Friday, April 15, 2011
Veteran New York Times reporter Joel Brinkley, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Cambodia on the fall of the Khmer Rouge discusses how that country is still haunted by its years of terror. In Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land, he looks at the results of efforts to pull the small nation out of the mire by making Cambodia a United Nations protectorate in 1992, and looks at the country, its people, and the deep historical roots of its modern-day behavior.
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Comments from readers:
Danny Seaman from Queens
Dear Joel, Before the Khmer Rouge, there was the U.S. military. In 1968 or Year Zero, I was a radio op for a small CIA/Special Forces team whose job was to train Cambodian children to fight the Vietnamese.We gave them old M-1 rifles and tried to make them wear boots. These tribal people did not understand the concept of an actual country such as Vietnam or Cambodia. They travel the borderless jungles, women topless and men barefooted for thousands of years. They had no agriculture or education. They were poor soldiers, they enjoyed taking their families on ambushes. Did these children eventual become the Khmer Rouge butchers? I don't know. Being a bad soldier does not mean you could not be a good murder.
Apr. 15 2011 01:26 PM
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Calls'em from Fairfax Cty, VA
All of these horrors can be laid at the feet of American liberals that demonstrated against the Viet Nam war. In the spring of 1970, the US Military & the ARVN went in to Cambodia and were within a week or two of completely destroying the NVA. Records release years later by NVA support this. Nixon stopped the invasion short of victory because of bad press and demonstrations at home. As a result, millions died and societies and the environment were further destroyed instead of being liberated and saved. So, thank you mindless liberal sheep - you have blood on your hands.
Apr. 15 2011 01:02 PM
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RJ from Prospect Hts
Didn't Cambodia at one point have a small successful unionized manufacturing center? Clothes, I believe?
Apr. 15 2011 12:35 PM
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AnnStan
Thanks for the in-depth research for the lasting effects of trauma. However, I have to take issue with this being the first documented case of trauma being passed to second generations.
Please see the important research of Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary whose work looks at the trauma of slavery and trauma symptoms that are still clearly observable today in parts of America. Unfortunately we don't have to look as far afield as Cambodia to witness this phenomenon.
Apr. 15 2011 12:33 PM
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hawkeye
It is impossible to take seriously anyone who says many people in Cambodia live as their ancestors did a thousand years ago. Cambodia has been visited, for better and mostly worst, by the modern world, for generations. Kids who bathe in ditches with their cattle (a reality, but not healthy) can recite the capitals of all the US states, because tourists give them dollars for this trick. There is nothing is Khmer culture that predisposes them to have accepted genocide. It's simply offensive to argue that Buddhism paved the way to accept their fate. It was a matter of who had power, along with the destabilizing effect of wars in Asia (including the US secret war over Thailand and Cambodia). Brinkley's analysis is...unsophisticated and vulgar.
Apr. 15 2011 12:26 PM
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