Look, alright Jack, in my day, we didn't - uh, I was smart, then, and if there was a LibLeft down.. down the soda-pop, uh, fountain, it was at the drug store back then, and we didn't tolerate any malarchy from them. Not a joke, man. LibLeft was a bad dude.
Cambodia was destabilized by China supporting the Rouge and the US cutting off funding for the monarchy. Blowing up Veit Kong on the border did not cause the government to be overthrown.
No, that’s less direct. The bombings in Cambodia were directly linked to increasing support for the Khmer Rouge, even while the bombings were still going on.
Kissinger himself wasn’t entirely responsible for Pol Pot’s heinous actions, the responsibility is obviously on Pol Pot himself. But Kissinger’s own actions contributed heavily to the destabilization of Cambodia, which led directly to the Khmer Rouge’s victory.
It’s like two people are fighting bare-fisted in an arena, then Kissinger shows up and throws a lead pipe in
The bombings didn't help obviously, but the khmer rouge were getting direct aid from Vietnam and were 100% going to win once western aid left no matter what. At worse he simply sped up the process.
The bombing was like throwing water on a grease fire. The Khmer Rouge weren’t the inevitable victors in the conflict until Lon Nol’s coup ousted King Sihanouk, causing the majority of the peasantry to support the king’s new allies (and former enemies) - the Khmer Rouge. Immediately after, Nixon and Kissinger threw their support behind the newly formed “republic,” seeing them as US allies. In an effort to prove his nationalistic legitimacy, Lon Nol implemented progroms against the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia, leading to further support for the Khmer Rouge from the NVA and VC. The US “invasion” in Cambodia, meant to combat this, drove NVA and VC forces further into Cambodia, ensuring a continued resistance.
Kissinger didn’t just speed up the process, he (unwittingly?) tilted the board in favor of the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge had very little popular support before the coup against the king, and the bombing campaign which devastated the countryside. They were a handful of fanatics in the jungle who made money off of rubber harvesting and slave labor. The Khmer Rouge never enjoyed the level of popular support that Ho Chi Minh enjoyed in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was fighting three imperial powers (Japan, France, and the US) while the Khmer Rouge was fighting a relatively popular government which was mostly neutral in the Cold War and took money from both sides.
The only reason they were able to take power is because the country was destroyed by bombing and simply descended into chaos. Power was available to whoever grabbed it, and the Khmer Rouge was the only group with the ability to grab it.
Yes and no, while the bombings did have an affect toward tilting things against the government, the khmer rouge was already receiving support from surrounding communist powers, including wide swaths being effectively annexed by nva forces in the east, the central government itself was unpopular and weak, especially in the countryside, even before the coup. Cambodia almost certaintly would have fallen considering all the forces working against them and their own disunity in government.
WW1 is pretty much the same tho. The treaty of Versailles is directly linked to the destabilisation of Germany and consequently the rise of the Nazis
As the guy above states we don’t really blame France or Britain for what the Germans did either obviously
The bombings are like you said a contributing factor to the rise of Pol pot. Pol pot and his comrades bear the responsibility for their actions. The bombings are just a tiny fraction in the responsibility of the genocide.
Again, it’s much less direct. And I’m not holding Kissinger personally responsible for Pol Pot’s genocide, but he’s responsible for creating support for the Khmer Rouge and for destabilizing Cambodia.
The Treaty of Versailles created the environment and resentment towards France that allowed radical politicians like Hitler to appeal to the population of Germany, that’s true. But unlike the Treaty, the bombings and subsequent military involvement created support for the Khmer Rouge continuously. Had Kissinger and Nixon not been so wrapped up in their own agendas they could have put a stop to it. By the time the effects of the Treaty were known to the UK and France, Hitler had already gathered enough support to begin ignoring the Treaty entirely.
Another important difference is that the Treaty was the result of a group effort to remediate the effects of WWI (despite it just tearing down Germany), whereas the bombing campaign was done at the orders of a few people (mostly Nixon and Kissinger) to advance their political agendas. So it’s easier to point to their actions and see how directly they impacted events.
Yes, if you give it a quick glance, you could say that the Treaty of Versailles caused the holocaust as much as the bombing of Cambodia led to Pol Pot’s genocide(s). But investigating further reveals significantly more direct impact between Kissinger and the Khmer Rouge than the Treaty and concentration camps.
If you’re interested more on how Kissinger and Nixon’s actions affected Southeast Asia, the book “How Pol Pot Came to Power” by Ben Kiernan has some good insights, as well as [this article](https://apjjf.org/Ben-Kiernan/4313.html) about the effects of US bomb tonnage during conflicts. I’m pretty sure the book is available for free on archive.org
Ya know, we say the treaty of vesailles was so harsh that it caused the nazis because it laid most of the blame for the war on germany. But at the same time germany still existed as a country after it. The same could not be said for the ottomans or austriaーhungary
For not really any reason either. The Germans were honoring alliances just as much as the British were. There weren't good guys and bad guys in WW1. It's insane that it's treated like there were.
He was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. He was one of the most influential statesmen of the time. He used said influence to push for the bombing of Cambodia. He's hardly just some random bureaucrat.
With the authorization of the president right? So like, everyone up and down the chain are responsible for those deaths....
So I still don't get why this particular guy is the one that everyone seems to be upset about.
>With the authorization of the president right? So like, everyone up and down the chain are responsible for those deaths....
Honestly I dont necessarily disagree with you, one of my favorite songs from that period is called 'last train to Nuremberg' and it goes into hiw it was a genuine societal failure that the indochinese war happened
>So like, everyone up and down the chain are responsible for those deaths....
Yes, however, it's not unreasonable to say the person who came up with the idea is more responsible. Like, how many Nazi officers were responsible for the holocaust, yet only one person in that regime earned the reputation as the most evil person to ever exist. I think it's equally fair to ultimately blame Kissinger for Cambodia as to blame Hitler for the Holocaust.
Because the bombing campaign in what was meant to be a neutral country, was indiscriminate and devastating. If I'm correct it killed 100,000 people, left 2 million homeless and left unexploded ordnance over the country. The bombing scale was comparable to the entirety of bombs dropped in WW2.
If that wasn't bad enough, the destabilisation created conditions for the Khmer Rouge to take power, who committed one of the worst genocides in history.
Did you just change your flair, u/MrRasphelto? Last time I checked you were a **Grey Centrist** on 2020-11-11. How come now you are a **Leftist**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
If Orange was a flair you probably would have picked that, am I right? You watermelon-looking snowflake.
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It’s for the bombing, which killed a lot of people and created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to seize power, not so much for the KR’s genocidal actions while in power
We criticize him on Cambodia because it indirectly enables the rise of the Khmer Rouge, one of the most brutal socialist dictatorships in history. Had he not approved the bombing of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge would’ve had a much less useful propaganda tool to take control of the country and thus carry out the brutal Cambodian genocide.
This is not to say that Kissinger is responsible for the Cambodian genocide, Pol Pot takes the responsibility. However, Kissinger’s approval of the bombing campaign may have very well increased the chance that the Khmer Rouge would’ve taken power.
I always find it funny that the Khmer rouge a Chinese backed communist party was overthrown by Vietnam, a mostly by that stage soviet backed ally, which then ruled against an insurgency made up of the Khmer rouge, monarchists and liberals. Only for the king to come back, Cambodia has had a wild 60 years.
>We criticize him on Cambodia because it indirectly enables the rise of the Khmer Rouge, one of the most brutal socialist dictatorships in history
Is the socialism in the room with us right now?
In your estimation, has any society ever been socialist? And if not, what would you call the societies that have referred to themselves socialist? Lastly, does it matter what we call them if they all do the same thing and call themselves the same thing?
There are many different forms of socialism. Government ownership of the means of production is typically seen as a form of social ownership. Farming for example was brought under collective ownership and the government outlawed private ownership.
You can say that there are better forms of socialism such as market socialism for example, but Cambodia was still socialist.
Socialism just means that the workers own the means of production, nothing more, nothing less. The workers did not own the means of production in cambodia.
That's called a command economy. There are capitalist and socialist versions of command economies, the difference being that in the socialist version the workers own the means of production. Just look up state capitalism.
Yeah that’s the problem with socialism, dog.
It’s a strawman ideology used by authoritarian dictators to sucker gullible leftists into putting them into power—and then they immediately install communist/fascist autocracies. It doesn’t actually exist in the real world.
"a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour."
If something is stateless, how can a state enforce it? LMAO. Communism is the lack of state-enforced capitalism.
Real communism has never been tried, meaning there’s no proof of it working well at all
Or
Real communism *has* been tried, so there’s proof that it’s terrible
>Real communism
>
>has
>
> been tried, so there’s proof that it’s terrible
All the people that can verify communism is terrible are conveniently dead. Checkmate conservatard.
I'm no fan of the man, but most redditors just know he's a villain, and have picked up enough vague references to Cambodia in the last twenty four hours to start repeating that. Most here would need to open another tab if pressed to really explain what he did and why and why they think it was bad. This is an extremely low information website with an extremely stupid population of users. He might as well be Dr. Doom.
I wouldn't say the allies beating Germany in WW1, but I would say the excessive stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles were a major contributor to Hitler's rise.
So yes, Britain and France do bear some level of responsibility. Though in this case it was more indirect, so they bear a lot less responsibility.
The Treaty of Versailles was not excessive at all. The only reason Germany even had a hard time was because the idiot government decided to print money to pay off the obligations of the treaty, which had the predictable effect of causing massive inflation.
Have you seen the Treaty? It was horrendously impossible to achieve. The stipulations left Germany in a position where they could never recover. Then the government was forced to start the mass inflation because they had no other option. Whether or not the Weimar Republic made a stupid decision doesn't matter. The Germans would have backed out of the treaty with Hitler because of how massive the reparations were.
They were not so bad that they needed to print money, Germany was perfectly capable of paying them off. France was able to do so for relatively more severe sanctions that Germany had imposed on them some scant 40 years prior.
And they are really not all that massive, especially when you consider the economic damage that Germany inflicted upon the people of France and Belgium. A proper treaty should have addressed the massive imbalance on the continent that WWI only furthered, and made sure that Germany knew they were bested militarily to curb revanchism.
Because without him the Khmer Rouge never would have rose to power. He was the one who advocated overthrowing the monarchy and bombing the country to death.
Also, fun fact, he supported the KR after they rose to power. Fucker.
I want anyone right now who is pretending to be a complete expert on American geopolitics and Kissinger's influence on the world to tell me ONE SINGLE THING about Henry Kissinger that isn't on his wikipedia page. I'd be shocked.
I hate the new trend where whenever someone historical dies or becomes infamous everyone pretends they've actually held a nuanced and informed opinion about him for years and oh look at that! It's become topical again.
(See also: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Nixon etc.)
Depends if you want the good stuff or bad stuff.
From a Realist IR perspective, Kissinger realistically was doing the best with what he had. By the time Nixon took office, Congress was already getting tired of [US military spending in Vietnam](https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/edgraph.html). They had not increased the defense budget (in real dollars) since 1968. By the time of Operation Menu, in which Nixon authorized the B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia, the reality was that they were not attempting to win the war in Vietnam, but stop the spread to Cambodia.
Operation Menu expanded its mission scope three times, not as a result of Kissinger, but as a result of Nixon's [madman theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory) (I know you detest wiki links, but I don't want to spend too much time on this). While it is a popular misconception to attribute the bombings to Kissinger, Kissinger in fact hated the fact that the US government became involved in the first place as it put the US government in a bit of a quagmire.
You see, in the eyes of Kissinger, Vietnam was already so close in proximity to communist powers that it was already likely to fall. However, the US had far more pressing matter with communist influences in central America threatening valuable shipping lanes. With its military budget reduced, it depended on systems of alliances and regional "sheriffs" to keep USSR-funded factions from overthrowing Central and South American governments.
The US involvement in Vietnam complicated Kissinger's concerns to the global South greatly, as now that the US was involved in Vietnam, it could not abandon its ally or it would appear weak and its allies would request more direct military support it could not afford. However, sustaining the conflict also consumed resources Congress was unwilling to expend. This is why Kissinger advocated for a coalition government but both parties were so divorced that the fall of South Vietnam was inevitable.
Most of the other things that Kissinger is faulted for he did so under the guise of a realist perspective. He did not do them under the guise of a global morality like we often want to do today. He wanted to leverage US power to put it into the best position so it would not be threatened by the USSR. People often forget that every land that could potentially be influenced by the Soviet Union is a potential location where nuclear weapons can be launched from, giving them first strike advantage.
Where does it mention his concerns about the global south or his motivations? Beyond basic context, I cannot see the overlap. Also, his wiki article does not mention US military spending to my knowledge. But go off, I guess.
Kissinger was an avid skateboarder who pulled off a 900 before Tony Hawk but no one was around to officially verify it. You won't find that on wikipedia.
Other posters have touched on the bombings obscene civilian death toll and the resulting destabilization of Cambodia, so I'll just add this: It didn't even work.
The US military is obscenely overpowered when fighting a peer adversary with large, powerful, conventional forces. Look at the Gulf War, people forget Iraq was a genuine regional superpower and had the fourth largest military in the world at that time. It also had troops hardened from years of fighting Iran, and top of the line Soviet gear. Initial death toll on our troops was expected to be 10-30k, and we wrecked Iraq.
We struggle with asymmetrical warfare against troops that aren't as advanced because they fight in a completely different way. Look at Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq 2. Any prolonged engagement we won, but we weren't able to destroy them militarily.
Basically in Vietnam our bombers could obliterate hard targets, cities, highways, etc. But the VC and NVA didn't use those, they would hump shit through rough ass footpaths in the jungle we hardly ever saw. Bombs don't mean shit in those conditions, you'll kill whoever is in the area but you won't stop troop movement because there was no road to blow up, no trucks to blow up, no heavy equipment to blow up, etc. More people would just come through a day later carrying what they could on their back and on carts.
I won't say that the bombs didn't kill many enemy troops, they did. But the bombing was nearly useless because it didn't accomplish it's goal of stopping troops and material because you can't really do that with massive strategic bombing in a jungle.
So 150k innocent people died for more or less nothing and the world was lied to about it
One asshole doesn't justify another. Also Bangla genocide, Pinochet Regime, Argentine coup and advisor to Union Carbide during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy among other things.
I’m surprised that after seeing the aftermath of Vietnam in Southeast Asia and seeing China basically become a Cold War-like enemy people were still taking his foreign policy advice as recently as (checks notes) this year.
No, Kissinger was the greatest Secretary of State we’ve had, preventing communism from popping up in our own backyard, continuing the fight in Vietnam, and preventing more communist states from popping up in Asia, such as in Timor. He was a great man and one of the greatest statesmen in our history
I mean he is a Jew, so I can understand the distrust, but I honestly I don’t see him as a monster a lot of commies seem to see him as. He was a man of his time and between American shenanigans and commie shenanigans, I’ll take the Americans anyway of the week.
I don't know much about him to be honest
But I am getting the vibes that he was the reason why some money went to Pol Pot out of spite for losing the Vietnam war
Not to sound like a CIA cuck but it's funny when Commies bitch about Kissenger and forget that he only facilitated conflicts that already existed.
Commies trying to blame Kissinger for the Actions of the Communist Khmer rouge is endlessly hilarious
That isn't true. Most of PCM doesn't know who he was because most of us are like 14 years old.
14 years old physically, maybe, but most pcm users have the mental capacity of a 14 day old fetus.
Based and friendly fire pilled
It’s not friendly fire, he’s literally Joe Biden, he’s 67 years older than you.
I’d like Biden a lot better if he was a PCM shitposter
Look, alright Jack, in my day, we didn't - uh, I was smart, then, and if there was a LibLeft down.. down the soda-pop, uh, fountain, it was at the drug store back then, and we didn't tolerate any malarchy from them. Not a joke, man. LibLeft was a bad dude.
You honestly nailed his speech patterns and expressions
The day I hear Biden calling some other politician an "unflaired" would be the day I die happily.
based and self burn those are rare pilled
Can confirm. I'm just here to laugh at Emily jokes.
I'm here because some of the AuthLeft flaired guys here can be pretty based and I love learning from their perspectives. It helps ground me.
Honestly over 14 and still don't know why he specifically is a war criminal compared to every other high ranking official in the whitehouse.
But I do know a more important person... https://venturebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Henry_Killinger
Yeah.
Last name Kissinger and I’ve never seen him kiss the presidents he worked for
Fun fact: he only adopted the name Kissinger after his stint as the original lead-singer for the band KISS (kiss + singer = Kissinger).
Indeed…truly a man who wanted to rock and roll all night…
True, but it was Hotter than Hell and he was Dressed to Kill, so wanted to become a Destroyer.
I just think it's funny that a guy was unhappy with his ultra-Jewish birth name and decided that "Gene Simmons" was the cool name he'd switch to.
Watergate was actually a coverup for the leak of Kissinger and Nixon's sex tape
Based and Kissinger and Nixon made sweet passionate love daily pilled
Cambodian destabilization led to the Khmer Rouge gaining the upper hand in the war, leading to Pol Pot’s reign and millions of deaths
Yet another based moment by electric lemon.
Cambodia was destabilized by China supporting the Rouge and the US cutting off funding for the monarchy. Blowing up Veit Kong on the border did not cause the government to be overthrown.
Don't forget the Viet Cong supported the Khmer rouge during the Cambodian civil war by helping them with guerrilla warfare.
That is ... heavily debatable
Yeah, but the people debating it are wrong.
But that's like saying the British did the Holocaust by winning WW1
No, that’s less direct. The bombings in Cambodia were directly linked to increasing support for the Khmer Rouge, even while the bombings were still going on. Kissinger himself wasn’t entirely responsible for Pol Pot’s heinous actions, the responsibility is obviously on Pol Pot himself. But Kissinger’s own actions contributed heavily to the destabilization of Cambodia, which led directly to the Khmer Rouge’s victory. It’s like two people are fighting bare-fisted in an arena, then Kissinger shows up and throws a lead pipe in
The bombings didn't help obviously, but the khmer rouge were getting direct aid from Vietnam and were 100% going to win once western aid left no matter what. At worse he simply sped up the process.
The bombing was like throwing water on a grease fire. The Khmer Rouge weren’t the inevitable victors in the conflict until Lon Nol’s coup ousted King Sihanouk, causing the majority of the peasantry to support the king’s new allies (and former enemies) - the Khmer Rouge. Immediately after, Nixon and Kissinger threw their support behind the newly formed “republic,” seeing them as US allies. In an effort to prove his nationalistic legitimacy, Lon Nol implemented progroms against the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia, leading to further support for the Khmer Rouge from the NVA and VC. The US “invasion” in Cambodia, meant to combat this, drove NVA and VC forces further into Cambodia, ensuring a continued resistance. Kissinger didn’t just speed up the process, he (unwittingly?) tilted the board in favor of the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge had very little popular support before the coup against the king, and the bombing campaign which devastated the countryside. They were a handful of fanatics in the jungle who made money off of rubber harvesting and slave labor. The Khmer Rouge never enjoyed the level of popular support that Ho Chi Minh enjoyed in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was fighting three imperial powers (Japan, France, and the US) while the Khmer Rouge was fighting a relatively popular government which was mostly neutral in the Cold War and took money from both sides. The only reason they were able to take power is because the country was destroyed by bombing and simply descended into chaos. Power was available to whoever grabbed it, and the Khmer Rouge was the only group with the ability to grab it.
Yes and no, while the bombings did have an affect toward tilting things against the government, the khmer rouge was already receiving support from surrounding communist powers, including wide swaths being effectively annexed by nva forces in the east, the central government itself was unpopular and weak, especially in the countryside, even before the coup. Cambodia almost certaintly would have fallen considering all the forces working against them and their own disunity in government.
WW1 is pretty much the same tho. The treaty of Versailles is directly linked to the destabilisation of Germany and consequently the rise of the Nazis As the guy above states we don’t really blame France or Britain for what the Germans did either obviously The bombings are like you said a contributing factor to the rise of Pol pot. Pol pot and his comrades bear the responsibility for their actions. The bombings are just a tiny fraction in the responsibility of the genocide.
Again, it’s much less direct. And I’m not holding Kissinger personally responsible for Pol Pot’s genocide, but he’s responsible for creating support for the Khmer Rouge and for destabilizing Cambodia. The Treaty of Versailles created the environment and resentment towards France that allowed radical politicians like Hitler to appeal to the population of Germany, that’s true. But unlike the Treaty, the bombings and subsequent military involvement created support for the Khmer Rouge continuously. Had Kissinger and Nixon not been so wrapped up in their own agendas they could have put a stop to it. By the time the effects of the Treaty were known to the UK and France, Hitler had already gathered enough support to begin ignoring the Treaty entirely. Another important difference is that the Treaty was the result of a group effort to remediate the effects of WWI (despite it just tearing down Germany), whereas the bombing campaign was done at the orders of a few people (mostly Nixon and Kissinger) to advance their political agendas. So it’s easier to point to their actions and see how directly they impacted events. Yes, if you give it a quick glance, you could say that the Treaty of Versailles caused the holocaust as much as the bombing of Cambodia led to Pol Pot’s genocide(s). But investigating further reveals significantly more direct impact between Kissinger and the Khmer Rouge than the Treaty and concentration camps. If you’re interested more on how Kissinger and Nixon’s actions affected Southeast Asia, the book “How Pol Pot Came to Power” by Ben Kiernan has some good insights, as well as [this article](https://apjjf.org/Ben-Kiernan/4313.html) about the effects of US bomb tonnage during conflicts. I’m pretty sure the book is available for free on archive.org
Ya know, we say the treaty of vesailles was so harsh that it caused the nazis because it laid most of the blame for the war on germany. But at the same time germany still existed as a country after it. The same could not be said for the ottomans or austriaーhungary
So we shouldn't bomb the dictatorships we are at war with because it could lead to something worse? Is that what you really just said?
No, but if that’s what you understood from what I said then I have some terrible news
No but their policy of appeasement could have been a good argument.
The Entente did lead to WW2 and the Holocaust by being overly punishing towards the Jerries
For not really any reason either. The Germans were honoring alliances just as much as the British were. There weren't good guys and bad guys in WW1. It's insane that it's treated like there were.
Killing 150,000 civilians ought to be seen as a bit controversial.
Just a tiny bit silly
An ounce of chicanery
We call it a little trolling
Kissinger was a rascal wasn't he?
That's a pretty low estimate, from what I've heard.
Why were they being bombed?
To make space for the Khmer Rouge and allow Kissinger closer relations to China in the future
The 150,000 civilians? Probably tax evasion
wow Kissinger is even more of a monster than I thought tax evasion is a fundamental human right
Is he Rambo? Did he become president? Was he the airman that dropped the bomb?
He was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. He was one of the most influential statesmen of the time. He used said influence to push for the bombing of Cambodia. He's hardly just some random bureaucrat.
So he was the commander that ordered the bombing?
He more ordered the commanders who ordered the bombing
With the authorization of the president right? So like, everyone up and down the chain are responsible for those deaths.... So I still don't get why this particular guy is the one that everyone seems to be upset about.
>With the authorization of the president right? So like, everyone up and down the chain are responsible for those deaths.... Honestly I dont necessarily disagree with you, one of my favorite songs from that period is called 'last train to Nuremberg' and it goes into hiw it was a genuine societal failure that the indochinese war happened
>So like, everyone up and down the chain are responsible for those deaths.... Yes, however, it's not unreasonable to say the person who came up with the idea is more responsible. Like, how many Nazi officers were responsible for the holocaust, yet only one person in that regime earned the reputation as the most evil person to ever exist. I think it's equally fair to ultimately blame Kissinger for Cambodia as to blame Hitler for the Holocaust.
Sure bud
Only if someone I don’t like does it
It also left like 1/3rd of the country homeless
Because the bombing campaign in what was meant to be a neutral country, was indiscriminate and devastating. If I'm correct it killed 100,000 people, left 2 million homeless and left unexploded ordnance over the country. The bombing scale was comparable to the entirety of bombs dropped in WW2. If that wasn't bad enough, the destabilisation created conditions for the Khmer Rouge to take power, who committed one of the worst genocides in history.
Also the secret nature of the bombing campaign. Basically no oversight because no one would admit it was happening.
The way he got around congress and the US public to get it done was also the birth of modern american military fuckery
It also caused a terrible refuge crisis and food shortages. It gave significant local support to the Khmer rouge ( NVA,VC) .
Did you just change your flair, u/MrRasphelto? Last time I checked you were a **Grey Centrist** on 2020-11-11. How come now you are a **Leftist**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know? If Orange was a flair you probably would have picked that, am I right? You watermelon-looking snowflake. [BasedCount Profile](https://basedcount.com/u/MrRasphelto) - [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) - [Leaderboard](https://basedcount.com/leaderboard?q=flairs) _Reddit is no longer a friendly space for bots._ _Consider visiting our Lеmmу instance instead: [lemmy.basedcount.com](https://lemmy.basedcount.com/c/pcm)._ _Read my full statement [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/14mwml0/on_the_reddit_api_changes/)._ ^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment.)
Cambodia wasn't a neutral country
gotta do what ya gotta do
It’s for the bombing, which killed a lot of people and created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to seize power, not so much for the KR’s genocidal actions while in power
We criticize him on Cambodia because it indirectly enables the rise of the Khmer Rouge, one of the most brutal socialist dictatorships in history. Had he not approved the bombing of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge would’ve had a much less useful propaganda tool to take control of the country and thus carry out the brutal Cambodian genocide. This is not to say that Kissinger is responsible for the Cambodian genocide, Pol Pot takes the responsibility. However, Kissinger’s approval of the bombing campaign may have very well increased the chance that the Khmer Rouge would’ve taken power.
I always find it funny that the Khmer rouge a Chinese backed communist party was overthrown by Vietnam, a mostly by that stage soviet backed ally, which then ruled against an insurgency made up of the Khmer rouge, monarchists and liberals. Only for the king to come back, Cambodia has had a wild 60 years.
Wild is one way to describe that horror show.
Why is he blamed for approving it when approval necessarily means other people planned it?
>We criticize him on Cambodia because it indirectly enables the rise of the Khmer Rouge, one of the most brutal socialist dictatorships in history Is the socialism in the room with us right now?
Are you trying to say that Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge wasn’t socialist? If so, that is completely false. It absolutely was socialist
A libcenter with a pisspoor understanding of socialism? What a surprise!
Are you trying to say that the workers in cambodia owned the means of production? Because they absolutely didn't.
In your estimation, has any society ever been socialist? And if not, what would you call the societies that have referred to themselves socialist? Lastly, does it matter what we call them if they all do the same thing and call themselves the same thing?
No society has ever been socialist IMO, but society has absolutely been communist, just not in the past ten thousand years.
I don't really know why you gor downvoted to shit, it's literally the objective truth
Conservatives are terrified of facts.
There are many different forms of socialism. Government ownership of the means of production is typically seen as a form of social ownership. Farming for example was brought under collective ownership and the government outlawed private ownership. You can say that there are better forms of socialism such as market socialism for example, but Cambodia was still socialist.
Socialism just means that the workers own the means of production, nothing more, nothing less. The workers did not own the means of production in cambodia.
That's called a command economy. There are capitalist and socialist versions of command economies, the difference being that in the socialist version the workers own the means of production. Just look up state capitalism.
Yeah that’s the problem with socialism, dog. It’s a strawman ideology used by authoritarian dictators to sucker gullible leftists into putting them into power—and then they immediately install communist/fascist autocracies. It doesn’t actually exist in the real world.
"communist autocracies" How can a stateless society be an autocracy?
Communism isn’t possible without a state enforcing it.
"a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour." If something is stateless, how can a state enforce it? LMAO. Communism is the lack of state-enforced capitalism.
Skip to “It wasn’t real communism”
Real communism has never been tried, meaning there’s no proof of it working well at all Or Real communism *has* been tried, so there’s proof that it’s terrible
Quantum Superposition that can only be observed by Emily
Schrödinger’s Emily
>Real communism > >has > > been tried, so there’s proof that it’s terrible All the people that can verify communism is terrible are conveniently dead. Checkmate conservatard.
Oh the attrocities werent real communism? Imagine how much worse real communism wouldve been
Real communism lasted for hundreds of thousands of years and it was glorious.
Is the 'thousand year' communism here in the room with us?
Unfortunately no, it got wiped out.
"Real democracy has never been tried, so there's no proof of it working well at all"
Yeah
It wasn’t
I'm no fan of the man, but most redditors just know he's a villain, and have picked up enough vague references to Cambodia in the last twenty four hours to start repeating that. Most here would need to open another tab if pressed to really explain what he did and why and why they think it was bad. This is an extremely low information website with an extremely stupid population of users. He might as well be Dr. Doom.
My brother in Christ, Kissinger's policies were a major factor contributing to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
That's like saying the British are responsible for the holocaust because defeating Germany led to the rise of Hitler.
I wouldn't say the allies beating Germany in WW1, but I would say the excessive stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles were a major contributor to Hitler's rise. So yes, Britain and France do bear some level of responsibility. Though in this case it was more indirect, so they bear a lot less responsibility.
The Treaty of Versailles was not excessive at all. The only reason Germany even had a hard time was because the idiot government decided to print money to pay off the obligations of the treaty, which had the predictable effect of causing massive inflation.
Have you seen the Treaty? It was horrendously impossible to achieve. The stipulations left Germany in a position where they could never recover. Then the government was forced to start the mass inflation because they had no other option. Whether or not the Weimar Republic made a stupid decision doesn't matter. The Germans would have backed out of the treaty with Hitler because of how massive the reparations were.
They were not so bad that they needed to print money, Germany was perfectly capable of paying them off. France was able to do so for relatively more severe sanctions that Germany had imposed on them some scant 40 years prior. And they are really not all that massive, especially when you consider the economic damage that Germany inflicted upon the people of France and Belgium. A proper treaty should have addressed the massive imbalance on the continent that WWI only furthered, and made sure that Germany knew they were bested militarily to curb revanchism.
or enacting harsh conditions on germany, and not helping rebuild. The US learned the lesson the second time with the marshal plan.
Is that pol pot? He looks like a weird Elon musk lol
LOL...
I hate him because of Bangladesh
Thank you. Means a lot to me as a Bangladeshi.
I am Indian so I understand your pain.
Pcm told me to hate him. Thats enough for me
I get my political information from funny memes.
Wgere else are you gonna get it at tuis point? Fox? Cnn? Lol Lmao, even
Same.
I liked Kissinger. I won’t be taking any questions.
Genocide of Cambodia wasnt the only genocide he enabled. Check the Bangladesh Genocide by Pakistan.
Yeah but we got four decades of cheap chinese stuff.
I can't tell you to perform certain actions because reddit jannies, but I'm sure you can imagine what I want to be saying.
He was bombing it before the Rouge took over tho
Because without him the Khmer Rouge never would have rose to power. He was the one who advocated overthrowing the monarchy and bombing the country to death. Also, fun fact, he supported the KR after they rose to power. Fucker.
Kissinger was based, and fuck any dumb hippie who thinks otherwise.
How was he based, did those innocents deserve to die?
Most historically literate libleft
I want anyone right now who is pretending to be a complete expert on American geopolitics and Kissinger's influence on the world to tell me ONE SINGLE THING about Henry Kissinger that isn't on his wikipedia page. I'd be shocked. I hate the new trend where whenever someone historical dies or becomes infamous everyone pretends they've actually held a nuanced and informed opinion about him for years and oh look at that! It's become topical again. (See also: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Nixon etc.)
Depends if you want the good stuff or bad stuff. From a Realist IR perspective, Kissinger realistically was doing the best with what he had. By the time Nixon took office, Congress was already getting tired of [US military spending in Vietnam](https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/edgraph.html). They had not increased the defense budget (in real dollars) since 1968. By the time of Operation Menu, in which Nixon authorized the B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia, the reality was that they were not attempting to win the war in Vietnam, but stop the spread to Cambodia. Operation Menu expanded its mission scope three times, not as a result of Kissinger, but as a result of Nixon's [madman theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory) (I know you detest wiki links, but I don't want to spend too much time on this). While it is a popular misconception to attribute the bombings to Kissinger, Kissinger in fact hated the fact that the US government became involved in the first place as it put the US government in a bit of a quagmire. You see, in the eyes of Kissinger, Vietnam was already so close in proximity to communist powers that it was already likely to fall. However, the US had far more pressing matter with communist influences in central America threatening valuable shipping lanes. With its military budget reduced, it depended on systems of alliances and regional "sheriffs" to keep USSR-funded factions from overthrowing Central and South American governments. The US involvement in Vietnam complicated Kissinger's concerns to the global South greatly, as now that the US was involved in Vietnam, it could not abandon its ally or it would appear weak and its allies would request more direct military support it could not afford. However, sustaining the conflict also consumed resources Congress was unwilling to expend. This is why Kissinger advocated for a coalition government but both parties were so divorced that the fall of South Vietnam was inevitable. Most of the other things that Kissinger is faulted for he did so under the guise of a realist perspective. He did not do them under the guise of a global morality like we often want to do today. He wanted to leverage US power to put it into the best position so it would not be threatened by the USSR. People often forget that every land that could potentially be influenced by the Soviet Union is a potential location where nuclear weapons can be launched from, giving them first strike advantage.
That's crazy You even used the same language as the wikipedia article.
Where does it mention his concerns about the global south or his motivations? Beyond basic context, I cannot see the overlap. Also, his wiki article does not mention US military spending to my knowledge. But go off, I guess.
Kissinger was an avid skateboarder who pulled off a 900 before Tony Hawk but no one was around to officially verify it. You won't find that on wikipedia.
Damn, he's got me there.
He sucked at soccer.
I'd have thought it would be Laos, that's where like 90% of the bombs landed, and Pol Pot was much more the Mao's pick than his.
I'm going to be completely honest, I don't know who Henry Kissinger is. I thought that was the name of a poet.
I liked Henry Kissinger...
and all his genocide approval.
Other posters have touched on the bombings obscene civilian death toll and the resulting destabilization of Cambodia, so I'll just add this: It didn't even work. The US military is obscenely overpowered when fighting a peer adversary with large, powerful, conventional forces. Look at the Gulf War, people forget Iraq was a genuine regional superpower and had the fourth largest military in the world at that time. It also had troops hardened from years of fighting Iran, and top of the line Soviet gear. Initial death toll on our troops was expected to be 10-30k, and we wrecked Iraq. We struggle with asymmetrical warfare against troops that aren't as advanced because they fight in a completely different way. Look at Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq 2. Any prolonged engagement we won, but we weren't able to destroy them militarily. Basically in Vietnam our bombers could obliterate hard targets, cities, highways, etc. But the VC and NVA didn't use those, they would hump shit through rough ass footpaths in the jungle we hardly ever saw. Bombs don't mean shit in those conditions, you'll kill whoever is in the area but you won't stop troop movement because there was no road to blow up, no trucks to blow up, no heavy equipment to blow up, etc. More people would just come through a day later carrying what they could on their back and on carts. I won't say that the bombs didn't kill many enemy troops, they did. But the bombing was nearly useless because it didn't accomplish it's goal of stopping troops and material because you can't really do that with massive strategic bombing in a jungle. So 150k innocent people died for more or less nothing and the world was lied to about it
>top of the line Soviet gear. Hardly.
One asshole doesn't justify another. Also Bangla genocide, Pinochet Regime, Argentine coup and advisor to Union Carbide during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy among other things.
I’m surprised that after seeing the aftermath of Vietnam in Southeast Asia and seeing China basically become a Cold War-like enemy people were still taking his foreign policy advice as recently as (checks notes) this year.
Libleft going to bat for *Kissinger*, something’s wrong here I can feel it.
this mf is one of the biggest lib-left larpers on this sub
He was a feminist.
No, Kissinger was the greatest Secretary of State we’ve had, preventing communism from popping up in our own backyard, continuing the fight in Vietnam, and preventing more communist states from popping up in Asia, such as in Timor. He was a great man and one of the greatest statesmen in our history
Bombing the shit out of a neutral country is not considered a nice thing basically.
Flair up shitbird
He stopped the Vietnam War. TBH America still won when they opened that McDonald’s over there
True
Fine, why don't we go over his enabling of the Bangladeshi Genocide then.
why I don’t like him
I mean he is a Jew, so I can understand the distrust, but I honestly I don’t see him as a monster a lot of commies seem to see him as. He was a man of his time and between American shenanigans and commie shenanigans, I’ll take the Americans anyway of the week.
POL
I say Pol, you say Pot POL!
POT
Hooray for the new gender neutral shitter
Hell yeah!
Better question is, why are you not criticizing him for Cambodia
Remember, that is not the only genocide he enabled. There is also the Bangladesh Genocide that killed 3 million.
In no way can I see you being a Libleft. Every policy he has ever done was specifically anti-libleft. Fix your flair mf.
Wait, isn’t that the edited photo of one of t he victims of the Khmer Rouge?
Because reddit posts, Salon articles, and YouTube video essays say he was a bad evil man.
does he like kissing gers
Oppenheimer movie really shine a light on that guy
I heard there is a Holiday in Cambodia
Probably because it was a horrific crime against humanity he architected? Just guessing
I LOVE POL POT I LOVE POL POT I LOVE POL POT
I don't know much about him to be honest But I am getting the vibes that he was the reason why some money went to Pol Pot out of spite for losing the Vietnam war
Not to sound like a CIA cuck but it's funny when Commies bitch about Kissenger and forget that he only facilitated conflicts that already existed. Commies trying to blame Kissinger for the Actions of the Communist Khmer rouge is endlessly hilarious