U.S. aids Kampuchean terrorists

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16 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1985 The Oscar-winning film "The Killing Fields" has reminded the American public of the genocidal terror campaign carried out in Kampuchea (Cambodia) by the now-exiled Pol Pot regime. Most Americans, however, seem to be unaware-and would be shocked to learn-that the U.S. government has for several years been trying to restore Pol Pot to power. Furthermore, those efforts are now being stepped up.

On April 9 the Reagan administration announced its intention to begin directly sending military aid to guerrilla groups seeking to overthrow the present Kampuchean government. Previously, U.S. assistance to the Southeast Asian "contras" had been supplied indirectly-"covertly" —through right-wing American allies in the region including Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

On April 2 the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to send $5 million in aid to the counterrevolutionaries. A New York Times editorial (April 11) called this "meager sum" a "down payment" meant "to clear the way for a much larger new commitment."

Those who remember how the United States conducted the Vietnam War will recognize this familiar one-step-at-atime scenario. A series of U.S. air strikes, for example, would typically advance a mile or two farther up the North Vietnamese coast day by day to test the response of Hanoi and its allies.

Likewise, the Reagan administration is today tiptoeing deeper into a Southeast Asian intervention, pausing at each step to gauge the reaction of the American public. Fear of the so-called Vietnam syndrome-that is, a reawakening of the mass opposition that forced the U.S. military out of Vietnam a decade ago-is widespread among U.S. policy makers. As Republican Rep. Jim Leach put it: "I personally believe that there is no stomach in this country for a renewed military involvement in Indochina."

The Vietnamese invasion In January 1979 the hated Pol Pot regime was driven from power and into "Citles were declared exile by the Vietnamese army. Generally speaking, military invasions are not popular among the people of an invaded country. This was an exception, however; virtually all international observers reported that the overwhelming majority of the Kampuchean people greeted the Vietnamese troops as liberators and were overjoyed at getting rid of Pol Pot.

But Pol Pot did not simply disappear. His Cambodian "contras" set up their military camps just over the border in Thailand and, much like their Nicaraguan counterparts in Honduras, engaged in murderous raids and sabotage in order to destabilize the new government. The only effective force blocking Pol Pot's return to power has been the Vietnamese army.

A bipartisan policy Why does the Reagan administration back the detestable Pol Pot gang? And how does it try to justify this policy?

First of all, the policy is not Reagan's alone; it was begun by the Carter administration. After Pol Pot was overthrown, Carter's diplomats made an all-out effort to keep his representatives seated as the official Cambodian delegation to the United Nations. So much for Carter's vaunted concern for "human rights."

This bipartisan policy stems from the American ruling class's desire to stop the spread of the Vietnamese revolution. Following the U.S. military withdrawal in 1975, North Vietnam's economic system was extended to the South.

The Hanoi government, after a three-year delay, began a drive in 1978 to sweep away capitalism in South Vietnam. A workers' state-bureaucratically ruled-based on the expropriation of the capitalists and a nationalized and planned economy was established throughout all of Vietnam.

Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in Kampuchea, however, took the opposite road. Far from moving beyond capitalism in the direction of socialism, Kampuchea under Pol Pot appeared to be reverting to a primitive precapitalist stage of peasant economy.

Cities were declared "wicked" and obliterated, public education and health were virtually abolished, circulation of paper money and coinage were outlawed. Kampuchea's economic infrastructure was destroyed, and forced agricultural labor camps became the basic economic unit. An estimated 2 million Kampucheans-out of a total population of 7 million—perished in this mad lurch into backwardness.

At first, U.S. propagandists seized on this tragedy for their own ends and gave it extensive publicity. They cited what they called the Khmer Rouge's "communist" terror as vindication of the U.S. role in Indochina.

But suddenly the spotlight on Kampuchea dimmed. The mass media, as if on command, ceased its exposures of the horrors. "Mr. Pol Pot," as The New York Times calls him, had become a respectable American ally.

Shades of George Orwell's "1984" where Big Brother's regime changed sides in the middle of a war, and nobody was supposed to notice!

Why the sudden turnaround? Although Hanoi's intentions in Kampuchea were defensive and not revolutionary, the American imperialists feared that a Vietnamese victory would result in the extension of socialist revolution to Kampuchea. They began to see the "communist" Khmer Rouge as their last pro-capitalist straw, and they grasped at it.

For its part, the Khmer Rouge eagerly accepted its role of helping the United States regain a toehold on the Indochinese peninsula.

How do they explain their policy?

How do U.S. government officials attempt to justify their effort to reimpose Pol Pot on Kampuchea? For one thing, they deny it. Their public relations line is that they recognize three distinct groupings among the Kampuchean "contras": Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, which they still falsely label "communist, and two smaller, "non-communist, forces led, respectively, by Son Sann and Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

American policy, they say, is to aid the non-communist groups, but not the Khmer Rouge.

It is clear to all concerned, however, that if the present Vietnamese-backed government were to be militarily overthrown, it would be replaced by Pol Pot's forces. Pol Pot commands an estimated 35,000 troops; the other two groups combined total only 25,000.

When Hanoi announced that it would withdraw its army from Kampuchea if the other "contras" would eliminate the Khmer Kvuge leadership, the ever-candid Prince Sihanouk responded: "If Vietnam has not been able to remove the Khmer Rouge in six years of fighting, how can they expect us to do it for them?"

In short, the U.S. claim that it can militarily support part of this coalition without aiding its strongest contingent—Pol Pot's—is a hoax.

Reagan's recent step-up in support for the counterrevolutionaries was spurred by serious military blows inflicted upon them in the past few months. Vietnamese troops destroyed most of their bases along the Thai border earlier this year, including several belonging to the Khmer Rouge. Son Sann, in a meeting with Secretary of State George Shultz on April 10, appealed for more U.S. funds to help his forces "regroup" into "small hit-and-run guerrilla units."

"U.S. backs criminals who created the real 'killing flelds'."

The lines in this war are clearly drawn. The U.S. government is backing the criminals who created the "killing fields" in real life. The Vietnamese army stopped the killing and remains the only force preventing a resumption of Pol Pot's reign of terror.

The Vietnamese-backed regime in Phnom Penh, however, has not brought workers and peasants' democracy to Kampuchea. The Kampuchean people face a long and difficult struggle for democratic rights and socialism, in which the overthrow of Pol Pot was only one necessary step.

Above all, it is necessary to remember that the soil from which Pol Pot's terror sprouted was the misery and destruction caused by American saturation bombing. From 1970 through 1973, 442,735 tons of bombs were dropped on Kampuchea.

We in the United States must oppose all renewed attempts of the Reagan administration to intervene in Southeast Asia. No aid to "contras" —in Central America or in Indochina!

The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, marked the victory of the Vietnamese revolution. National liberation was achieved after 35 years of armed resistance against Japanese, French-and finally United States occupation.

The cost of U.S. intervention alone was staggering. A half million U.S. troops occupied South Vietnam by 1967. Six years later, 50,000 had been killed.

Up to 2 million Vietnamese were killed out of a population, North and South, of 53 million. Ten million became refugees. Nearly 8 million tons of bombs and 400,000 tons of napalm were dropped throughout the Indochinese peninsula.

The U.S. antiwar movement, generated by mass revulsion to the "dirty little war," caused a lasting distrust of the U.S. government in the minds of millions of people.

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'wicked' by Pol Pot and obliterated."

10 years after fall of Saigon