A 250-kilogram American MK82 bomb is loaded onto the back of a vehicle after it was unearthed in Kandal province in March. PHOTO SUPPLIED
The United States’ controversial bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War killed fewer civilians than American drone attacks under President Barack Obama have done, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said on the weekend, a claim labelled as “disingenuous”, foolish and plain wrong by historians and experts.
In a National Public Radio (NPR) interview aired Saturday, Kissinger also said decisions taken by the US during the war, including the massive aerial bombing of Cambodia and Laos, were correct and would be taken by anyone faced with the same circumstances today.
Henry Kissinger
Estimates for the number of civilian casualties of the US bombardment of Cambodia targeting North Vietnamese communists and later the Khmer Rouge – which saw some 2.75 million tonnes of ordnance dropped between 1965 and 1973 – vary greatly, however most scholars agree that they are at least in the tens of thousands.
Unexploded ordnance from the period continues to kill Cambodians today.
In comparison, US drone attacks are estimated to have killed 2,702 to 4,316 people in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia in total under Bush and Obama, with up to 1,041 civilian deaths, according to the UK-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism.
Little information is known about drone casualties in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 strikes have occurred.
In the NPR interview, Kissinger, 90, who served as national security adviser to US president Richard Nixon from 1969 until he was appointed secretary of state in 1973, was asked to respond to those critical of his role in the bombing campaign.
“They should study what is going on. I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerrilla-type wars, that the Obama administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon administration ever did,” he said.
When asked about the difference between a drone attack and a carpet bombing, Kissinger responded that despite the stark contrast in accuracy, “the principle is essentially the same”.
“You attack locations where you believe people operate who are killing you. You do it in the most limited way possible. And I bet if one did an honest account, there are fewer civilian casualties in Cambodia than there have been from American drone attacks,” he continued.
Studying the Vietnam War now without prejudice, one would find “that the decisions that were taken would almost certainly have been taken by those of you who are listening, faced with the same set of problems”, Kissinger said. “And you would have done them with anguish, as we did them with anguish.”
While Kissinger’s assertion that drone strikes under Obama had been wider in geographical scale than the bombing of Cambodia may be at least partly accurate, his statement about the civilian casualties is “disingenuous”, said Carlyle Thayer, a Southeast Asia expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
While it is impossible to know how many were killed in bombings of communist base areas in eastern Cambodia in 1969-70, if later airstrikes when the Khmer Rouge began to advance on Phnom Penh are included, “at a minimum, several tens of thousands” of civilians perished, he said.
Historian Ben Kiernan writes in The Pol Pot Regime that up to 150,000 civilian deaths resulted from the bombings between 1969 and 1973, though he does not provide a source for these numbers.
Demographer Marek Sliwinski, meanwhile, estimates about 53,000 people, both civilian and military, were killed by bombardments.
According to eminent Cambodia historian David Chandler, while nobody has any reliable evidence of casualties from the US bombings, they “certainly killed a lot more civilians than drones” have.
“The problem is, if you just made a very cold, calculating, military decision, the bombing of 1973 was in fact a sensible thing to do [at the time], because had it not happened, the Khmer Rouge would have taken Phnom Penh [much earlier] and South Vietnam would have had a communist country on its flank,” he said.
The cost of the campaign, however, was enormous, he added, given that they “were bombing the most populated parts of Cambodia”.
There is also, despite Kissinger’s assertion, “no evidence from the time, that this was causing any anguish” to him and Nixon, Chandler said.
After Nixon telephoned Kissinger to demand a covert escalation of bombings in December 1970, he called General Alexander Haig to relay the orders, Kiernan wrote in an article published in 2006.
“He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order. It’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?” Kissinger reportedly said.
A line between the Cambodia bombings and drone strikes has been drawn before.
A confidential US Justice Department white paper published by NBC News in February last year used the bombing of communist bases in Cambodia as an example to bolster the government’s case for ordering the killings of its own citizens abroad using drones.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan yesterday refrained from criticising Kissinger but said that “we should learn from the past, how the foreign policy of the US came across at the time”.
“Americans talk so much about human rights, so they have to apply the policy,” he said.
6 comments:
That's him, Henry Kissinger has signal to Viets, if they invade Cambodia, US won't do anything to viets. ( source: Spotlight new paper. )
some quotes about this evil man .. which some young khmers came out to defend him when i posted that he is evil...
[ "Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that "depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World." He quoted reasons of national security, and because `(t)he U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-developed countries ... Wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and to the economic interests of U.S.] NSC = national security council
[Two months ago, hundreds of thousands of Chileans somberly marked the 40th anniversary of their nation’s September 11th terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende. Sixteen years of repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet, while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda Copper and the like – resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other nations might get ideas about independence, were the very reason for the coup and even the partial moves toward nationalization instituted by Allende could not be tolerated by the US business class.
Henry Kissinger was national security advisor and one of the principle architects – perhaps the principle architect – of the coup in Chile. US-instigated coups were nothing new in 1973, certainly not in Latin America, and Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon were carrying on a violent tradition that spanned the breadth of the 20th century and continues in the 21st – ]
[There is a 90-year-old “war criminal” helping to frame the foreign policy of the Obama administration. Perhaps a little surprising. Until, of course, you realise that the old boy in question is Henry Kissinger, and he has been advising the White House on a subject he knows well – the Russians....The charge sheet is extremely long, even considering the eight eventful years Kissinger was running US foreign policy: he and the CIA helped orchestrate the coup against the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and his murder in 1973; he and Nixon invaded neutral Cambodia in 1970; they indiscriminately bombed civilians in that long war; connived in the Indonesians’ brutal repression in East Timor; left the Kurds to their fate at the hands of Saddam as early as 1972; the list goes on. “War criminal” and Nobel Peace Prize holder; the unique genius of Henry Kissinger.]
links
http://www.rense.com/general59/kissingereugenics.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimes-against-humanity-why-is-henry-kissinger-walking-around-free/5358322
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/henry-kissinger-a-diplomatic-colossus-who-is-still-a-key-influence-in-us-amid-syria-crisis-8815533.html
There more than 500 000 of Cambodian died between 1970 - 1975, it is not a joke Henry, you should have been trial in international court for your crime against humanity and pay compensation to the victims and their property.
you can not justify your policy of bombing Cambodia to drone use in Middle East.
You supported the coup, bombing of Cambodia and at the end you left Cambodian and put Cambodian in the hand of the Communist. You are just irresponsible idiot.
Do not say that you get rid of VN Communist in Cambodia in order to help Cambodia defend herself, you cannot even defend your south Vietnamese ally and how can you defend Cambodia?
It was wrong to bomb the innocent Khmer who stayed home and did nothing wrong. It is not wrong to whack the batons on the aggressive Khmer who stir up troubles. Using batons is the most human way. If I visit Cambodia, I would offer Cambodian police as free baton whacker, I bet it's fun.
-Drungzet-
-Drgunzet- is blah blah blah .... LOL How funny this Vietnamese gook named -Drgunzet-.
-Drgunzet- is also insulting his own stupid Vietnamese race because he representing his stupid Vietnamese gooks. Later, his Vietnamese gooks want to smash -Drgunzet-'s head because he has made his Vietnamese gooks so embarrassed.
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