Great letter by Sen. Kerry to the WSJ about Vietnam & Cambodia

[beachmom]

Basically, the Right has used the argument that we can't leave Iraq because then there will be a genocide, just like after we left Vietnam there was a genocide in Cambodia. This argument has annoyed the hell out of me since forever, because it has a flawed notion of cause and effect. Last week, James Taranto of the WSJ wrote a scathing indictment of Democrats who want to pull out of Iraq, and even singled out Senator Kerry (in addition to Obama):

One may take the position that genocide would not be the likely result of an American retreat from Iraq. That is the view of Mr. Obama's Massachusetts colleague John Kerry, the 2004 presidential nominee. Mr. Kerry, who served in Vietnam before turning against that war, voted for the Iraq war before turning against it. He draws on the Vietnam experience in making the case that the outcome of a U.S. pullout from Iraq would not be that bad. "We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen," he said recently.

"It didn't happen" -- just as Mr. Kerry predicted it wouldn't. In his June 1971 debate with fellow swift boat veteran John O'Neill on "The Dick Cavett Show," the 27-year-old Mr. Kerry said, "There's absolutely no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath. . . . One has to, obviously, conjecture on this. However, I think the arguments clearly indicate that there probably wouldn't be. . . . There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw." Mr. Kerry acknowledged that "there would be certain political assassinations," but said they would number only "four or five thousand."

Then he names every bad thing that happened afterwards, acting like it was a direct result of the U.S. pulling out of Vietnam. Senator Kerry had an LTE in the paper:

Exaggerated Claims Of Violence in Vietnam
Date: 08/04/2007
By John Kerry

James Taranto misinterpreted my words and misreads history ("'It Didn't Happen,'" Opinion, July 26). I know the tragedy that followed a tragic war. John McCain and I led the effort to locate American POWs and ultimately normalize relations with Vietnam. I traveled to Cambodia to help create a genocide tribunal to bring to justice the butchers of the killing fields.

But what did not happen was the region-wide war or immediate chaos predicted by many who believed we had to maintain our massive military presence in Vietnam. A brutal dictatorship consolidated power in Vietnam, the region's refugee crisis worsened and two years after we left Vietnam, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge launched a genocide.

Mr. Taranto mistakenly views the violence after 1973 as a direct result of our withdrawal. In fact, the violence arose from the conditions that led us to withdraw: a Vietnamese civil war we couldn't stop supported by a Cambodian insurgency we couldn't bomb into submission. It's horrifying that so many South Vietnamese suffered. But, even accepting Mr. Taranto's estimate of 165,000 Vietnamese deaths -- double that of most academic sources -- this is a significant decrease from the preceding eight years when 450,000 civilians and 1.1 million soldiers were killed.

We should not repeat the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq, but let's have an honest debate rather than a hysterical one. The agony of exiting a quagmire is that there are few certainties and no good options. That choice was created not by the advocates for changing course, but by the architects of a disastrous war.

Sen. John Kerry
U.S. Senator (D., Mass.)
Washington

Subscription only link to the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118617215323687653.html

[killbotfactory]

1. Didn't Vietnam invade Cambodia and stop the Khmer Rouge?

And didn't the US support Khmer Rouge at that time?

[beachmom]

2. Yes to your first question -- Vietnam did ultimately invade Cambodia

and stopped the genocide. Anyone else know the second answer?

[killbotfactory]

3. I'm looking this up right now

Our bombing helped their rise to power, whether it was intentional or not, but I thought I read about the US defending them in the UN because it went against the interests of Vietnam.

Historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge. Kiernan and Owen argue that "Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began,<3>. In his study of Pol Pot's rise to power, Kiernan argues that "Pol Pot's revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia" and that the U.S. carpet bombing "was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot's rise." <4>

When the U.S. Congress suspended aid to Cambodia in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country. By 1975, with the Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

[beachmom]

4. Which is WHY we should not be bombing Iran or Syria or

any other country in the area. Look at the horrible results from bombing Cambodia, which I doubt U.S. military strategists foresaw.

[MH1]

5. Kerry got it exactly right and it bears repeating

The agony of exiting a quagmire is that there are few certainties and no good options. That choice was created not by the advocates for changing course, but by the architects of a disastrous war.

Thanks for posting this, beachmom. Excellent response by Kerry.

[killbotfactory]

16. Well I found one article about the US support of the Khmer Rouge

When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia and drove the Pol Potists from power in January 1972, Washington took immediate steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a guerrilla movement. International relief agencies were pressured by the U.S. to provide humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who fled into Thailand. For more than a decade, the Khmer Rouge have used the refugee camps they occupy as military bases to wage a contra-war in Cambodia. According to Linda Mason and Roger Brown, who studied the relief operations in Thailand for Cambodian refugees:

...relief organizations supplied the Khmer Rouge resistance movement with food and medicines.... In the Fall of 1979 the Khmer Rouge were the most desperate of all the refugees who came to the Thai-Kampuchean border. Throughout l900, however, their health rapidly improved, and relief organizations began questioning the legitimacy of feeding them. The Khmer Rouge. . . having regained strength...had begun actively fighting the Vietnamese. The relief organizations considered supporting the Khmer Rouge inconsistent with their humanitarian goals.... Yet Thailand, the country that hosted the relief operation, and the U.S. government, which funded the bulk of the relief operations, insisted that the Khmer Rouge be fed.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_PolPot.html

[struggle4progress]

17. Reagan and Bush I supported the Khmer Rouge as Vietnam's enemy: there were several

of bills introduced in Congress towards the end of Reagan's reign and in the early part of Bush I's, that intended to forbid US funding for the Khmer Rouge. Reagan was successful at stopping such bills before they got very far, and Bush I killed at least one. Part of the story can be found in the Congressional Record.

[ProSense]

6. Excellent!

History Repeating Itself: Kerry-Brokered Cambodia Tribunal Set To Begin

[karynnj]

7. The parallels are heart breaking

Your thread has more information than I ever had seen on Cambodia. We need to learn from this - as Kerry clearly has - rather than lie about it and smear people who have spoken out on either of these disasters.

The WSJ did nothing to normalize relationships in SE Asia, though some of its readers may have benefitted from it. That writer really crossed the line of decency.

[beachmom]

11. And I don't think history should be studied for a political agenda.

It should be studied to learn the follies of man, and try not to repeat those mistakes. I may add that this "genocide theory" has also appeared in LTEs in my local paper, showing that this is a concerted effort by the Right with a variation on the "Stabbed in the Back" method to keep us STUCK.

[karynnj]

12. That's interesting

I had heard seen and read Cambodia et al blamed on our leaving - but it was not tied to Kerry. It very likely is there new reason we can't leave - until Democrats do it - then they will blame us as they did in Vietnam. What is infuriating is that in the 1970s, people understood that it had nothing to do with us leaving. It almost seems that via movies and RW declarations that things are fact, they have tried to re-write history.

[zulchzulu]

8. Thank you Mr. REAL President

John continues to be The Man.

[politicasista]

9. K&R

:kick:

[ProSense]

10. 535 days

until Bush leaves office, too many deaths too late.

[MasonJar]

13. To think that our country could have been led by Al Gore and John Kerry

for the last 7 years instead of a corporate dummy just shocks the body's immune system. How could this happen? Both men are patricians and statesmen but more importantly both men are big environmentalists; we would already be on our way to helping solve global warming, a threat to man's continued existence, if either of these men were president. Fate has dealt the US a powerful blow. I only hope we can recover. Time is running short on global warming. Another GOPer regime may actually spell the end of time for man. I am not so worried about the USA as I am the world itself. If we elect another Pug, then America may not deserve to survive; it certainly will not deserve to lead.

[politicasista]

19. True n/t

[ProSense]

14. Kick! n/t

[wisteria]

15. i am happy he explained this. The Republicans have been distorting history. n/t

[ProSense]

18. Kick! n/t