Pol Pot by Any Other Name
SIEM REAP, Cambodia — Just about the time that the White House announced plans for an investigation into faulty Iraq intelligence, my Cambodian friend Phead took me to visit one of the monuments to the victims of his nation's genocide. On the way to see the collection of human bones and skulls gathered from the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, I asked Phead what he thought about the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Phead, like other survivors of this country's almost incomprehensible tragedy, has plenty of reason to abhor war -- and to resent and distrust the United States. After all, Washington's Vietnam adventure provided the ferment for the Cambodian civil war that in the 1970s propelled to power the deranged regime of Pol Pot.
The U.S. had carpet-bombed Cambodia in an effort to root out Vietnamese fighters and their supply lines. By some accounts, the bombings killed more than 200,000 villagers. To this day, the scattering of unexploded American ordnance -- along with millions of land mines left by an assortment of armies -- continues to take limbs and lives.
In this atmosphere of chaos Pol Pot came to power, and in less than four years the Paris-educated leader and his followers pursued a Maoist utopia that pushed this country into a nightmare of terror, hunger and death. Other countries contributed to decades of bloodshed in Cambodia, but the main culprit was the demented Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge followers.
Before it was overthrown by Vietnamese forces, the Khmer Rouge sent as many as one-quarter of all Cambodians to their deaths.
After living through the horrors and losing five family members, Phead had no hesitation in assessing the Iraq campaign. He did not mention weapons of mass destruction, oil or corporate profits. He didn't even mention democracy. He summed it up in one sentence: "Saddam Hussein is like Pol Pot." The U.S., he said, was right to attack.
The Cambodian people understand better than most the suffering that war entails and what it means to live under a ruthless dictatorship. The war in Iraq is nowhere near the top of their concerns. But every one of the Cambodians I asked who knew about Iraq gave me a response nearly identical to Phead's: A man like Pol Pot must be removed from power.
