Chomsky: The Arab World is on Fire

[westwall]

False according to whom?
Berkeley undergrads?

"An official United States Air Force record of some US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US president Bill Clinton in 2000.

"The data reveals the true extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration. This was four years earlier than previously believed.

"A report by historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen states 2,756,941 tons of ordnance was dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites.

"Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having 'unknown' targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.[1][2]

"The Menu bombings were an escalation of these air attacks. Nixon authorized the use of long-range B-52 bombers to carpet bomb the region.

"Historians now classify the campaign as a mere fourteen month phase in an extensive series of secretive bombing raids that spanned a period of eleven years."

Are you familiar with the concept of carpet bombing?
2,756,941 tons of ordinance.
230, 516 sorties.

'Think they killed any Cambodian civilians?
'Think Dick and Henry cared?
Do you think the profit margin on every bomb mattered more than the loss of life?

Operation Menu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First off anyone who quotes wiki has allready lost the argument. Secondly, yes the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia then they did on Germany during WWII, and they did it along the Ho Chi Minh trail IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE and the targets (such as they were because it was a notoriously wasteful campaign with thousands of bombs dumped into one particular swamp just to get them off the airplane) were North Vietnamese regulars transporting supplies and equipment down the trail, not the Cambodians who were dozens of miles away.

My gosh but you are dense. Try reading a good book instead of your Chomsky propaganda. Hell Zinn's better than that retard Noam.

 

[georgephillip]

The US is to blame for pol pot now? Jesus the US gets the blame for everything.

US bombs and artillery were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians in an attempt to interdict NV suppy lines.

Chomsky makes sure to include that fact in his assessments of Pol Pot's genocide.

"hundreds of thousands"?....uhmm, I am gong to have to ask for a sane link on that please.

I'm guessing you find Wiki closer to "sane" than CounterPunch:

"Casualties and losses

"Khmer Rouge fighters and Cambodian civilians: 40,000 (demographer Marek Sliwinski); tens of thousands (Banister and Johnson); 50-150,000 (Ben Kiernan) NOTE: These figures refer to the entirety of the US bombing of Cambodia, not just the Menu bombings per se.

"Vietnamese Casualties: Unknown."

Saul Landau's version:

"Between March 1969 and May 1970, Kissinger ordered some 3,600 B 52 bombing raids on Cambodia. Kissinger later lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he had selected only 'unpopulated' areas of Cambodia for bombing.

Somehow, between 600,000 to 800,000 civilians died in these 'unpopulated areas'. This carnage occurred before Pol Pot won power..."

Up the Mekong...

 

[georgephillip]

False according to whom?
Berkeley undergrads?

"An official United States Air Force record of some US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US president Bill Clinton in 2000.

"The data reveals the true extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration. This was four years earlier than previously believed.

"A report by historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen states 2,756,941 tons of ordnance was dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites.

"Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having 'unknown' targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.[1][2]

"The Menu bombings were an escalation of these air attacks. Nixon authorized the use of long-range B-52 bombers to carpet bomb the region.

"Historians now classify the campaign as a mere fourteen month phase in an extensive series of secretive bombing raids that spanned a period of eleven years."

Are you familiar with the concept of carpet bombing?
2,756,941 tons of ordinance.
230, 516 sorties.

'Think they killed any Cambodian civilians?
'Think Dick and Henry cared?
Do you think the profit margin on every bomb mattered more than the loss of life?

Operation Menu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First off anyone who quotes wiki has allready lost the argument. Secondly, yes the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia then they did on Germany during WWII, and they did it along the Ho Chi Minh trail IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE and the targets (such as they were because it was a notoriously wasteful campaign with thousands of bombs dumped into one particular swamp just to get them off the airplane) were North Vietnamese regulars transporting supplies and equipment down the trail, not the Cambodians who were dozens of miles away.

My gosh but you are dense. Try reading a good book instead of your Chomsky propaganda. Hell Zinn's better than that retard Noam.

Speaking of good (online) books:

"WAR is a racket. It always has been."

 

[westwall]

False according to whom?
Berkeley undergrads?

"An official United States Air Force record of some US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US president Bill Clinton in 2000.

"The data reveals the true extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration. This was four years earlier than previously believed.

"A report by historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen states 2,756,941 tons of ordnance was dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites.

"Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having 'unknown' targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.[1][2]

"The Menu bombings were an escalation of these air attacks. Nixon authorized the use of long-range B-52 bombers to carpet bomb the region.

"Historians now classify the campaign as a mere fourteen month phase in an extensive series of secretive bombing raids that spanned a period of eleven years."

Are you familiar with the concept of carpet bombing?
2,756,941 tons of ordinance.
230, 516 sorties.

'Think they killed any Cambodian civilians?
'Think Dick and Henry cared?
Do you think the profit margin on every bomb mattered more than the loss of life?

Operation Menu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First off anyone who quotes wiki has allready lost the argument. Secondly, yes the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia then they did on Germany during WWII, and they did it along the Ho Chi Minh trail IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE and the targets (such as they were because it was a notoriously wasteful campaign with thousands of bombs dumped into one particular swamp just to get them off the airplane) were North Vietnamese regulars transporting supplies and equipment down the trail, not the Cambodians who were dozens of miles away.

My gosh but you are dense. Try reading a good book instead of your Chomsky propaganda. Hell Zinn's better than that retard Noam.

Speaking of good (online) books:

"WAR is a racket. It always has been."

I have a first edition of Butlers book. In fact I have a copy of every book he ever wrote, he was a very good author and a very smart and brave man. The problem is he was dead long before the Vietnam war got started so you can't just read a political book and understand what went on there now can you. Nice try at deflection but you clearly know nothing about the subject. There are hundreds of good books on the subject dealing with the air war alone. You could read Christopher Robbins two books on the secret war "The Ravens" and of course "Air America" to get a better idea of the war we waged on trees in Laos and Cambodia. They are an entertaining read as well so even you should be entertained enough to read them.

 

[georgephillip]

First off anyone who quotes wiki has allready lost the argument. Secondly, yes the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia then they did on Germany during WWII, and they did it along the Ho Chi Minh trail IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE and the targets (such as they were because it was a notoriously wasteful campaign with thousands of bombs dumped into one particular swamp just to get them off the airplane) were North Vietnamese regulars transporting supplies and equipment down the trail, not the Cambodians who were dozens of miles away.

My gosh but you are dense. Try reading a good book instead of your Chomsky propaganda. Hell Zinn's better than that retard Noam.

Speaking of good (online) books:

"WAR is a racket. It always has been."

I have a first edition of Butlers book. In fact I have a copy of every book he ever wrote, he was a very good author and a very smart and brave man. The problem is he was dead long before the Vietnam war got started so you can't just read a political book and understand what went on there now can you. Nice try at deflection but you clearly know nothing about the subject. There are hundreds of good books on the subject dealing with the air war alone. You could read Christopher Robbins two books on the secret war "The Ravens" and of course "Air America" to get a better idea of the war we waged on trees in Laos and Cambodia. They are an entertaining read as well so even you should be entertained enough to read them.

Justice or Forces?

"PHILOSOPHER and linguist Noam Chomsky says the
United States owes Cambodia not only an apology but massive
reparations for the B-52 bombing campaign called Operation Menu that killed up to a million people.

"The campaign lasted from March 18, 1969, to May 26, 1970, destroyed an estimated 1,000 towns and villages, displaced 2 million people and, Chomsky says, and helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power.

"Chomsky’s comments come after the US last week ruled out
a plea from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to forgive a
US$317 million debt to the US accrued by the Lon Nol regime
during the 1970s.

"In the interview, Chomsky said: 'Henry Kissinger would certainly
be brought to trial for his role in the bombing, if the world were
governed by justice, not forces.'”

Did you find this entertaining?

 

[westwall]

Speaking of good (online) books:

"WAR is a racket. It always has been."

I have a first edition of Butlers book. In fact I have a copy of every book he ever wrote, he was a very good author and a very smart and brave man. The problem is he was dead long before the Vietnam war got started so you can't just read a political book and understand what went on there now can you. Nice try at deflection but you clearly know nothing about the subject. There are hundreds of good books on the subject dealing with the air war alone. You could read Christopher Robbins two books on the secret war "The Ravens" and of course "Air America" to get a better idea of the war we waged on trees in Laos and Cambodia. They are an entertaining read as well so even you should be entertained enough to read them.

Justice or Forces?

"PHILOSOPHER and linguist Noam Chomsky says the
United States owes Cambodia not only an apology but massive
reparations for the B-52 bombing campaign called Operation Menu that killed up to a million people.

"The campaign lasted from March 18, 1969, to May 26, 1970, destroyed an estimated 1,000 towns and villages, displaced 2 million people and, Chomsky says, and helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power.

"Chomsky’s comments come after the US last week ruled out
a plea from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to forgive a
US$317 million debt to the US accrued by the Lon Nol regime
during the 1970s.

"In the interview, Chomsky said: 'Henry Kissinger would certainly
be brought to trial for his role in the bombing, if the world were
governed by justice, not forces.'”

Did you find this entertaining?

We killed a million trees but his cliam for killing a million Cambodians is utter rubbish. A very good friend of mine lost almost his entire family to the khmer Rouge, he lived it and fortunately escaped with his life, astonishingly he loves America and has no recollection of American bombs ever killing Cambodians. Trees yes, lot's of those, but people, no, that was your buddy Chomskeys pets the Khmer Rouge.

Try again moron.

 

[georgephillip]

Got any links?

Bitch.

 

[westwall]

Got any links?

Bitch.

Study it yourself you lazy fool. Go to a library near you and crack a book. I have a life which clearly you lack.

 

[georgephillip]

"Cambodia was an island of relative tranquility prior to the American invasion of 1970, though it had been repeatedly attacked by American and U.S.-backed forces from 1957 on.

"There was limited local insurgency, aroused by government repression, even by the 1960s.

"As Vietnamese were driven to a narrow border strip by the savage American military operations of early 1967, direct U.S. attacks on Cambodia escalated.

"By May 1967, the Pentagon was concerned that Cambodia was 'becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later,' an obvious consequence of U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos.

"In March 1969. shortly after the 'secret bombings' began, Sihanouk vainly called upon the Western press to publicize his government's protest over the 'criminal attacks' on Khmer peasants.

"The 1970 invasion helped organize the Khmer Rouge rebellion as thousands of peasants rallied to the resistance under the impact of the vicious bombing and ground attacks of the U.S. military and the Vietnamese forces it organized.

"Charles Meyer, who had long been close to ruling forces in Cambodia, warned then that "it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred (of the peasants) for those who destroyed their villages and their possessions" (Derriere le sourir khmer).

"This was well before the murderous American bombings of the 1970s, which surely inflamed peasant hatred and desire for revenge."

How many innocent human lives (not trees) did the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia claim?

Are you and your "very good friend" sufficiently brainwashed to believe the Khmer Rouge didn't benefit from the "peasant hatred" that "heroic" US hired killers produced?

Are you personally ignorant enough to believe it wasn't the profit motive driving US policies in Indochina?

The Cynical Farce....

 

[editec]

Good ol Chomsky. Who beleives that war in all cases is bad. Unless of course your fighting against the united states or trying to premote religious extreamism or socialism. Then he is fine with it.

Chomsky doesn't believe that.

Go read a book, Lad.

 

[georgephillip]

Shouldn't those who condemned the Soviet and US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan be considered American prophets?

 

[westwall]

"Cambodia was an island of relative tranquility prior to the American invasion of 1970, though it had been repeatedly attacked by American and U.S.-backed forces from 1957 on.

"There was limited local insurgency, aroused by government repression, even by the 1960s.

"As Vietnamese were driven to a narrow border strip by the savage American military operations of early 1967, direct U.S. attacks on Cambodia escalated.

"By May 1967, the Pentagon was concerned that Cambodia was 'becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later,' an obvious consequence of U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos.

"In March 1969. shortly after the 'secret bombings' began, Sihanouk vainly called upon the Western press to publicize his government's protest over the 'criminal attacks' on Khmer peasants.

"The 1970 invasion helped organize the Khmer Rouge rebellion as thousands of peasants rallied to the resistance under the impact of the vicious bombing and ground attacks of the U.S. military and the Vietnamese forces it organized.

"Charles Meyer, who had long been close to ruling forces in Cambodia, warned then that "it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred (of the peasants) for those who destroyed their villages and their possessions" (Derriere le sourir khmer).

"This was well before the murderous American bombings of the 1970s, which surely inflamed peasant hatred and desire for revenge."

How many innocent human lives (not trees) did the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia claim?

Are you and your "very good friend" sufficiently brainwashed to believe the Khmer Rouge didn't benefit from the "peasant hatred" that "heroic" US hired killers produced?

Are you personally ignorant enough to believe it wasn't the profit motive driving US policies in Indochina?

The Cynical Farce....

Anybody with a brain knows that numbskull. LBJ became a multi millionaire thanks to his war profits, as did McNamara and a whole host of industrialists. Where have I ever said we should have been in VN? It was a horrible waste of human life on both sides.

My gosh but you're dense. Do you think your the first person to have read a lefty book dealing with the VN war? Read a few books by the pilots who dropped the bombs, they hated what they were doing. they were disgusted by the waste, they wanted to fight the bad guys but they were instead directed to blow up patches of jungle when they knew there was nothing there but trees.

Chomsky and your fellow travellers think that dropping lots of bombs MUST result in loss of life, this is patently untrue. As has been stated in book after book about the war, we blew the crap out of jungle where there was no one.

As far as the other read "The Politics of Heroin In Southeast Asia" if you want some better info on the secret wars fought in the region. Your problem is you read a couple of leftist polemics and think you know something. Try reading about 100 other books that deal with all aspects of the war and then you may actually know something, right now you know about 1 percent of what went on there and because you are a typical lefty you think that makes you an expert. Guess what, it doesn't.

While you're at it you should read some of the French experience as well, Bernard Fall has many excellent books he wrote before he was killed by a landmine while on a patrol with US Marines in 1967.

The Viet-Minh Regime (1954)
Street Without Joy (1961)
The Two Vietnams (1963)
Viet-Nam Witness, 1953-66 (1966)
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1966).
Last Reflections on a War (1967), published after his death.
Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-1961 (1969).

I suggest you read them as they are very well researched (he was there after all and witnessed what he was writing about), and had the US listened to him, the waste, death and destruction would have been greatly diminished.

So there's some homework. Get to work and educate yourself.

 

[Ropey]

Good that the Arab world is on fire. The people have been held back for far too long. Let the people speak. Break up Nigeria into Christian and Muslim countries. No more dead Christians that way. No more removing polio vaccines from Christians because Muslims fear that the polio is to limit birth rates of Muslims.

Let's let the people speak and listen to them shall we?

 

[Ropey]

False according to whom?
Berkeley undergrads?

"An official United States Air Force record of some US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US president Bill Clinton in 2000.

"The data reveals the true extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration. This was four years earlier than previously believed.

"A report by historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen states 2,756,941 tons of ordnance was dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites.

"Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having 'unknown' targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.[1][2]

"The Menu bombings were an escalation of these air attacks. Nixon authorized the use of long-range B-52 bombers to carpet bomb the region.

"Historians now classify the campaign as a mere fourteen month phase in an extensive series of secretive bombing raids that spanned a period of eleven years."

Are you familiar with the concept of carpet bombing?
2,756,941 tons of ordinance.
230, 516 sorties.

'Think they killed any Cambodian civilians?
'Think Dick and Henry cared?
Do you think the profit margin on every bomb mattered more than the loss of life?

Operation Menu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First off anyone who quotes wiki has allready lost the argument. Secondly, yes the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia then they did on Germany during WWII, and they did it along the Ho Chi Minh trail IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE and the targets (such as they were because it was a notoriously wasteful campaign with thousands of bombs dumped into one particular swamp just to get them off the airplane) were North Vietnamese regulars transporting supplies and equipment down the trail, not the Cambodians who were dozens of miles away.

My gosh but you are dense. Try reading a good book instead of your Chomsky propaganda. Hell Zinn's better than that retard Noam.

This bears repeating.

 

[westwall]

Good ol Chomsky. Who beleives that war in all cases is bad. Unless of course your fighting against the united states or trying to premote religious extreamism or socialism. Then he is fine with it.

Chomsky doesn't believe that.

Go read a book, Lad.

His hatred of American politics and policies are well known, here are a few of his quotes dealing with the subject. He's also a devout secularist so of course hates religion and the bible. Some of what he says is of course correct but he taints it with his particular viewpoint and has been said before, his support of the Khmer Rouge is well documented and that alone condemns him in my opinion. Anyone who supports genocide is not worthy of my time and renders his judgements of anyone else null and void.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media.

 

[georgephillip]

Good that the Arab world is on fire. The people have been held back for far too long. Let the people speak. Break up Nigeria into Christian and Muslim countries. No more dead Christians that way. No more removing polio vaccines from Christians because Muslims fear that the polio is to limit birth rates of Muslims.

Let's let the people speak and listen to them shall we?

No more racist rabbis refusing to rent to Christians in Jerusalem?

No more Jewish State?

Not soon enough.

 

[georgephillip]

"Cambodia was an island of relative tranquility prior to the American invasion of 1970, though it had been repeatedly attacked by American and U.S.-backed forces from 1957 on.

"There was limited local insurgency, aroused by government repression, even by the 1960s.

"As Vietnamese were driven to a narrow border strip by the savage American military operations of early 1967, direct U.S. attacks on Cambodia escalated.

"By May 1967, the Pentagon was concerned that Cambodia was 'becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later,' an obvious consequence of U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos.

"In March 1969. shortly after the 'secret bombings' began, Sihanouk vainly called upon the Western press to publicize his government's protest over the 'criminal attacks' on Khmer peasants.

"The 1970 invasion helped organize the Khmer Rouge rebellion as thousands of peasants rallied to the resistance under the impact of the vicious bombing and ground attacks of the U.S. military and the Vietnamese forces it organized.

"Charles Meyer, who had long been close to ruling forces in Cambodia, warned then that "it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred (of the peasants) for those who destroyed their villages and their possessions" (Derriere le sourir khmer).

"This was well before the murderous American bombings of the 1970s, which surely inflamed peasant hatred and desire for revenge."

How many innocent human lives (not trees) did the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia claim?

Are you and your "very good friend" sufficiently brainwashed to believe the Khmer Rouge didn't benefit from the "peasant hatred" that "heroic" US hired killers produced?

Are you personally ignorant enough to believe it wasn't the profit motive driving US policies in Indochina?

The Cynical Farce....

Anybody with a brain knows that numbskull. LBJ became a multi millionaire thanks to his war profits, as did McNamara and a whole host of industrialists. Where have I ever said we should have been in VN? It was a horrible waste of human life on both sides.

My gosh but you're dense. Do you think your the first person to have read a lefty book dealing with the VN war? Read a few books by the pilots who dropped the bombs, they hated what they were doing. they were disgusted by the waste, they wanted to fight the bad guys but they were instead directed to blow up patches of jungle when they knew there was nothing there but trees.

Chomsky and your fellow travellers think that dropping lots of bombs MUST result in loss of life, this is patently untrue. As has been stated in book after book about the war, we blew the crap out of jungle where there was no one.

As far as the other read "The Politics of Heroin In Southeast Asia" if you want some better info on the secret wars fought in the region. Your problem is you read a couple of leftist polemics and think you know something. Try reading about 100 other books that deal with all aspects of the war and then you may actually know something, right now you know about 1 percent of what went on there and because you are a typical lefty you think that makes you an expert. Guess what, it doesn't.

While you're at it you should read some of the French experience as well, Bernard Fall has many excellent books he wrote before he was killed by a landmine while on a patrol with US Marines in 1967.

The Viet-Minh Regime (1954)
Street Without Joy (1961)
The Two Vietnams (1963)
Viet-Nam Witness, 1953-66 (1966)
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1966).
Last Reflections on a War (1967), published after his death.
Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-1961 (1969).

I suggest you read them as they are very well researched (he was there after all and witnessed what he was writing about), and had the US listened to him, the waste, death and destruction would have been greatly diminished.

So there's some homework. Get to work and educate yourself.

Are you under the delusion the pilots dropping those bombs were "good guys"?

What part of global class war are you most ignorant of?

American Exceptionalism?

Educate yourself, Plato.

 

[westwall]

"Cambodia was an island of relative tranquility prior to the American invasion of 1970, though it had been repeatedly attacked by American and U.S.-backed forces from 1957 on.

"There was limited local insurgency, aroused by government repression, even by the 1960s.

"As Vietnamese were driven to a narrow border strip by the savage American military operations of early 1967, direct U.S. attacks on Cambodia escalated.

"By May 1967, the Pentagon was concerned that Cambodia was 'becoming more and more important as a supply base -- now of food and medicines, perhaps ammunition later,' an obvious consequence of U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos.

"In March 1969. shortly after the 'secret bombings' began, Sihanouk vainly called upon the Western press to publicize his government's protest over the 'criminal attacks' on Khmer peasants.

"The 1970 invasion helped organize the Khmer Rouge rebellion as thousands of peasants rallied to the resistance under the impact of the vicious bombing and ground attacks of the U.S. military and the Vietnamese forces it organized.

"Charles Meyer, who had long been close to ruling forces in Cambodia, warned then that "it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred (of the peasants) for those who destroyed their villages and their possessions" (Derriere le sourir khmer).

"This was well before the murderous American bombings of the 1970s, which surely inflamed peasant hatred and desire for revenge."

How many innocent human lives (not trees) did the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia claim?

Are you and your "very good friend" sufficiently brainwashed to believe the Khmer Rouge didn't benefit from the "peasant hatred" that "heroic" US hired killers produced?

Are you personally ignorant enough to believe it wasn't the profit motive driving US policies in Indochina?

The Cynical Farce....

Anybody with a brain knows that numbskull. LBJ became a multi millionaire thanks to his war profits, as did McNamara and a whole host of industrialists. Where have I ever said we should have been in VN? It was a horrible waste of human life on both sides.

My gosh but you're dense. Do you think your the first person to have read a lefty book dealing with the VN war? Read a few books by the pilots who dropped the bombs, they hated what they were doing. they were disgusted by the waste, they wanted to fight the bad guys but they were instead directed to blow up patches of jungle when they knew there was nothing there but trees.

Chomsky and your fellow travellers think that dropping lots of bombs MUST result in loss of life, this is patently untrue. As has been stated in book after book about the war, we blew the crap out of jungle where there was no one.

As far as the other read "The Politics of Heroin In Southeast Asia" if you want some better info on the secret wars fought in the region. Your problem is you read a couple of leftist polemics and think you know something. Try reading about 100 other books that deal with all aspects of the war and then you may actually know something, right now you know about 1 percent of what went on there and because you are a typical lefty you think that makes you an expert. Guess what, it doesn't.

While you're at it you should read some of the French experience as well, Bernard Fall has many excellent books he wrote before he was killed by a landmine while on a patrol with US Marines in 1967.

The Viet-Minh Regime (1954)
Street Without Joy (1961)
The Two Vietnams (1963)
Viet-Nam Witness, 1953-66 (1966)
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1966).
Last Reflections on a War (1967), published after his death.
Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-1961 (1969).

I suggest you read them as they are very well researched (he was there after all and witnessed what he was writing about), and had the US listened to him, the waste, death and destruction would have been greatly diminished.

So there's some homework. Get to work and educate yourself.

Are you under the delusion the pilots dropping those bombs were "good guys"?

What part of global class war are you most ignorant of?

American Exceptionalism?

Educate yourself, Plato.

Ah yes the eternal complaint of the global class war. Here's a wakeup call for you bucko, Stalin murdered 80 million of his own people. Hows that for class war doofus. Mao murdered 150 million during the "Cultural Revolution", hows that for class warfare? You want class warfare look to your socialist collectivist nations for outright class genocide. Gosh you are a twit. I've read Plato, and Aristotle and Socrates, clearly you havn't. So get out of your moms basement and go to the library and read some.

You are so far out of your depth here it is pathetic. The only person you have to blame for your miserable life is you bucko. I was born poor and lived in a truck for 6 years. I know what it means to be poor. I also know what it means to work hard and do something with my life. All the kids I grew up with are poor still, because they weren't as smart as me but mainly because they were lazy twerps like you who would rather party than work.

That's the real world idiot. It has nothing to do with class, it has everything to do with individual responsibility and hard work. I am wealthier than my entire family, and all of their friends because instead of drinking and partying I worked and studied, now I am semi retired and having a good time while they slave away woring for the "man". Which the complain about incessantly, yet they never bother to do anything about it. Is that the "mans" fault? No, it's theirs, the same as it's your fault you're a miserable failure.

 

[georgephillip]

You didn't answer my question about the pilots and the "good guys."

Are you confused about who the greatest purveyor of violence on this planet applies to? And the role US pilots have played in killing MILLIONS of innocent civilians since the end WWII?

Stalin and Mao had little in common with socialism, and I'm sure even you noticed their mass murders did not occur on the opposite side of the planet from their homelands.

How many millions of North American Indians did the "good guys" of the 18th and 19th Centuries butcher for God and Gold?

A little education can be a dangerous thing as your pathetic denials of five thousand years of class war make abundantly clear. Individual responsibility and hard work don't trump government's use war and private bond markets to socialize cost and privatize profit.

To get up to speed on Cambodia, read more John Pilger:

"Cambodia had been the West's dirty secret since then-president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger ordered a 'secret bombing', extending the war in Vietnam into Cambodia in the early 1970s, killing hundreds of thousands of peasants.

"If this doesn't work", an aide heard Nixon say to Kissinger, "it'll be your ass, Henry".

"It worked in handing Pol Pot his chance to seize power."

Now tell me how the pilots who dropped those bombs knew there was nothing but trees dying thousands of feet below.

"Today,(11/5/2009) Pol Pot is dead and several of his elderly henchmen are on trial in a United Nations/Cambodian court for crimes against humanity.

"Kissinger, whose bombing opened the door to the nightmare of Year Zero, is still at large."

None are more miserable than arrogant slaves like you.
Particularly if they are rich.

 

[westwall]

You didn't answer my question about the pilots and the "good guys."

Are you confused about who the greatest purveyor of violence on this planet applies to? And the role US pilots have played in killing MILLIONS of innocent civilians since the end WWII?

Stalin and Mao had little in common with socialism, and I'm sure even you noticed their mass murders did not occur on the opposite side of the planet from their homelands.

How many millions of North American Indians did the "good guys" of the 18th and 19th Centuries butcher for God and Gold?

A little education can be a dangerous thing as your pathetic denials of five thousand years of class war make abundantly clear. Individual responsibility and hard work don't trump government's use war and private bond markets to socialize cost and privatize profit.

To get up to speed on Cambodia, read more John Pilger:

"Cambodia had been the West's dirty secret since then-president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger ordered a 'secret bombing', extending the war in Vietnam into Cambodia in the early 1970s, killing hundreds of thousands of peasants.

"If this doesn't work", an aide heard Nixon say to Kissinger, "it'll be your ass, Henry".

"It worked in handing Pol Pot his chance to seize power."

Now tell me how the pilots who dropped those bombs knew there was nothing but trees dying thousands of feet below.

"Today,(11/5/2009) Pol Pot is dead and several of his elderly henchmen are on trial in a United Nations/Cambodian court for crimes against humanity.

"Kissinger, whose bombing opened the door to the nightmare of Year Zero, is still at large."

None are more miserable than arrogant slaves like you.
Particularly if they are rich.

Given the relative merits of the combatants involved, namely the North Vietnamese propensity to murder innocent civilians vs the American Pilots willingness to place themselves in more danger to avoid civilian casualties then yes the American pilots were far and away the good guys in the VN war.

Your assertion that the US has killed millions of civilians since WWII is once again utter rubbish completely unsupported by fact, but you will never believe real facts you care only about your propaganda so I won't waste my time trying to educate you. You are unteachable.

Your lefty sources that claim the US killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Cambodia is likewise rubbish. We bombed far, far away from civilian population centers and this is well documented by both US and Soviet sources so once again enjoy your propaganda but that's all it is.

The only ignorant slave is you, I can do anything I want whenever I want. I EARNED the ability to do that. You are either willfully ignorant or stupid. You may choose which classification you are but I could care less. In my book your a worthless twerp, so enjoy your basement.