Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nicholas_chiasson]

quoting Chomsky is like quoting Satan. Even if you agree, you've got a problem.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge

http://jim.com/chomsdis.htm


http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/e-asia/chomsky.html

[blaseblasphemener]

Joo, I will take a look at your links. However, please try to stay on point. The Iraq movie, ok?

Meanwhile, Chomsky's words (www.chomsky.info :

Let us assume the accuracy of the condemnation of the Khmer Rouge (noting, however, that the susceptibility of intellectuals to fabricated atrocity stories has been no less notorious since World War I than their apologetics for some favored state, and that skepticism is aroused in this case by the many documented falsehoods). On this assumption, should we reconsider opposition to the Vietnam War?

One who raises this question must be assuming (1) that the U.S. war was intended to avert Khmer Rouge barbarity, or might have had this likely effect; and (2) that the U.S. has the right to exercise force and violence to avert potential crimes.

Assumption (1) is ludicrous in the light of the factual record. Cambodia was an island of relative tranquility prior to the American invasion of 1970, though it had been repeatedly attacked by American and U.S.-backed forces from 1957 on. There was limited local insurgency, aroused by government repression, even by the 1960s. As Vietnamese were driven to a narrow border strip by the savage American military operations of early 1967, direct U.S. attacks on Cambodia escalated. By May 1967, the Pentagon was concerned that Cambodia was "becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later," an obvious consequence of U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos. In March 1969. shortly after the "secret bombings" began, Sihanouk vainly called upon the Western press to publicize his government's protest over the "criminal attacks" on Khmer peasants. The 1970 invasion helped organize the Khmer Rouge rebellion as thousands of peasants rallied to the resistance under the impact of the vicious bombing and ground attacks of the U.S. military and the Vietnamese forces it organized. Charles Meyer, who had long been close to ruling forces in Cambodia, warned then that "it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred (of the peasants) for those who destroyed their villages and their possessions" (Derriere le sourir khmer). This was well before the murderous American bombings of the 1970s, which surely inflamed peasant hatred and desire for revenge.

Those who failed to devote their energies to ending the American war in Indochina bear a double burden of guilt: for the atrocities committed under American initiative and for the legacy of starvation, disease, hatred, and revenge that was a direct and predicted consequence of the attack on rural Cambodia. Similar remarks apply in the case of Vietnam and Laos.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

You can see his entire article together with an analysis next to it .

http://jim.com/chomsdis.htm

Noam Chomsky said: (놈) get it

[blaseblasphemener]

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Ponchaud's book is based on his own personal experiences in Cambodia from 1965 until the capture of Phnom Penh, extensive interviews with refugees and reports from the Cambodian radio. Published in France in January 1977, it has become the best-known unread book in recent history, on the basis of an account by Jean Lacouture (in the New York Review of Books), widely cited since in the press, which alleges that Ponchaud has revealed a policy of "auto-genocide" (Lacouture's term) practiced by the Communists.

* * *

Before looking more closely at Ponchaud's book and its press treatment, we would like to point out that apart from Hildebrand and Porter there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing. These reports also emphasize both the extraordinary brutality on both sides during the civil war (provoked by the American attack) and repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false. They also testify to the extreme unreliability of refugee reports, and the need to treat them with great caution, a fact that we and others have discussed elsewhere (cf. Chomsky: At War with Asia, on the problems of interpreting reports of refugees from American bombing in Laos). Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account.

[bacasper]

[Justin Hale]

[loose_ends]

JOO




Watch the freakin movie.



WATCH THE MOVIE

[Julius]

[endo]

[blaseblasphemener]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[endo]

[BS.Dos.]

I'm releaved that No End In Sight didn't win an Oscar. I didn't really think it deserved one. Hardly ground breaking reporting. I think if anyone found this documentary to be revealing in anyway regarding whats actually been going on in Iraq since 2003, then I can only conclude that they must have had their heads buried in the sand for the last 5-years.

You trying to tell me that you didn't know the Bush et al were making a complete and utter balls up of things over there until now?

Disappointing.