited Cambodia a few years ago and was struck by the age gap. There were almost no men between 30 and 70; they had all been murdered. The young kids would flock around us and want to hear about America. Most had lost their fathers and uncles, and they endured crushing poverty. Cambodia is the poorest country I have ever visited, including some really poor places in Latin America and Africa.
It was odd how the French culinary influence survived. Even in tiny remote, hamlets there were people selling beautiful baguettes.
And Angkor Wat was simply amazing.
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But Chomsky said it didn’t happen! (And it was the predictable consequences of the American war on poor Asians anyway!)