Chomsky's accuracy
John Filiss
Chomsky's accuracy, or lack of it, on the matter of the Khmer Rouge and
atrocities in Cambodia. I'm curious to know if there are similar debates
going on regarding any of Chomsky's other, extensive writings on foreign
policy. Are there well-documented rebuttals and counter-arguments to his
views on Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, etc.? Is the Cambodia issue the only one
which has this level of debate?
John Filiss
The Anarchy Board
http://pub5.ezboard.com/btheanarchyboard
Brian Siano
John Filiss wrote:
> There seems to be a pretty good body of literature on both sides concerning
> Chomsky's accuracy, or lack of it, on the matter of the Khmer Rouge and
> atrocities in Cambodia. I'm curious to know if there are similar debates
> going on regarding any of Chomsky's other, extensive writings on foreign
> policy. Are there well-documented rebuttals and counter-arguments to his
> views on Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, etc.? Is the Cambodia issue the only one
> which has this level of debate?
>
> John Filiss
I wouldn't call it a debate, actually. It's just that clowns like James
Donald have a position, and they have continued to argue it regardless of
reason or evidence. It's no more a "debate" than arguments over a
flat earth.
Matt
<bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
I think James Donald's position on Chomsky is reasonable and empirically
supported. I also think he may be prone to exageration about his
opponent's intentions, which leaves him prone to your kind of criticism.
Charles Kalina's posts are invariably even-handed, and I think he has
forcefully demonstrated some serious problems in Chomsky's work.
Stephen Denney and David Friedman have also made indisputably fair
criticisms of Chomsky clearly based on reason and evidence.
I hope my criticisms have been fair as well, though recently they've
sucked since I haven't had easy access to the source material. Readers
can judge for themselves though.
It seems to me the exact opposite of your claims is true: Chomsky
supporters dogmatically stand by their man, regardless of the evidence
against him.
--
Matt (djar...@usa.net.invalid)
remove "invalid" to email
Ignatz Mouse
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
John Filiss
"Brian Siano" <bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:39591AC7...@cceb.med.upenn.edu...
>
>
> John Filiss wrote:
>
> > There seems to be a pretty good body of literature on both sides
concerning
> > Chomsky's accuracy, or lack of it, on the matter of the Khmer Rouge and
> > atrocities in Cambodia. I'm curious to know if there are similar
debates
> > going on regarding any of Chomsky's other, extensive writings on foreign
his
> > views on Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, etc.? Is the Cambodia issue the only
one
> > which has this level of debate?
> >
> > John Filiss
>
> I wouldn't call it a debate, actually. It's just that clowns like James
> Donald have a position, and they have continued to argue it regardless of
> reason or evidence. It's no more a "debate" than arguments over a
> flat earth.
>
I would have to disagree with your interpretation. I think Matt, Donald, et
al, have done a very good job of defending their positions. I'm not a
Chomsky fan, but the Cambodia issue was one area where I really tried to
give him every doubt. A friend of mine traveled through Southeast Asia, and
met one Cambodian who told him that the stories in the West re the Khmer
Rouge were exaggerations. That is anecdotal stuff, and means little by
itself, but it at least encouraged me to keep an open mind on the topic
while following the recent debate. Unfortunately, I get the impression
Chomsky himself rarely keeps an open mind on these topics, and your
accusation against Donald might apply to Chomsky himself.
Which is why I want to know of other critiques of Chomsky's perspective on
world affairs. I'd like to know what sort of footing he's really on.
But thanks for your input.
Adam Bayliss
confirmations of your personal judgments on Chomsky is clearly the
reason you are convinced by their arguments. Do you really think that
no one died as a result of US bombing or that the number is
consequential? This is James's position, you don't question it at all
huh? Nor do you question the media perpetrated fraud involved in
reporting events in Cambodia? I invite anyone to view the numerous
times that I have shown James to be an outright liar. If you are really
this dense then by all means, cowtow to James and Matt all you like
since your hatred of Chomsky clearly ditorts your ability to examine
evidence objectively.
Adam Bayliss
position on the bombing summed up in a nutshell from a recent znet
posting:
Noam Chomsky: more on
Atrocities in Cambodia
I didn't quite understand the first comment, which reads: "Quick
response: Kiernan cites a figure of 1.5 million. He
criticizes Vickery's population figures as too low by about
700,000--which explains the difference between the two
estimates."
Remember that the relation is reciprocal. Vickery criticizes
Kiernan's figures as too high. And there are various
other differences in (highly uncertain) estimates. As I think I may
have mentioned, leading specialists go both ways:
thus Robert Cribb, in the standard scholarly study of Indonesian
and comparative genocide, takes Vickery's figures.
It's true that the KR (not just Pol Pot, I believe) were rabidly
racist, and had support for that. There was an
element of what Vickery calls "poor peasant chauvinism." How large
an element it was is another point of dispute.
Vickery thinks a lot; Kiernan thinks less. Not easy to determine.
We can't answer questions like that easily even for
far more familiar and intensively studied societies: our own, for
example.
On "casualities resulting directly and indirectly from the bombing
of Cambodia," estimates are even more uncertain
than for the Pol Pot period. The topic isn't studied, for the
obvious reason (just ask who will be blamed). The
Finnish government study "Decade of Genocide: 1969-1979," the only
independent governmental study, recognizes that the
"genocide" had two phases, but devotes only a few pages to the
first phase, because there is so little information. US
reporters on the scene (like Sydney Schanberg, called "the
conscience of the press" because of his dedication to
exposing Pol Pot terror) literally refused to interview refugees
fleeing into Phnom Penh. That didn't require trekking
into the jungle (which reporters were happy to do to interview
refugees who could expose Pol Pot terror): just
crossing the street from their hotel. Ed Herman and I documented
this in detail in "Manufacturing Consent." It's
standard. I saw it myself, first-hand, in Laos in 1970. I happened
to be there just when the CIA mercenary army had
drive a flood of refugees from the Plain of Jars to encampments
about 20 miles out of the capital city, which was then
hosting leading journalists from all over the world, who flew in
because of fraudulent US claims of a North Vietnamese
invasion (everyone knew it was a fraud, and there was much ridicule
in the hotel bar where the journalists hung out,
but they reported it soberly). The Plain of Jars had been subjected
to the most intense bombing in history (later
exceeded by US bombing in Cambodia); in fact, thousands of people
are still dying every year from unexploded
"bomblets," mostly children and farmers, while the US refuses to do
anything about it and it isn't reported here
though it is known -- another horror story. To get back to the
point, I spent maybe 20 hours during the few days I was
in Vientiane interviewing refugees to learn something about what
had been going on in the Plain of Jars (I was taken
by a Lao-speaking US volunteer, Fred Branfman, who had been trying
desperately to get Western reporters to have a look
at the facts, with no luck). Virtually no US reporters wanted to
find out; they preferred the 5PM handouts at the US
Embassy, which all knew were absurd. The story gets much worse. I
wrote about it in "At War with Asia" (1970); Fred
has a much more detailed account in his "Voices from the Plain of
Jars." There's more in my "For Reasons of State" and
later.
Same in Vietnam. Millions of people were fleeing into the slums of
Saigon from US saturation bombing of the
densely-populated Meking Delta. How many interviews can you find?
Americans estimate the deaths in Indochina at about
100,000; journalists sometimes report that figure too; official
figures are over 3 million. If we discovered that
ordinary Germans estimated Holocaust deaths at a few hundred
thousand, there would (properly) be an outcry. Have you
heard one here?
It's easy to continue. US crimes are off the agenda.
To get to your question (finally), the little evidence is something
like this. The CIA (in its postwar demographic
study) estimates deaths in the first phase of the "decade of
genocide" at 600,000 (of course, they don't regard the US
as responsible). In 1975, just before the Khmer Rouge takeover,
Western doctors in Phnom Penh were estimating deaths
at 8000 a month -- what was going on in the countryside, where the
bombing was in progress, no one tried to estimate.
They also predicted that there would be a "lost generation," as a
result of the horrendous attack on the countryside.
The only extensive study of this that I know is Gary Porter and
George Hildebrand's book, but since it is a heavily
documented study of US atrocities, it is undiscussable here.
Progressives, like "Progressive" editor Matthew
Rothschild, regard it as outrageous even to say that the book is
well-documented (though it transparently is); written
in 1976, it is mostly devoted to US crimes, therefore even to cite
it is criminal. We have to agree that before the KR
takeover, Cambodia was a "gentle land" of happy people: to question
that is another outrage, according to standard
doctrine, going as far to the dissident side as Rothschild and "In
These Times."
To continue, high US officials cited by the highly-respected Asia
correspondent of the (eminently respectable) Far
Eastern Economic Review predicted that 1 million would die as a
consequence of the US bombings. US aid officials
leaving Phnom Penh when the KR took over predicted that two years
of "slave labor" would be necessary to overcome the
effects of the bombing.
Whether these estimates are right or wrong, no one knows, and no
one cares. There is a doctrine to be established: we
must focus solely on the (horrendous) crimes of Pol Pot, thus
providing a retrospective justification for (mostly
unstudied) US crimes, and an ideological basis for further
"humanitarian intervention" in the future -- the Pol Pot
atrocities were explicitly used to justify US intervention in
Central America in the '80s, leaving hundreds of
thousands of corpses and endless destruction. In the interests of
ideological reconstruction and laying the basis for
future crimes, facts are simply irrelevant, and anyone who tries to
suggest otherwise is targeted by a virulent stream
of abuse. That runs pretty much across the spectrum, an instructive
phenomenon. But one consequence is that no one can
give a serious answer to the question you raise, because it is
about US crimes.
Noam Chomsky
Stephen Denney
In his latest salvo forwarded by Adam Bayliss, Noam Chomsky said, among
other things:
"The only extensive study of this that I know is Gary Porter and George
Hildebrand's book, but since it is a heavily documented study of US
atrocities, it is undiscussable here. Progressives, like `Progressive'
editor Matthew Rothschild, regard it as outrageous even to say that the
book is well-documented (though it transparently is); written in 1976, it
is mostly devoted to US crimes, therefore even to cite it is criminal. We
have to agree that before the KR takeover, Cambodia was a `gentle land' of
happy people: to question that is another outrage, according to standard
doctrine, going as far to the dissident side as Rothschild and `In These
Times.'
I haven't read this commentary by `Progressive' editor Mathew Rothschild,
or whatever Chomsky is referring to that appeared in `In These
Times'. But I would not associate either of these publications with
defenders of "US crimes".
The criticism that William Shawcross, myself and others have directed
toward this monograph is not that it did not portray Cambodia before the
KR takeover as a "gentle land" of happy people, but rather that it did
portray Cambodia *after* the KR takeover as a "gentle land" of happy
people, relying to a large extent on official Khmer Rouge statements to
support this view.
It is interesting, and pathetic, that even now, almost 25 years after the
monograph was published, Chomsky can still not recognize the fundamental
flaw in this monograph, the authors' uncritical posture toward Khmer Rouge
propaganda.
- Steve Denney
"It is easier to admire a revolution when one does not know its victims."
- Jean Lacouture
John Filiss
"Adam Bayliss" <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote in message
news:395A46DA...@students.wisc.edu...
> confirmations of your personal judgments on Chomsky is clearly the
> reason you are convinced by their arguments.
So I guess I would only be free from bias if I thought Chomsky was brilliant
from the beginning.
Do you really think that
> no one died as a result of US bombing or that the number is
> consequential?
Was that ever a lynchpin of the debate?
This is James's position, you don't question it at all
> huh? Nor do you question the media perpetrated fraud involved in
> reporting events in Cambodia?
You mean that the media reported atrocities of Pol Pot? Now were those
atrocities real or not, or were they reported roughly on the scale of what
actually occurred? And if you want to state that the press was right for the
wrong reasons, how well can you support such a viewpoint?
I invite anyone to view the numerous
> times that I have shown James to be an outright liar.
Cool. No problem with that...document those instances.
If you are really
> this dense then by all means, cowtow to James and Matt all you like
> since your hatred of Chomsky clearly ditorts your ability to examine
> evidence objectively.
A common theme in these newsgroups is that James goes past a certain line in
ascribing outright malice to those he debates. I would also criticize him
somewhat in that respect. Now are your manners open to censure as well?
On the board I run, Adam, I posted the links you gave me over a week ago,
with your commentary, in order to help anyone else who wanted to hear all
sides on a topic for which Chomsky has faced considerable criticism. Here's
the link
http://pub5.ezboard.com/ftheanarchyboardlibertariansocialist.showMessage?top
icID=7.topic
I'm doing everything I can to look at the evidence objectively, and to make
all of these perspectives available to others. Now, if I don't come to agree
with your perspective, I suppose the fault would lie either with your
arguments, Chomsky's record, or my perceptiveness. Happily, the debate is
accessible to those who want to judge what is in error.
Jon Duncan
Stephen Denney wrote:
> In his latest salvo forwarded by Adam Bayliss, Noam Chomsky said, among
> other things:
>
> "The only extensive study of this that I know is Gary Porter and George
> Hildebrand's book, but since it is a heavily documented study of US
> atrocities, it is undiscussable here. Progressives, like `Progressive'
> editor Matthew Rothschild, regard it as outrageous even to say that the
> book is well-documented (though it transparently is); written in 1976, it
> is mostly devoted to US crimes, therefore even to cite it is criminal. We
> have to agree that before the KR takeover, Cambodia was a `gentle land' of
> happy people: to question that is another outrage, according to standard
> doctrine, going as far to the dissident side as Rothschild and `In These
> Times.'
>
> I haven't read this commentary by `Progressive' editor Mathew Rothschild,
> or whatever Chomsky is referring to that appeared in `In These
> Times'. But I would not associate either of these publications with
> defenders of "US crimes".
You put "US crimes" is in quotes. Interesting.
> The criticism that William Shawcross, myself and others have directed
> toward this monograph is not that it did not portray Cambodia before the
> KR takeover as a "gentle land" of happy people, but rather that it did
> portray Cambodia *after* the KR takeover as a "gentle land" of happy
> people, relying to a large extent on official Khmer Rouge statements to
> support this view.
I haven't read the book either, but I'd be shocked if it didn't portray
"Democratic Kampuchea" as being a pretty miserable place.
> It is interesting, and pathetic, that even now, almost 25 years after the
> monograph was published, Chomsky can still not recognize the fundamental
> flaw in this monograph, the authors' uncritical posture toward Khmer Rouge
> propaganda.
>
> - Steve Denney
>
> "It is easier to admire a revolution when one does not know its victims."
> - Jean Lacouture
I see nothing in what Chomsky wrote above that indicates he does not share
your view that the "monograph" is fundamentally flawed. If the book has that
particular flaw (my guess happens to be that it does), that doesn't prevent it
from being successful in accurately portraying the devastation that resulted
from the U.S. bombing.
Jon Duncan
Dan Clore
> "Adam Bayliss" <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote in message
> news:395A46DA...@students.wisc.edu...
> > John Filiss wrote:
> > > "Brian Siano" <bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message
> > > news:39591AC7...@cceb.med.upenn.edu...
> > > > John Filiss wrote:
> Do you really think that
> > no one died as a result of US bombing or that the number is
> > consequential?
>
> Was that ever a lynchpin of the debate?
That has been a frequent subject in the debate. It takes on a rather
high degree of importance when you consider that those who accuse
Chomsky of denying mass murder are willing to do so themselves.
> This is James's position, you don't question it at all
> > huh? Nor do you question the media perpetrated fraud involved in
> > reporting events in Cambodia?
>
> You mean that the media reported atrocities of Pol Pot? Now were those
> atrocities real or not, or were they reported roughly on the scale of what
> actually occurred? And if you want to state that the press was right for the
> wrong reasons, how well can you support such a viewpoint?
Depends on what "roughly on the scale of what actually occurred" means.
Total deaths caused by the Khmer Rouge are estimated (scholarly
estimates based on population figures) at anywhere from 600,000 to 1.7
million. The mass media was reporting total executions on the order of 1
million, 2 million, even 3 million, long before the worst period of
Khmer Rouge rule. The most common figures given were undoubtedly higher
than the true figures. Whether they were "roughly on the scale of what
actually occurred" would depend on just how roughly you mean.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm
"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.
John Filiss
"Dan Clore" <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote in message
news:395B00...@columbia-center.org...
> John Filiss wrote:
> > "Adam Bayliss" <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote in message
> > news:395A46DA...@students.wisc.edu...
> > > John Filiss wrote:
> > > > "Brian Siano" <bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message
> > > > news:39591AC7...@cceb.med.upenn.edu...
> > > > > John Filiss wrote:
>
> > Do you really think that
> > > no one died as a result of US bombing or that the number is
> > > consequential?
> >
> > Was that ever a lynchpin of the debate?
>
> That has been a frequent subject in the debate. It takes on a rather
> high degree of importance when you consider that those who accuse
> Chomsky of denying mass murder are willing to do so themselves.
Dan, look at how Adam frames the question. First, he asks if I think no one
died as a result of US bombings, or that the number is [in]consequential.
The first half of the question is ridiculous, the second half almost equally
so. What number of deaths is inconsequential?
>
> > This is James's position, you don't question it at all
> > > huh? Nor do you question the media perpetrated fraud involved in
> > > reporting events in Cambodia?
> >
> > You mean that the media reported atrocities of Pol Pot? Now were those
> > atrocities real or not, or were they reported roughly on the scale of
what
> > actually occurred? And if you want to state that the press was right for
the
> > wrong reasons, how well can you support such a viewpoint?
>
> Depends on what "roughly on the scale of what actually occurred" means.
> Total deaths caused by the Khmer Rouge are estimated (scholarly
> estimates based on population figures) at anywhere from 600,000 to 1.7
> million. The mass media was reporting total executions on the order of 1
> million, 2 million, even 3 million, long before the worst period of
> Khmer Rouge rule. The most common figures given were undoubtedly higher
> than the true figures. Whether they were "roughly on the scale of what
> actually occurred" would depend on just how roughly you mean.
So the media's range, based on early estimates, was from 1 to 3 million. The
range by later estimates was from 600,000 to 1.7 million. You are noting a
time difference as to when the media claimed these deaths, and when the
Khmer Rouge carried them out, but not giving me figures as to what the best
estimates are during the period of early media reporting.
What were they and what was the disparity between them and media reports?
And what were Chomsky's estimate of deaths at the time, or the estimate that
he felt most comfortable with, and how accurate was it in contrast to media
reports?
And was one party largely correct by accident, and the other party incorrect
in spite of proper diligence in trying to ascertain the facts?
What were the sources used, and their credibility?
Did the media largely fabricate their figures, or did they obtain them from
refugees, observers, and other evidence available to them at the time?
Similarly, how did Chomsky obtain evidence supporting his perspective?
What were the biases in each case? What perspectives were the mass media
trying to push, outside of a respectful description of the facts as best
known to them? And what perspectives was Chomsky trying to push, outside of
a respectful description of the facts as best known to him?
Oh, and you say "even 3 million." What estimate, if any, was most generally
pushed? Was the 3 million a common figure, or a rare one given by
publications with a strong ideological slant? Would there have been any
basis in believing the high figure at the time? (And by the way, what was
the population of Cambodia at the time? A figure of 3 million to me strains
credibility somewhat on the part of the reporter, since Cambodia is a small
country. Even the smaller figures are amazing in context. But you simply
have to go on best evidence.)
Not putting all of those questions on you :), just noting that those are
some of the queries that arise from your paragraph and the whole debate.
John Filiss
The Anarchy Board
http://pub5.ezboard.com/btheanarchyboard
>
Dan Clore
> "Dan Clore" <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote in message
> news:395B00...@columbia-center.org...
> > John Filiss wrote:
> > > "Adam Bayliss" <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote in message
> > > news:395A46DA...@students.wisc.edu...
> > > > John Filiss wrote:
> > > > > "Brian Siano" <bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote in message
> > > > > news:39591AC7...@cceb.med.upenn.edu...
> > > > > > John Filiss wrote:
> > > Do you really think that
> > > > no one died as a result of US bombing or that the number is
> > > > consequential?
> > >
> > > Was that ever a lynchpin of the debate?
> >
> > That has been a frequent subject in the debate. It takes on a rather
> > high degree of importance when you consider that those who accuse
> > Chomsky of denying mass murder are willing to do so themselves.
>
> Dan, look at how Adam frames the question. First, he asks if I think no one
> died as a result of US bombings, or that the number is [in]consequential.
> The first half of the question is ridiculous, the second half almost equally
> so. What number of deaths is inconsequential?
I don't know, but that is what those arguing your side have frequently
claimed.
> > > This is James's position, you don't question it at all
> > > > huh? Nor do you question the media perpetrated fraud involved in
> > > > reporting events in Cambodia?
> > >
> > > You mean that the media reported atrocities of Pol Pot? Now were those
> > > atrocities real or not, or were they reported roughly on the scale of
> what
> > > actually occurred? And if you want to state that the press was right for
> the
> > > wrong reasons, how well can you support such a viewpoint?
> >
> > Depends on what "roughly on the scale of what actually occurred" means.
> > Total deaths caused by the Khmer Rouge are estimated (scholarly
> > estimates based on population figures) at anywhere from 600,000 to 1.7
> > million. The mass media was reporting total executions on the order of 1
> > million, 2 million, even 3 million, long before the worst period of
> > Khmer Rouge rule. The most common figures given were undoubtedly higher
> > than the true figures. Whether they were "roughly on the scale of what
> > actually occurred" would depend on just how roughly you mean.
>
> So the media's range, based on early estimates, was from 1 to 3 million. The
> range by later estimates was from 600,000 to 1.7 million. You are noting a
> time difference as to when the media claimed these deaths, and when the
> Khmer Rouge carried them out, but not giving me figures as to what the best
> estimates are during the period of early media reporting.
>
> What were they and what was the disparity between them and media reports?
The best estimates at the time were usually thousands or tens of
thousands, but that's only for executions, not for all deaths
attributable to the Khmer Rouge (this distinction was usually not made
by the media).
> And what were Chomsky's estimate of deaths at the time,
He didn't have one. Herman & Chomsky's works on the subject repeatedly
pointed out that they did not know the true extent of the killing.
> or the estimate that he felt most comfortable with, and how accurate was it in contrast to media
> reports?
> And was one party largely correct by accident, and the other party incorrect
> in spite of proper diligence in trying to ascertain the facts?
>
> What were the sources used, and their credibility?
>
> Did the media largely fabricate their figures, or did they obtain them from
> refugees, observers, and other evidence available to them at the time?
Basically just made them up.
> Similarly, how did Chomsky obtain evidence supporting his perspective?
>
> What were the biases in each case? What perspectives were the mass media
> trying to push, outside of a respectful description of the facts as best
> known to them? And what perspectives was Chomsky trying to push, outside of
> a respectful description of the facts as best known to him?
>
> Oh, and you say "even 3 million." What estimate, if any, was most generally
> pushed?
I believe that 2 million was probably most common.
> Was the 3 million a common figure, or a rare one given by
> publications with a strong ideological slant? Would there have been any
> basis in believing the high figure at the time? (And by the way, what was
> the population of Cambodia at the time? A figure of 3 million to me strains
> credibility somewhat on the part of the reporter, since Cambodia is a small
> country. Even the smaller figures are amazing in context. But you simply
> have to go on best evidence.)
Estimates of the starting population vary, but 7 or 8 million cover the
range.
> Not putting all of those questions on you :), just noting that those are
> some of the queries that arise from your paragraph and the whole debate.
Well, thanks. I answered a few.
Adam Bayliss
> So I guess I would only be free from bias if I thought Chomsky was brilliant
> from the beginning.
integrity thats on trial here.
>
> Do you really think that
> > no one died as a result of US bombing or that the number is
> > consequential?
>
> Was that ever a lynchpin of the debate?
It has always been very important since it is the thrust of Chomsky's
stance in ATC. James argues that Chomsky's attempt to point out flaws
in the media's account is nothing more than communist sympathizing,
despite the fact that these critiques are inarguable fact (many authors
revised their work after Chomsky pointed out their inconsistencies). I
have been trying to point out that the main emphasis in ATC is a
critique of the media. Mainly the critique centers around media silence
on obvious injustices committed by the US campaign and fraudulent
atrocity evidence. I have provided substantial documentation proving
that this is the overriding theme of ATC. The only critique they can
offer is to point to Hildebrand and Porter's account and say that it is
flawed in factual content because it is pro-KR. They never dispute the
facts themselves. The recent debate about the famines is one of the few
times I have seen an argument over events in Cambodia taking place.
Usually the debate centers around ad hominem attacks on my sources.
Never once do they acknowledge that Ponchaud revised his publications to
account for Chomsky's criticisms, or do they attempt to attack Chomsky's
criticisms themselves. James's only desire is to slander and make as
many allegations and unsubstantiated reports as he possibly can until
his opponent gives up for lack of time.
>
> This is James's position, you don't question it at all
> > huh? Nor do you question the media perpetrated fraud involved in
> > reporting events in Cambodia?
>
> You mean that the media reported atrocities of Pol Pot? Now were those
> atrocities real or not, or were they reported roughly on the scale of what
> actually occurred? And if you want to state that the press was right for the
> wrong reasons, how well can you support such a viewpoint?
>
> I invite anyone to view the numerous
> > times that I have shown James to be an outright liar.
>
> Cool. No problem with that...document those instances.
Above, Here just once instance:
Adam Bayliss wrote:
>
> > Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> > > I have read before the KR takeover the State Department had
> > > knowledge of tremendous potential for starvation in the cities due
> > > to the destruction of the food supply via US bombing (I think the
> > > source for this is Hildebrands Congressional report).
> >
> > Liar.
> >
> > > I have also heard that US inflicted casualties range upward from
> > > 800,000 due to bombings and subsequent starvation following our
> > > suspension of attacks. It seems very difficult to deny that our
> > > destruction of the Cambodian countyside had alot to do with why
> > > there was no food in Cambodia.
> >
> > Yet oddly, according the Khmer Rouge apologists at the time, notably
> > Hildebrand and Porter, so warmly praised by Chomsky, there was abundant
> > food in Cambodia, which made possible, and justified, the substantial
> > exports of food that the Khmer Rouge made to their allies.
>
> Here we have clearcut evidence that James is, as he so often proclaims
> others to be, a liar. I found an exact quote showing what Hildebrand
> and Porter said in Cambodia:Starvation and Revolution referring to
> pre-KR takeover (this quote is taken directly from ATC page 161):
> "...those children who did not die of starvation will suffer permanent
> damage to their minds and bodies due to severe malnutrition." They
> quote Dr. Penelope Key of the World Vision Organization, working in
> Phnom Penh:
> "This generation is going to be a lost generation of children.
> Malnutrition is going to affect their numbers and their mental
> capacities. So, as well as knocking off a generation of young men, the
> war is knocking off a generation of children."
> Just one of the many examples of James trampling the truth to make a
> point.
Here is an example where James distorts the argument at hand, and then
lies about Himmel's position.
> >He flatly contradicts your original claim, the claim that was in
> >dispute. You blamed the US bombing as the primary cause of crop
> >problems, and denied the failure of the Khmer agricultural program (a
> >denial from which you have recently retreated)
>
> Never claimed it was the primary cause. You cant show me where I did. Just
> claimed that it was a factor. As to the denial of the Khmer Rouge agricultural
> failure, yeah sure James, whatever you say.
>
Here's another one
Adam Bayliss wrote:
>
> jam...@echeque.com wrote:
> >
> > --
> > Adam Bayliss:
> > > > > How many died from starvation and disease, how many died from
> > > > > the KR executions? The blame for the two cases lies in
> > > > > different hands (as Chomsky points out in ATC)
> >
> > eu...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > > > There were many died from starvation and disease, but most of
> > > > death during khmer rouge regime were from execution. Few days
> > > > after April 17, 1975 many citizens including militaries,
> > > > government workers and all walk of lives (including living in
> > > > France) were tricked by khmer rouge that they had been invited to
> > > > welcome the king return to phnom pehn. Most of them shot to death
> > > > outside the cities. I remembered that when I left Battambang city,
> > > > I came across the smell of death people along the route and saw
> > > > many trucks that carried these citizens were empties. My dad
> > > > talked to local people and found out that these were Lon Nol
> > > > armies that supposed to go welcome the king. After we left the
> > > > city, I lived in a small village outside Battambang and I always
> > > > heard people were executed by the khmer rouge and a fresh graves
> > > > where I worked and even put more dirt trying to cover up the knees
> > > > that showed up since the buried was not deep enough. When
> > > > Vietnams came in 1979, I moved back to my place of birth which I
> > > > found out that many of my cousins, uncle, dad's cousins, aunt and
> > > > uncles were executed every members of the families. There were
> > > > starvation because most of the foods khmer rouge kept away from
> > > > us. We worked days and nights with a little food. I heard from
> > > > close friend of the family that rice were exported to Thailand and
> > > > China to pay back for the guns.
> >
> > Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> > > I am sorry for the tragedy that had befallen your family as well as
> > > a discussion which may seem callous to your loss.
> >
> > You hypocritical scumbag. In past posts you argued that the Khmer
> > Rouge executions of city people were like the french executing nazi
> > collaborators, that people like eusvt were traitors to Cambodia and
> > part of the US apparatus of colonialist oppression.
> >
> > --digsig
> > James A. Donald
> > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
> > bqcqgI8k1o4OUpf3aGQmVt/AI3j8+yqBjPcEvCPP
> > 4JJ8rK5AphA7b0hr7rmarKQJluqdolXAqo8v0H7OJ
> >
> > --
> > We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
> > of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
> > right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
> >
> > http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
> >
> > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > Before you buy.
>
> You are an ignorant liar, and a hateful obsessed jack-ass. I have never
> stated the KR were good guys, only that evidence available in 1977 was
> not sufficient to convict them. Once again, you lie in wait like a
> snake in the grass, to bite ankles of passers by. You distort arguments
> and slander desparetly clinging to your idiotic illusions and
> distortions. How dare you accuse me of being a supporter of the KR, you
> better hope we never meet.
Once again, James distorts at such a high rate you'd need a team to keep
up with his lying and slanders.
Clore has tons of these instances as does Nathan FOLKERT (not sure if
this is his name).
> A common theme in these newsgroups is that James goes past a certain line in
> ascribing outright malice to those he debates. I would also criticize him
> somewhat in that respect. Now are your manners open to censure as well?
Malice, nothing. The line is clearly drawn between truth and falsehood.
Anyone who agrees with Chomsky and Herman's assessment of the media is a
communist and a supporter of tyranny in James's opinion. So you see the
line crossed is slander. Chomsky's emphasis is on dispelling propaganda
and postponing judgment until sufficient evidence is in (the stance any
reputable scholar would take). Yet James claims Chomsky's intent is to
support commie fascist regimes. After reading ATC and Chomsky's other
writings on the subject, it is clear that James is lying, thus
slandering Chomsky. You are right to view my manners as contemptible,
my only defense is that my patience grows thin at having been slandered
several times myself by the other side on this issue and with having to
constantly refute unsubstantiated lies put forth by James and the gang.
porta...@my-deja.com
Ignatz Mouse <edix...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <slimv2...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Matt <djar...@usa.net.invalid> wrote:
> > In article <39591AC7...@cceb.med.upenn.edu>, Brian Siano
> > <bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > > There seems to be a pretty good body of literature on both sides
> > > > concerning
> > > > Chomsky's accuracy, or lack of it, on the matter of the Khmer
> Rouge and
> > > > atrocities in Cambodia. I'm curious to know if there are
similar
> > > > debates
> > > > going on regarding any of Chomsky's other, extensive writings on
> > > > foreign
> > > > policy. Are there well-documented rebuttals and counter-
> > > > his
> > > > views on Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, etc.? Is the Cambodia issue
the
> only
> > > > one
> > > > which has this level of debate?
> > > >
> > > > John Filiss
> > >
> > > I wouldn't call it a debate, actually. It's just that clowns like
> James
> > > Donald have a position, and they have continued to argue it
> regardless of
> > > reason or evidence. It's no more a "debate" than arguments over a
> > > flat earth.
> >
> empirically
> > supported. I also think he may be prone to exageration about his
> > opponent's intentions, which leaves him prone to your kind of
> criticism.
> >
> > Charles Kalina's posts are invariably even-handed, and I think he
has
> > forcefully demonstrated some serious problems in Chomsky's work.
> > Stephen Denney and David Friedman have also made indisputably fair
> > criticisms of Chomsky clearly based on reason and evidence.
> >
> > I hope my criticisms have been fair as well, though recently they've
> > sucked since I haven't had easy access to the source material.
> Readers
> > can judge for themselves though.
> >
> > It seems to me the exact opposite of your claims is true: Chomsky
> > supporters dogmatically stand by their man, regardless of the
> evidence
> > against him.
> >
> > --
> I'd be interested to explore these "debates". How can I find out more?
The Chomsky debates on these newgroups are an endless web sprawling
over time and space. When I, too, tried to retirieve these discussions
I got a million hits, but you can find most of the discusions through
deja.com. But what you'll find will only be the tip of the iceberg
since dejanews is in process of moving, and everything before mid-99 is
unaccessible for the timebeing.
Here's two links, however, from two of the main participants in these
debates as far as I can tell:
James A. Donald's page where he argues Chomsky lied:
http://catalog.com/jamesd/chomsdis.htm
(it also has a link to Chomsky's own response).
Dan Clore's page where he argues he did not:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/jamesd.html
John Filiss
> > A common theme in these newsgroups is that James goes past a certain
line in
> > ascribing outright malice to those he debates. I would also criticize
him
> > somewhat in that respect. Now are your manners open to censure as well?
> Malice, nothing. The line is clearly drawn between truth and falsehood.
> Anyone who agrees with Chomsky and Herman's assessment of the media is a
> communist and a supporter of tyranny in James's opinion. So you see the
> line crossed is slander. Chomsky's emphasis is on dispelling propaganda
> and postponing judgment until sufficient evidence is in (the stance any
> reputable scholar would take). Yet James claims Chomsky's intent is to
> support commie fascist regimes. After reading ATC and Chomsky's other
> writings on the subject, it is clear that James is lying, thus
> slandering Chomsky. You are right to view my manners as contemptible,
> my only defense is that my patience grows thin at having been slandered
> several times myself by the other side on this issue and with having to
> constantly refute unsubstantiated lies put forth by James and the gang.
No big deal here, man. :) Chomsky actually smeared a fellow primitivist and
friend of mine John Moore, to which I made response in the letters column of
Anarchy. Here's the link
http://pub5.ezboard.com/ftheanarchyboardanarchy.showMessage?topicID=64.topic
Thank you for the references as to what you regard as some telling points in
the debate. I'll suspend judgement on the matter until I've looked at them
as closely I've can.
Stephen Denney
>
[snip]
>
> So the media's range, based on early estimates, was from 1 to 3 million. The
> range by later estimates was from 600,000 to 1.7 million. You are noting a
> time difference as to when the media claimed these deaths, and when the
> Khmer Rouge carried them out, but not giving me figures as to what the best
> estimates are during the period of early media reporting.
>
> What were they and what was the disparity between them and media reports?
>
> he felt most comfortable with, and how accurate was it in contrast to media
> reports?
>
In the June 25, 1977 _Nation_ review-essay ("Distortions at Fourth Hand")
Chomsky co-authored with Edward Herman, they said:
"Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as
the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne
Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by
highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence
available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the
thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge
influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings
were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American
destruction and killing."
In the Chomsky Chat commentary forwarded by Adam Bayliss a few weeks ago
(which got this whole discussion thread rolling), Chomsky claimed that
despite their greatest efforts his critics could find nothing incorrect or
misleading in what he and Herman wrote on the Khmer Rouge.
Therefore it would seem reasonable to assume that Chomsky today would
find nothing misleading or incorrect in the above _Nation_ quote, that he
still believes only a few thousand people were executed in Cambodia during
the first two years of Khmer Rouge rule, and that these deaths occurred in
areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence where peasants were carrying out
acts of revenge.
> And was one party largely correct by accident, and the other party incorrect
> in spite of proper diligence in trying to ascertain the facts?
>
> What were the sources used, and their credibility?
>
The "highly qualified specialists" to whom Chomsky and Herman were
referring in the above quote were: a letter to the editor of _The
Economist_ by W.J. Sampson, an economist who had worked in Cambodia during
the war; Ben Kiernan, who at the time was editing _News from Kampuchea_, a
pro-Khmer Rouge newsletter; and Nayan Chanda, a correspondent for the _Far
Eastern Economic Review_.
On the other hand, Fr. Francois Ponchaud, author of _Cambodia: Year Zero_,
estimated the number of executions to be much higher. The following is an
excerpt from "The Third Indochina War", by William Shawcross, _New York
Review of Books_, April 6, 1978:
"Indeed Father Ponchaud says he has by now talked to over a thousand
Cambodian refugees, seeing them not only in Thailand but also in France,
where some 10,000 of them now live. He describes in detail how he checks
their stories against one another, discounting those which seem
exaggerated or false. His research appears more thorough than any yet
undertaken, and he contradicts those who argue that `executions have
numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of
limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent...' [footnote
referring to the above-mentioned _Nation_ essay]. On the contrary,
Ponchaud estimated last autumn that the number executed was `certainly
more than one hundred thousand' -- including not only a large proportion
of the old regime's military personnel, civil servants, and teachers but
also many of the educated class and of those who dared to express their
aversion to the regime's brutal methods. These killings, his interviews
showed, took place in many parts of Cambodia.
"At the end of February, Ponchaud gave the following summary of his most
recent research:
"`The estimate that more than 100,000 Khmer have been executed must now
be taken as an absolute minimum. It is possible that two or three times as
many people have been executed. The number who have died because of the
lack of food and of medical and sanitary facilities, and from the frantic
pace of work, may well be more than two million. I have had reports of
villages in which a third, a half, or even nine-tenths of the population
have died.'"
[snip remainder of questions]
Matt
> The Chomsky debates on these newgroups are an endless web sprawling
> over time and space. When I, too, tried to retirieve these discussions
> I got a million hits, but you can find most of the discusions through
> deja.com. But what you'll find will only be the tip of the iceberg
> since dejanews is in process of moving, and everything before mid-99 is
> unaccessible for the timebeing.
>
> Here's two links, however, from two of the main participants in these
> debates as far as I can tell:
>
> James A. Donald's page where he argues Chomsky lied:
>
> http://catalog.com/jamesd/chomsdis.htm
> (it also has a link to Chomsky's own response).
>
> Dan Clore's page where he argues he did not:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/jamesd.html
Thanks for providing the links and the tip about Deja--it didn't work
for me tonight either.
I should apologize to Ignatz Mouse for not getting back to him. I think
he was asking where to find debates about Chomsky that were less
polemical than James Donald's material.
Of course, he can find them in Deja--when it's working and if he's
willing to look. Meantime, here is a large concatenation of posts I
saved from early spring:
http://people.bu.edu/mfhill/Clore-KalinaFeb-2000.txt
Charles Kalina represents my side of the argument. Dan Clore and a few
others represent Chomsky's side. I did not HTMLize the file, so you may
find it looks better in a text editor of your choice.
Another page you may appreciate is Sophal Ear's paper:
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/canon.htm
See in particular Chapter 3, "The Chomsky-Lacouture Controversy."
This is a good deal of material there. David Friedman reviewed it and
offered the following concise account of a major problem in Chomsky's
work on Cambodia. I couldn't get it from Deja, but luckily it was saved
in my Internet Explorer scrapbook:
http://people.bu.edu/mfhill/DonaldvChomsky.txt.
--
Matt
matt...@my-deja.com
NRN Consulting
John Filiss <jfi...@bestweb.net> wrote:
>
>No big deal here, man. :) Chomsky actually smeared a fellow primitivist...
So, did you and The Professor make that computer out of coconut shells?
NRN Consulting
Stephen Denney <sde...@ocf.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
> Therefore it would seem reasonable to assume that Chomsky today would
>find nothing misleading or incorrect in the above _Nation_ quote, that he
>still believes only a few thousand people were executed in Cambodia during
>the first two years of Khmer Rouge rule, and that these deaths occurred in
>areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence where peasants were carrying out
>acts of revenge.
>
It would appear from the posting of one of Chomsky's recent comments on the
matter that he believes that the KR executed between 3/4 and 1 1/2 million.
Brian Siano
Stephen Denney wrote:
> In the June 25, 1977 _Nation_ review-essay ("Distortions at Fourth Hand")
> Chomsky co-authored with Edward Herman, they said:
>
> "Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as
> the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne
> Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by
> highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence
> available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the
> thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge
> influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings
> were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American
> destruction and killing."
>
> In the Chomsky Chat commentary forwarded by Adam Bayliss a few weeks ago
> (which got this whole discussion thread rolling), Chomsky claimed that
> despite their greatest efforts his critics could find nothing incorrect or
> misleading in what he and Herman wrote on the Khmer Rouge.
Nothing controversial here: C & H are reporting on what experts
were saying at the time. Even if the experts cited were subsequently
found to be incorrect, the errors were theirs, not C & H's.
> Therefore it would seem reasonable to assume that Chomsky today would
> find nothing misleading or incorrect in the above _Nation_ quote, that he
> still believes only a few thousand people were executed in Cambodia during
> the first two years of Khmer Rouge rule, and that these deaths occurred in
> areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence where peasants were carrying out
> acts of revenge.
It wouldn't seem reasonable to assume anything of the sort. C & H are
in record as acknowledging that higher death tolls (that is, higher than the
"few thousand" you mention) are substantiated.
--
Brian Siano - bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu
Adam Bayliss
> Therefore it would seem reasonable to assume that Chomsky today would
> find nothing misleading or incorrect in the above _Nation_ quote, that he
> still believes only a few thousand people were executed in Cambodia during
> the first two years of Khmer Rouge rule, and that these deaths occurred in
> areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence where peasants were carrying out
> acts of revenge.
Wow, oddly enough if one reads the Nation article we find it to be a
dispute over the facts and reporting of events. Chomsky and Herman once
again do not plunge headfirst into what the mass media espouses, but
take a cautious and reserved approach. They question the sources and
look at the numbers carefully. From the same article here is what
Chomsky and Herman said about Ponchaud's book (note that this is the
French version, the American version Year Zero, was revised by Ponchaud
to eliminate some of the errors C&H point out.)
Chomsky and Herman:
Ponchaud's book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of
the commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of of what
refugees have reported to him about the barbarity
of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. He also reminds us
of some relevant history. For example, in this "peaceful land," peasants
were massacred, their lands stolen and
villages destroyed, by police and army in 1966, many then joining the
maquis out of "their hatred for a government exercising such injustices
and sowing death." He reports the enormous
destruction and murder resulting directly from the American attack on
Cambodia, the starvation and epidemics as the population was driven from
their countryside by American military terror
and the U.S.-incited civil war, leaving Cambodia with "an economy
completely devastated by the war." He points out that "from the time of
Sihanouk, then Lon Nol, the soldiers of the
government army had already employed, with regard to their Khmer Rouge
'enemies,' bloodthirsty methods in no way different from those of
Democratic Cambodia" (the Khmer Rouge). He
also gives a rather positive account of Khmer Rouge programs of social
and economic development, while deploring much brutal practice in
working for egalitarian goals and national
independence.
Ponchaud's book lacks the documentation provided in Hildebrand and
Porter and its veracity is therefore difficult to assess. But the
serious reader will find much to make him somewhat wary.
For one thing, Ponchaud plays fast and loose with quotes and with
numbers. He quotes an unattributed Khmer Rouge slogan, "One or two
million young people will be enough to build the
new Cambodia." In an article in Le Monde (February 18, 1976) he gives
what appears to be the same quote, this time as follows: "To rebuild the
new Cambodia, a million people are
enough." Here the quote is attributed to a Khmer Rouge military
commander, along with the statement misrepresented by Barron and Paul,
noted above (Lacouture changes the numbers to
1.5 million to 2 million, attributes the quote to an unnamed Marxist,
and concludes that it goes beyond barbarism). This is one of the rare
examples of a quote that can be checked. The results
are not impressive.
Ponchaud cites a Cambodian report that 200,000 people were killed in
American bombings from March 7 to August 15, 1973. No source is offered,
but suspicions are aroused by the fact that
Phnom Penh radio announced on May 9, 1975 that there were 200,000
casualties of the American bombing in 1973, including "killed, wounded,
and crippled for life" (Hildebrand and Porter).
Ponchaud cites "Cambodian authorities" who give the figures 800,000
killed and 240,000 wounded before liberation. The figures are
implausible. By the usual rule of thumb, wounded
amount to about three times killed; quite possibly he has the figures
reversed.
More significant is Ponchaud's account of the evacuation of Phnom Penh
in April 1975. He reports the explanation given by the revolutionary
government: that the evacuation was motivated
by impending famine. But this he rejects, on the ground that rice stocks
in Phnom Penh would have sufficed for two months, with rationing (what
he thinks would have happened after two
months, with no new harvest, he does not say). He gives no source for
this estimate, and fails to observe that "According to Long Boret, the
old Government's last Premier, Phnom Penh had
only eight days worth of rice on hand on the eve of the surrender"
(Agence France-Presse, Bangkok; New York Times, May 9, 1975). Nor does
he cite the testimony of U.S. AID officials that
Phnom Penh had only a six-day supply of rice (William Goodfellow, New
York Times, July 14, 1975).
In fact, where an independent check is possible, Ponchaud's account
seems at best careless, sometimes in rather significant ways.
Nevertheless, the book is a serious work, however much
the press has distorted it."
Here we see that Chomsky even questions the substantial number of people
killed via American bombing. This is undoubtedly a lapse out of his
commie fascist self into a cool capitalist perspective. Wait! He is
undoubtedly trying to absolutely discredit Ponchaud to aid the KR. Of
course, we would have to ignore that whole "serious and worth reading"
part. Nonetheless, Chomsky is still a anarchist commie socialist
fascist reactionary without an ounce of love for his mother or apple
pie.
What exactly about this critique should they take back? Clearly the
demand for evidence and the attention drawn to mistakes in reporting the
issues are important. Clearly the critique of Barron and Paul's sloppy
account is warranted. Herman and Chomsky have both acknowledged that
the KR killed hundreds of thousands. They specialists that they cite
were not misrepresented, and their accounts were based on legitimate
research. As to the actual sources that Mr. Denney cites above I think
it is educational to note the title of Kiernan's most recent book:
"The Pol Pot Regime : Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the
Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 "
Here is a link to a recent article he wrote:
http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/kiernan.htm
Here is what Herman had to say about attacks on Kiernan's reputation:
"These convenient views prevail today: there is no phase one, although
it is sometimes admitted in passing that the United States dropped some
bombs on Cambodia before
1975 and aligned itself with the "resistance" (including Pol Pot) after
1978. All deaths in phase two are attributed to Pol Pot and his
fanatical beliefs, so that it is reasonable to
identify him as the unique villain deserving a war crimes trial. It can
be suggested in the Canadian media that maybe Nixon and Kissinger are
war criminals also (Thomas
Walkum, "Let's try Kissinger along with Pol Pot," Toronto Star, June 30,
1997), but not in the mainstream U.S. press. Even a scholar like Ben
Kiernan, who wrote eloquently
about the U.S. support of Pol Pot in the Reagan-Bush years, now places
an op ed column in the New York Times (June 20, 1997) denouncing Pol Pot
and calling for his trial,
without even mentioning phase one or suggesting any compromising of the
case by the aggressive post-1978 U.S. and Western support of the war
criminal. Kiernan had
been subjected to a furious red-baiting campaign by the right-wing
fanatic Stephen Morris and Wall Street Journal editors, and in an
excellent illustration of the working of
"flak" is now busily proving his anti-Pol Pot credentials."
Adam Bayliss
Britannica are also commie sympathizers, but here is their book list for
their entry on Cambodia:
Cambodia
General introductions to the country are Russell R. Ross (ed.),
Cambodia: A Country Study, 3rd ed. (1990);
David P. Chandler, The Land and People of Cambodia (1992); and
Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics,
Economics, and Society (1986). Jean Delvert, Le Paysan cambodgien
(1961), is a magisterial work. Ben
Kiernan and Chanthou Boua (eds.), Peasants and Politics in
Kampuchea, 1942-1981 (1982), is a useful
anthology. Rémy Prud'Homme, L'Économie du Cambodge (1969), is the
only detailed study of the Cambodian
economy and is still of historical interest.
David P. Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 2nd ed. (1992), traces the
country's beginnings through the 1980s
and is supplemented by his The Tragedy of Cambodian History (1991),
a detailed political history since
World War II. Claude Jacques, Angkor (1990), is an up-to-date
treatment (in French) by France's leading
Angkorean scholar. An indispensable work for scholars is Lawrence
Palmer Briggs, The Ancient Khmer
Empire (1951, reprinted 1962). In addition to the works by Chandler
above, modern Cambodian history is
analyzed in Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (1983); William
Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger,
Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia, rev. ed. (1987); Karl D.
Jackson (compiler), Cambodia, 1975-1978
(1989); and Michael Vickery, Cambodia, 1975-1982 (1984), probably
the best book-length analysis of the
revolutionary era. (D.P.Ch.)
First contaminating in our precious bodily fluids and now this.
Wretched commies, is there no aspect of our society they haven't
invaded!
John Filiss
"NRN Consulting" <n...@enteract.com> wrote in message
news:8jieaa$nae$1...@news.enteract.com...
No, we formed a Worker's Council and traveled around the world to work in
different fabs so we could avoid Marxist alienation from the product of our
labor. Unfortunately, Moore foolishly lapsed into reactivism, and is trying
to run an antiquated SGI MIPS, prior to SGI's betrayal to the
counter-revolutionary IA-64 from Intel. His weak MIPS enables only the most
pitiful graphics work. I went to Dresden to get a heroic new Thunderbird
Athlon with powerful FPU for robust rendering capabilities.
Stephen Denney
>
[Steve Denney]:
> > Therefore it would seem reasonable to assume that Chomsky today would
> > find nothing misleading or incorrect in the above _Nation_ quote, that he
> > still believes only a few thousand people were executed in Cambodia during
> > the first two years of Khmer Rouge rule, and that these deaths occurred in
> > areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence where peasants were carrying out
> > acts of revenge.
>
> Wow, oddly enough if one reads the Nation article we find it to be a
> dispute over the facts and reporting of events. Chomsky and Herman once
> again do not plunge headfirst into what the mass media espouses, but
> take a cautious and reserved approach. They question the sources and
> look at the numbers carefully. From the same article here is what
> Chomsky and Herman said about Ponchaud's book (note that this is the
> French version, the American version Year Zero, was revised by Ponchaud
> to eliminate some of the errors C&H point out.)
[snip lengthy excerpt from C&H on Ponchaud]
>
> Here we see that Chomsky even questions the substantial number of people
> killed via American bombing. This is undoubtedly a lapse out of his
> commie fascist self into a cool capitalist perspective. Wait! He is
> undoubtedly trying to absolutely discredit Ponchaud to aid the KR. Of
> course, we would have to ignore that whole "serious and worth reading"
> part. Nonetheless, Chomsky is still a anarchist commie socialist
> fascist reactionary without an ounce of love for his mother or apple
> pie.
>
> What exactly about this critique should they take back? Clearly the
> demand for evidence and the attention drawn to mistakes in reporting the
> issues are important. Clearly the critique of Barron and Paul's sloppy
> account is warranted. Herman and Chomsky have both acknowledged that
> the KR killed hundreds of thousands. They specialists that they cite
> were not misrepresented, and their accounts were based on legitimate
> research. As to the actual sources that Mr. Denney cites above I think
> it is educational to note the title of Kiernan's most recent book:
> "The Pol Pot Regime : Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the
> Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 "
This book was published by Yale University in 1996. At the time Kiernan
was cited as one of three "highly qualified specialists" by C&H, in the
June 25, 1977 _Nation_ article, he was editing a pro-Khmer Rouge
newsletter titled _News from Kampuchea_. As I understand, he changed his
views on the Khmer Rouge around 1978. What Kiernan says about the KR today
is not relevant to my original point.
I gather from your above comments that you find nothing misleading in
their Nation article, in particular the statement in question:
"Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as
the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne
Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by
highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence
available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the
thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge
influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings
were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American
destruction and killing."
Why do I find it misleading?? First of all, because the last part of the
statement is clearly untrue. Or do you believe that over the first two
years of KR rule only a few thousand people were executed, and these
executions took place in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence where
peasants were carrying out acts of revenge? Does anyone believe that now?
If Chomsky does not believe now that only a few thousand people were
executed during the first two years of KR rule, in areas of limited KR
influence, etc., then he should acknowledge on this basis alone that the
above statement in _The Nation_ was misleading.
Secondly, it is misleading because if, as claimed by some in this debate,
Chomsky and Herman were merely presenting an estimate of some "highly
qualified specialists" without offering any opinion that this assessment
was correct, then they would also have noted that there were other highly
qualified specialists who had concluded that the number of Cambodians
executed during that period was far higher, and that these deaths were the
result of deliberate Khmer Rouge policy, not random acts of revenge
carried out in areas of limited KR influence. It was obvious from the
refugee accounts that the KR were systematically executing former officers
and government officials of the Lon Nol regime. By presenting only this
one assessment of "highly qualified specialists" while belittling
assessments of others more critical of the Khmer Rouge, C&H gave readers
the impression that this view was probably correct.
Finally, the reference to "highly qualified specialists" is misleading. So
far as I know Chomsky and Herman had never heard of Sampson before he
wrote his letter to the editor of _The Economist_, nor did they make an
effort to contact him prior to writing _The Nation_ article. Do C&H
normally peruse the letters-to-the-editor section of _The Economist_,
looking for reliable information? As for Kiernan, he was an academic, but
also a pro-KR activist at the time, not an objective observer. The third
"specialist" was Nayan Chanda, a correspondent for the Far Eastern
Economic Review, no more a specialist than other journalists covering the
region at the time. (It is also my understanding that he did not actually
say what was attributed to him by C&H.)
As to Ponchaud, as William Shawcross noted in the April 6, 1978 NYRB
review I excerpted, Fr. Ponchaud had interviewed over a thousand Cambodian
refugees by that time, his estimate that at least 100,000 people had been
executed by the Khmer Rouge does not seem far from current estimates on
the number of executions; certainly closer to the truth than the "highly
qualified specialists" C&H cited in their _Nation_ article.
It is interesting that Herman apparently considers Kiernan a "flak" for
the U.S. now. This statement says more to me about Herman than Kiernan.
Regarding "right-wing fanatic Stephen Morris" (not to be confused with the
Stephen Jay Morris who posts to this group), you can read his recently
published book, _Why Vietnam invaded Cambodia: Political culture and the
causes of war_ (Stanford Univ. Press, 1999, Cambridge Univ. Press for
overseas) and judge for yourself whether he is a fanatic. A review of the
book can be found at :
http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/resources/lsj/archive/dec1999/109_2.html
- Steve Denney
NRN Consulting
John Filiss <jfi...@bestweb.net> wrote:
>
>No, we formed a Worker's Council and traveled around the world to work in
>different fabs so we could avoid Marxist alienation from the product of our
>labor. Unfortunately, Moore foolishly lapsed into reactivism, and is trying
>to run an antiquated SGI MIPS, prior to SGI's betrayal to the
>counter-revolutionary IA-64 from Intel. His weak MIPS enables only the most
>pitiful graphics work. I went to Dresden to get a heroic new Thunderbird
>Athlon with powerful FPU for robust rendering capabilities.
>
>John Filiss
>The Anarchy Board
>http://pub5.ezboard.com/btheanarchyboard
>
>
You've got too much time on your hands and your board sucks.
Ignatz Mouse
I appreciate all the info on the debates. I didn't realize that it
wasn't some sort of print debate or in an official setting. I went
through the stuff portaugust posted about Donald, Chomsky and Clore on
the topic. I'm inclined to side with Chomsky. Donald seems to be
working too hard to try to impress someone to me. I hadn't really
looked at Clore's stuff, which I guess is pretty comprehensive. I've
read alot about the issue of Cambodia concerning Chomsky's and Herman's
work in the print media and haven't seen them really lose any arguments
there about what they wrote. I'll try to take some time to go through
as much of that stuff as possible to see if there is anything new being
brought to light.
Chomsky's response was interesting. He was glib as usual, but I wonder
why he felt the need to respond to something written on the internet. I
would gather from that response, that he probably doesn't spend much
time in this newsgroup.
John Filiss
I always appreciate constructive and intelligent criticism.
I'm glad the board doesn't appeal to you.
Dan Clore
> Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
I don't think you understand what Herman was saying there. You might
want to go back over this again, and maybe check _Manufacturing Consent_
on the subject of "flak".
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
Dan Clore
> I appreciate all the info on the debates. I didn't realize that it
> wasn't some sort of print debate or in an official setting. I went
> through the stuff portaugust posted about Donald, Chomsky and Clore on
> the topic. I'm inclined to side with Chomsky. Donald seems to be
> working too hard to try to impress someone to me. I hadn't really
> looked at Clore's stuff, which I guess is pretty comprehensive. I've
> read alot about the issue of Cambodia concerning Chomsky's and Herman's
> work in the print media and haven't seen them really lose any arguments
> there about what they wrote. I'll try to take some time to go through
> as much of that stuff as possible to see if there is anything new being
> brought to light.
> Chomsky's response was interesting. He was glib as usual, but I wonder
> why he felt the need to respond to something written on the internet. I
> would gather from that response, that he probably doesn't spend much
> time in this newsgroup.
He doesn't spend any time on newsgroups. He does respond when this stuff
is brought to his attention at the ChomskyChat forum:
www.lbbs.org
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
Ignatz Mouse
While I haven't gone through everything posted on this topic about the
debates, what I have seen so far is not convincing. It seems to me that
the detractors of Chomsky on Cambodia want him to admit that there were
massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia that were nearly as bad as
the media reported. They want him to cry uncle (sam). There's also a
lot of name calling, like left fascist, etc. Many people try to relate
other works by Chomsky into the argument, for instance the worthiness
of the propaganda model. Seems like a bit of jealousy, that the left
(and the anarchists) have a popular spokesman who needs to be cut down
to size. I don't think that it will hurt Chomsky's reputation.
Charles P. Kalina
Ignatz Mouse <edix...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> While I haven't gone through everything posted on this topic about the
> debates, what I have seen so far is not convincing. It seems to me
> that
> the detractors of Chomsky on Cambodia want him to admit that there
> were
> massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia that were nearly as bad as
> the media reported. They want him to cry uncle (sam).
To judge by the title, this thread concerns Chomsky's accuracy, yes?
Therefore, the relevant question is whether his comments about post-war
Cambodia were accurate or not. If they were not correct, then he
should acknowledge his earlier mistake and correct the error. If he
doesn't, then it's fair to say that he is not accurate -- which is
evidence that he is not a credible commentator.
There were indeed massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia; media
reports at the time may have contained minor errors but were
substantively correct. If Chomsky perceives it as defeat ("crying
uncle") to admit this fact, that's his problem.
[...]
> Seems like a bit of jealousy, that the left
> (and the anarchists) have a popular spokesman who needs to be cut down
> to size.
Chomsky can hardly be described as a "popular spokesman". He is not
exactly well-known outside certain intellectual and academic circles,
and among those who do know his work, he finds more detractors than
admirers.
He provides intellectual ammunition and affirmation for a certain
subset of the far left, and among such persons he is no doubt very
popular, but I don't think he convinces many people who didn't already
share his view of the world. Indeed, his work has become so repetitive
and self-referential that I think affirmation can be its only use.
To say that Chomsky is expected to "cry uncle" implies that his
commentary is substantively accurate, but that he is nonetheless
expected to surrender to some sort of ideological force-majeure.
Certainly one can understand why he (and his partisans) would try to
frame the debate in such favorable terms. Nevertheless, it begs the
question: is his commentary generally accurate, or not?
The fact remains that Chomsky has been a poor judge of foreign regimes,
his comments on the Khmer Rouge being only the most grotesque
instance. Frankly I don't care whether he admits this ("cries uncle")
or not -- old men are entitled to their snits and quibbles.
What interests me is the devotion he inspires among his acolytes
despite this evident lack of judgment and (ahem) accuracy.
Adam Bayliss
>
> In article <8jotr6$m5n$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Ignatz Mouse <edix...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > While I haven't gone through everything posted on this topic about the
> > debates, what I have seen so far is not convincing. It seems to me
> > that
> > the detractors of Chomsky on Cambodia want him to admit that there
> > were
> > massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia that were nearly as bad as
> > the media reported. They want him to cry uncle (sam).
>
> To judge by the title, this thread concerns Chomsky's accuracy, yes?
>
> Therefore, the relevant question is whether his comments about post-war
> Cambodia were accurate or not.
Speaking of framing the debate notice the attempt to exclude the
importance of US involvement with the term post war, as if pre-1975
Cambodia did not exist. Chomsky's comments about Cambodia pertained to
a critique of media reports. He did not make any error with these
critiques, the media had lied and made repeated mistakes.
> If they were not correct, then he
> should acknowledge his earlier mistake and correct the error. If he
> doesn't, then it's fair to say that he is not accurate -- which is
> evidence that he is not a credible commentator.
>
He certainly has, in every way, acknowledged the brutality of the KR (I
am pretty sure I can find a dozen or so quote pointing this fact out).
It seems that the one statement anti-chomskyites see as easy pickins' is
his 1977 Nation bit. In this case he relied on evidence provided by
credible sources.
> There were indeed massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia; media
> reports at the time may have contained minor errors but were
> substantively correct.
Had 2 million to 3 million people been killed by the KR in 1977? Were
atrocity photographs not faked? Did the US press not downplay the
effect of bombing campaigns? The press was relying on falsified
evidence to make their conclusions. Should Chomsky have accepted the
conclusions of a media that was using falsified, and erroneous evidence?
>If Chomsky perceives it as defeat ("crying
> uncle") to admit this fact, that's his problem.
How odd. Chomsky admits the KR were brutal, but denies that this
affects his thesis about the media's portrayal of the events in
Cambodia. His conclusions are clearly supported by fact: the media did
fake photos, exaggerate numbers without evidence, and downplay the
slaughter in East Timor. Yet, this newsgroup's ardent critics continue
in their constant silliness of getting him to revoke statements which
were correct, who's trying to get who to say "uncle" here?
>
> [...]
> > Seems like a bit of jealousy, that the left
> > (and the anarchists) have a popular spokesman who needs to be cut down
> > to size.
>
> Chomsky can hardly be described as a "popular spokesman". He is not
> exactly well-known outside certain intellectual and academic circles,
> and among those who do know his work, he finds more detractors than
> admirers.
This is true, his circle is limited to those who read the New York
Times, who refer to him as "possibly the most important intellectual of
our time." As for detractors, every great mind is sure to find more
than are countable (it is the sign that you are doing something right).
You will find that outside America, Chomsky is widely respected, as for
America itself, Mozart never caught on in Salzburg until after his
death.
>
> He provides intellectual ammunition and affirmation for a certain
> subset of the far left, and among such persons he is no doubt very
> popular, but I don't think he convinces many people who didn't already
> share his view of the world. Indeed, his work has become so repetitive
> and self-referential that I think affirmation can be its only use.
Unlike your statements here, which offer nothing more than your personal
opinion, Chomsky relies on something more substantive.
>
> To say that Chomsky is expected to "cry uncle" implies that his
> commentary is substantively accurate, but that he is nonetheless
> expected to surrender to some sort of ideological force-majeure.
>
> Certainly one can understand why he (and his partisans) would try to
> frame the debate in such favorable terms. Nevertheless, it begs the
> question: is his commentary generally accurate, or not?
>
> The fact remains that Chomsky has been a poor judge of foreign regimes,
You cite his critique of the media's handling of Cambodia (your attacks
are in dispute), perhaps you wish to offer another "foreign regime" in
which you find Chomsky's account deficient?
> Frankly I don't care whether he admits this ("cries uncle")
> or not -- old men are entitled to their snits and quibbles.
...as are young men to their youthful arrogance.
>
> What interests me is the devotion he inspires among his acolytes
> despite this evident lack of judgment and (ahem) accuracy.
How fitting to your above comments, that the term "accuracy" might cause
your speech to falter.
NRN Consulting
John Filiss <jfi...@bestweb.net> wrote:
>
>I always appreciate constructive and intelligent criticism.
>
You also enjoy talking to yourself.
>I'm glad the board doesn't appeal to you.
>
I'm sure I'm in good company, Mr. "Anarchist."
James A. Donald
On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 19:43:19 GMT, "John Filiss" <jfi...@bestweb.net>
wrote:
> There seems to be a pretty good body of literature on both sides concerning
> Chomsky's accuracy, or lack of it, on the matter of the Khmer Rouge and
> atrocities in Cambodia. I'm curious to know if there are similar debates
> going on regarding any of Chomsky's other, extensive writings on foreign
> policy.
I have never read anything truthful by Chomsky. Even when he is
making a case for something that is perfectly true, for example that
Ustashi were really bad guys, he uses made up facts and fraudulent
citations in support of that position.
Cambodia is however a convenient tree to nail him to, because of the
infamous U turn on Cambodia that the left committed when the Soviet
line changed, just as we nailed earlier generation of commies onto
their U turn on Hitler.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
naN4sfts3KBXmUIlhB4budWYFOt7VEgIjeT6kNmI
4RqaGOIvy+VN70OyIr5NFYIQNPo42Bu4FwP7UPkOc
------
James A. Donald
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:47:04 GMT, "John Filiss" <jfi...@bestweb.net>
wrote:
> Which is why I want to know of other critiques of Chomsky's
> perspective on world affairs. I'd like to know what sort of footing
> he's really on.
Chomsky committed equally wacky errors on North Vietnam, which he
depicted as a democracy and in large part a participatory democracy,
while depicting Thailand as a totalitarian terror state. He defended
non communist regimes, regimes that murdered anyone vaguely to the
left, when those regimes were aligned with the Soviet Union, and
condemned when they changed alliance. He supported the communist
aggression against Greece. He produced rationalizations for the
Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, and all the justifications he
produced for all these things were like his works on Cambodia, phony
facts and twisted citations.
The only difference is that there are lots of people even today who
will defend his position on North Vietnam etc, but after 1979 when the
Soviet Union changed its line, no one, not even Chomsky himself, will
defend the position he took on Cambodia. Instead of defending his
position, he lies about his position, claiming that his post 1979
position was also his pre 1979 position.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
CvYnp8AQLrR9DqIwTdcCp68mZYMic21JBZEg2lvt
4aq13pwqRZ+t0w6Yfl4lZu5foAoeH1ha0oN+abW10
James A. Donald
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 01:45:47 -0400, Matt <matt...@my-deja.com>
wrote:
> Of course, he can find them in Deja--when it's working and if he's
> willing to look. Meantime, here is a large concatenation of posts I
> saved from early spring:
>
> http://people.bu.edu/mfhill/Clore-KalinaFeb-2000.txt
This concatenation represents the end of a debate, rather than the
beginning. People simply assert their positions, in quick summary
form, over and over.
> This is a good deal of material there. David Friedman reviewed it and
> offered the following concise account of a major problem in Chomsky's
> work on Cambodia. I couldn't get it from Deja, but luckily it was saved
> in my Internet Explorer scrapbook:
>
> http://people.bu.edu/mfhill/DonaldvChomsky.txt.
In which David Friedman, in his very polite and pleasant manner,
accuses Chomsky of falsifying the evidence.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
9y6GECumUQ26H3GpjmAH0FgtCgqBeAGAy6WjT3jw
43LzbIbNfiLs5AM76Rr1skEutIbzkCc5mBjUY/0PV
James A. Donald
On Mon, 03 Jul 2000 18:09:26 -0500, Adam Bayliss
<raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Speaking of framing the debate notice the attempt to exclude the
> importance of US involvement with the term post war, as if pre-1975
> Cambodia did not exist. Chomsky's comments about Cambodia pertained
> to a critique of media reports. He did not make any error with
> these critiques, the media had lied and made repeated mistakes.
Chomsky lied about the media, just as he lied about what was happening
in Cambodia, and lied about what evidence was available for what was
happening in Cambodia.
Shawcross gives an account of world reaction to the holocaust by
governments, mass media, the radical left, and Chomsky in particular,
and an account of what evidence was available, and when it became
available:
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/shawcross.htm>
Compare Shawcross's account with Chomsky's account
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/chomsdis.htm>
Shawcross's account is diametrically opposite to Chomsky's account on
almost every issue.
Which is more likely: That Shawcross is lying to support a war that
he opposed, or that Chomsky is lying to support totalitarian terror?
Further, we can easily check many of Shawcross's points. I have done
so. The events in Cambodia were massively under reported. Many in
the western press did not want to hear the news, and sought to
discredit and deny it.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Jcc3ysOlmOtIlM6/VWs3z32KmYJ0hD+2/E1maF51
4HRxl3jogj0S0pYV8CNYDkXi8oLS5Uj3f4HYZWC4h
James A. Donald
Stephen Denney wrote:
> > In the June 25, 1977 _Nation_ review-essay ("Distortions at Fourth Hand")
> > Chomsky co-authored with Edward Herman, they said:
> > In the Chomsky Chat commentary forwarded by Adam Bayliss a few weeks ago
> > (which got this whole discussion thread rolling), Chomsky claimed that
> > despite their greatest efforts his critics could find nothing incorrect or
> > misleading in what he and Herman wrote on the Khmer Rouge.
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:08:34 -0400, Brian Siano
<bsi...@cceb.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Nothing controversial here: C & H are reporting on what experts
> were saying at the time.
Chomsky and Herman were lying about what experts were saying at the
time.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
pvpCiAt2km6CWCh0y8lf30oPFsm7UlUTQPajDEAc
4iZD6s6qGZ6L6ipr1Lqp83mmTI2p6B9gYWqcB/d4y
James A. Donald
On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 07:47:37 GMT, Dan Clore
<cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
> Depends on what "roughly on the scale of what actually occurred" means.
> Total deaths caused by the Khmer Rouge are estimated (scholarly
> estimates based on population figures) at anywhere from 600,000 to 1.7
> million.
This rather like claiming that scholarly estimates of the murder of
the jews by the nazis range from six hundred thousand to four million.
There are no scholarly estimates lower than 1.5 million, and the 1.5
million figure and similar lowball figures come from communist
scholars.
Vickery is the source for the six hundred thousand figure, and he
falsifies his citations even more flagrantly and outrageously than
Chomsky. Vickery is a scholar in the same sense as Irving and Chomsky
are scholars. Vickery does not attribute that six hundred thousand to
Pol Pot, but to hardship caused by the US bombing, undisciplined
troops taking revenge contrary to Pol Pots generous and mild orders,
spontaneous peasant outrage, and internal warfare caused by lack of
adequate central discipline.
For a discussion of one of Vickery's more infamous falsified citations
see <http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640861360>
See also <http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640603767>, and
<http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=640694477>
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
2V8QvFcp37ZhifPYLzs5vrW+Pe1yv275qrDYcJHz
4b1OqduZbpOkd+2C2nhxhbVcpkO+vzNf1X4OzZ4Sp
Tobold Rollo
> falsifies his citations even more flagrantly and outrageously than
> Chomsky. Vickery is a scholar in the same sense as Irving and Chomsky
> are scholars. Vickery does not attribute that six hundred thousand to
> Pol Pot, but to hardship caused by the US bombing, undisciplined
> troops taking revenge contrary to Pol Pots generous and mild orders,
> spontaneous peasant outrage, and internal warfare caused by lack of
> adequate central discipline.
I wonder how Jimmy MacD would fair in a formal public debate with
Chomsky. Looks like Chomsky would be humiliated by James' extensive
knowledge of the issues.
James A. Donald
On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 11:00:35 -0500, Adam Bayliss
<raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> It has always been very important since it is the thrust of
> Chomsky's stance in ATC. James argues that Chomsky's attempt to
> point out flaws in the media's account is nothing more than
> communist sympathizing, despite the fact that these critiques are
> inarguable fact (many authors revised their work after Chomsky pointed out their inconsistencies).
But these inconsistencies were inconsequential. Chomsky is like those
holocaust revisionists who make a big deal out of the absence of a
blue stain on the walls of such and such a gas chamber, and argue that
therefore the holocaust of the jews never happened.
As Lacouture pointed out when he corrected his errors, these errors
did not significantly alter the big picture of mass murder, terror,
and universal slavery with many slaves treated with appalling cruelty.
Before and after these corrections, Lacouture's work still projects
the same entirely accurate picture of Cambodia, and Chomsky's work
projects a wildly false picture of Cambodia.
Yes, Lacouture was careless about details. But he relying on sources
that were very careful about details, and the overall picture he gave
of those sources was accurate
Further, why make a big deal about inaccuracies that do not change the
overall picture, when Chomsky's work contains inaccuracies that
radically change the picture. An inaccuracy that does not change the
story is an error. An inaccuracy that radically reverses the story is
a lie. Lacouture erred. Chomsky lied.
As I have been saying, compare Shawcross's account of what was known,
what was said, with Chomsky's account of what was known, what was
said, compare
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/shawcross.htm>
with Chomsky's account
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/chomsdis.htm>
One of them has to be knowingly lying. They cannot both be sincerely
telling what they honestly believe to be the truth.
We can check out Chomsky's citations, they are deceptive. We can
check out Shawcross's citations. They are accurate.
For example Chomsky leads the reader to believe that Hildebrand and
Porter presented a neutral evaluation of observations by neutral
observers, when in reality they were merely mouthpieces for official
Khmer propaganda. Chomsky and Herman lie about the evidence presented
by Ponchaud, claiming it was second hand, and implying that it was
extorted by fear from refugees who were forced to tell Ponchaud that
which they imply he wished to hear. Chomsky and Herman also denied
the existence of direct observation of the tortured bodies of murdered
women and children by outsider who saw these bodies near the border.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
QQMR0jsBbXUqdilEiDc5+MC1xCij3P33RN3Cpc/u
4ZqcDrtnMMGZKNE0zSg23c1T6IiCBX0ioEsxNoLrj
Charles P. Kalina
Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> "Charles P. Kalina" wrote:
> > Therefore, the relevant question is whether his comments about post-
war
> > Cambodia were accurate or not.
> Speaking of framing the debate notice the attempt to exclude the
> importance of US involvement with the term post war, as if pre-1975
> Cambodia did not exist.
If you'd like to discuss Chomsky's comments on Cambodian events prior
to 1975, fine. I'm not trying to exclude any disucssion of such
issues -- in fact, I don't think his judgment during the war was any
better than his judgment after it.
However, I was addressing his specific misjudgment of the Khmer Rouge
regime. Since the Khmer Rouge took power after the war, I referred to
this as "post-war Cambodia".
> Chomsky's comments about Cambodia pertained to
> a critique of media reports.
His critique of the media contained, both logically and in fact, an
assertion regarding the facts in post-war Cambodia. When you accuse
someone of lying, you are implicitly asserting an alternative version
of the truth (even if only a very general assertion that the truth is
something other than what the alleged liar says).
Chomsky's technique was to establish a set of alleged facts by
selecting certain sources. The major media did not report these facts,
or contradicted them; therefore media reports were false (and guided
by ideology rather than fact).
The problem is that he gave no good reason why we should believe his
sources were more credible than the mass media. Otherwise his argument
worked just as well in reverse: instead of using his sources to
discredit the mass media, we could use the mass media to discredit his
sources.
> He did not make any error with these
> critiques, the media had lied and made repeated mistakes.
He didn't even identify more than a handful of specific errors in media
reports about Cambodia. His demonstrated only that media content
diverged from his preferred sources, but unless we can show that his
sources were more credible, that doesn't constitute evidence of error.
It goes without saying that any major historical event will generate a
certain number of false or exaggerated reports. No doubt there were
some false or exaggerated reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities, and no
doubt some number of inaccurate reports were accepted as fact by the
western press because they were consistent with the weight of evidence
available.
Even if Chomsky could identify specific errors, it would not be
reasonable to generalize (as he does) to media coverage of Cambodia as
a whole, still less to media behavior generally.
By analogy: While it's widely believed that the Nazis made soap out of
human corpses, apparently they never actually did. It would be obvious
nonsense to argue on this basis that all evidence for the Holocaust is
likewise open to question -- nor could we argue that the absence of
such inquiry is evidence of a sinister hegemony.
Of course, there are revisionists who make just such arguments. My
contention is that Chomsky's argument is essentially identical, which
is why I feel it's appropriate to call him a revisionist in the
pejorative sense.
[...]
> He certainly has, in every way, acknowledged the brutality of the KR
(I
> am pretty sure I can find a dozen or so quote pointing this fact
out).
> It seems that the one statement anti-chomskyites see as easy pickins'
is
> his 1977 Nation bit. In this case he relied on evidence provided by
> credible sources.
One of Chomsky's techniques is to offer disclaimers that are at odds
with the substance of his argument. When he is attacked for the
argument, he points to the disclaimer, and insists he's being
misrepresented.
Thus: I'm sure one can find passages in which Chomsky acknowledges that
the Khmer Rouge are brutal and violent. Taken in isolation these
quotes would seem to acquit him of the charge that he was a Khmer Rouge
apologist who denied their crimes.
However, in context, his argument was consistently that the Khmer Rouge
were much less brutal and violent than they were reported to be. One
can thereby be an apologist and denier while still averring, quite
sincerely, that the regime in question was brutal and violent.
Again, Holocaust denial provides a parallel. Revisionist authors will
routinely intone that the Nazi state was brutal and violent and that it
did kill some large number of Jews. One could defend these authors by
citing these comments, in isolation, to prove that they are not pro-
Nazi and do not deny the Holocaust.
Yet the substance of these authors' argument is that the Nazis weren't
all that brutal, that they didn't kill that many Jews, that the real
war crimes were committed by the Nazis' enemies, and that we think
otherwise only because of powerful propaganda. The parallel to
Chomsky's own commentary hardly needs further exploration.
> > There were indeed massive atrocities in Khmer Rouge Cambodia; media
> > reports at the time may have contained minor errors but were
> > substantively correct.
> Had 2 million to 3 million people been killed by the KR in 1977?
His 1977 article cites no source which claims three million deaths. He
does cite estimates in the 1-2 million range. This was not an
unreasonable estimate and it is neither surprising nor sinister that it
was reported in the western press. It was certainly in the correct
order of magnitude and was far closer than the low-five-figure
estimates Chomsky suggested as alternatives.
To repeat my earlier point: even if we can point to specific errors,
media reports were substantively correct. Chomsky's view of the psot-
war regime was substantively wrong. Khmer Rouge Cambodia was indeed
analogous to Stalin's regime, or Hitler's -- not, as Chomsky tried to
argue, to France after liberation from the Nazis.
> Were atrocity photographs not faked?
I cannot speak to this, as I have not researched the question (and am
not prepared to take Chomsky's word for it). Nevertheless, even if we
stipulate that some false evidence did surface, we cannot generalize
from that to the evidence as a whole. We cannot ignore the weight of
valid evidence merely because we find some specific piece of evidence
that isn't valid.
By analogy, Holocaust revisionism doesn't become credible just because
we discover that the Nazis never made soap from human remains.
> The press was relying on falsified evidence to make their
> conclusions. Should Chomsky have accepted the conclusions of a
> media that was using falsified, and erroneous evidence?
Chomsky never demonstrated that the media's conclusions about Cambodia
were based on false or erroneous evidence. The most we can say is that
Chomsky drew attention to one or two instances when false evidence
surfaced in the western press.
When one has thousands of pieces of evidence supporting a certain
conclusion, it hardly discredits the conclusion if we discover that one
or two of those pieces are actually false. Nor does it demonstrate
that people who accepted these erroneous bits of information (e.g. the
news media) were somehow dishonest when they did so.
That is not to say that Chomsky correctly identified errors in media
coverage of Cambodia; most of the alleged errors were merely instances
when media coverage did not correspond to the information he got from
his preferred sources.
We can quibble whether 1-2 million was a fair estimate in 1977, or a
shade to high. The fact remains, as I said, that media reports about
post-war Cambodia were substantively correct. Conversely, Chomsky was
substantively wrong. The Khmer Rouge did indeed compare to Hitler or
Stalin, not to the French after liberation in 1944, and Chomsky was
wrong to say otherwise.
[...]
> This is true, his circle is limited to those who read the New York
> Times, who refer to him as "possibly the most important intellectual
> of
> our time."
Strange: doesn't this falsify the propaganda model? Chomsky
frequently invokes the New York Times as an example of the alleged
propaganda system at work. What "elite interest" is served by
describing Chomsky in such favorable terms?
> As for detractors, every great mind is sure to find more
> than are countable (it is the sign that you are doing something
> right).
If having a lot of detractors is the sign you're doing something
right... then how can you tell when you're doing something wrong?
("They laughed at Galileo. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.")
[...]
> You cite his critique of the media's handling of Cambodia (your
> attacks
> are in dispute), perhaps you wish to offer another "foreign regime" in
> which you find Chomsky's account deficient?
Previously in this forum, I have explored his treatment of communist
Vietnam (both before and after 1975) at some length. In fact I think
Vietnam provides a better example of his propaganda technique; while
Hanoi's crimes were less grotesque than those of the Khmer Rouge,
Chomsky's apologism for the Vietnamese regime was far less equivocal.
Needless to say, many regulars here did not think my comments on his
Vietnam work had merit, so I suppose you may classify this too as "in
dispute". Readers, as I always say, must judge for themselves.
Matt
<cka...@capaccess.org> wrote:
> Again, Holocaust denial provides a parallel. Revisionist authors will
> routinely intone that the Nazi state was brutal and violent and that it
> did kill some large number of Jews. One could defend these authors by
> citing these comments, in isolation, to prove that they are not pro-
> Nazi and do not deny the Holocaust.
>
> Yet the substance of these authors' argument is that the Nazis weren't
> all that brutal, that they didn't kill that many Jews, that the real
> war crimes were committed by the Nazis' enemies, and that we think
> otherwise only because of powerful propaganda. The parallel to
> Chomsky's own commentary hardly needs further exploration.
Have you read Irving's _Hitler's War_? (I think that's the title).
Based on what I've read of it, it closely resembles Chomsky's work on
Cambodia.
--
Matt
matt...@my-deja.com
Charles P. Kalina
Matt <matt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> Have you read Irving's _Hitler's War_? (I think that's the title).
> Based on what I've read of it, it closely resembles Chomsky's work on
> Cambodia.
Yes, I read _Hitler's War_ about ten years ago. I've always been
interested in debunkers; unfortunately, when I was young, I didn't
always have enough experience to distinguish legitimate debunkers from
charlatans.
Chomsky's techniques bear comparison to David Irving's, but I think
there are also some distinctions. Irving does original research, but
dishonestly manipulates what he finds. Chomsky does little or no
primary research; he relies almost entirely on secondary sources, and
the manipulation comes in his source-selection.
In that sense, Chomsky could be compared to an author who wrote about
the Holocaust relying entirely on authors like David Irving (and others
like him).
When Chomsky proves to be wrong (as he was in Cambodia), this allows
defenders (like Mr. Bayliss) to insist that Chomsky was relying on
credible sources. This shifts the debate from questions of fact to
judgements about source credibility, which are inevitably easier to
fudge and obfuscate, especially in cases where only limited information
was available.
The most precise parallel to Chomsky's work is, IMHO, Stalin's
apologists in the 1920s and 1930s -- the sort of "comfortable
professor" Orwell satirized. One thinks of the Webbs, for instance,
who insisted that while there had been some hardships and privation in
the Soviet Union, the Ukranian terror-famine was a fabrication of
hostile western propaganda.
I wonder if, later, they had the presence of mind to insist that they
had never denied the existence of the terror-famine and had been
writing only about the attitude of the western press.
Adam Bayliss
Procrustes
wrote:
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Sure this is all well and good if you are silly enough to believe that
Chomsky's efforts are synonymous with communist apologia. Once again,
Chomsky's admission that he is not an expert in policy, and his
continued emphasis on critiquing media methods show that he is not
dismissed as a pure apologist like the Stalinist figures you mention
(who, by the way, were prevalent until Kruschev's speech in 1956). Your
comparisons are ludicrous and clearly demonstrate your desire to
demonize Chomsky with any cheap shot possible. Of course, such
comparisons should be expected from individuals lacking scholarly
persistence or credibility.
Matt
<raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Sure this is all well and good if you are silly enough to believe that
> Chomsky's efforts are synonymous with communist apologia. Once again,
> Chomsky's admission that he is not an expert in policy, and his
> continued emphasis on critiquing media methods show that he is not
> dismissed as a pure apologist like the Stalinist figures you mention
> (who, by the way, were prevalent until Kruschev's speech in 1956).
That doesn't follow. Your claim would only have merit if Chomsky's
critics denied he said anything about the media. Chomsky's critics
don't deny this. Rather, they say his apologia is (often) a part of his
media critique. Thus evidence of media criticism is not evidence
against his critics.
Sometimes, however, Chomsky is just a naked apologist for
totalitarianism. Take for example chapter 5 of _At War with Asia_, in
which he favorably reports state propaganda from the communist
government of North Vietnam.
> Your
> comparisons are ludicrous and clearly demonstrate your desire to
> demonize Chomsky with any cheap shot possible. Of course, such
> comparisons should be expected from individuals lacking scholarly
> persistence or credibility.
These are assertions, not arguments, and are obviously false to anyone
who has been reading these threads.
--
Matt (djar...@usa.net.invalid)
remove "invalid" to email
Charles P. Kalina
Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Sure this is all well and good if you are silly enough to believe that
> Chomsky's efforts are synonymous with communist apologia.
That was more or less my assertion, yes. Whether it is "silly" or
accurate -- well, readers can judge for themselves whether the case has
been made.
Of course, I don't expect to convince many of Chomsky's fans in this
forum. The most I expect is that they may at least understand the
reasons that many people find him less than persuasive.
> Once again,
> Chomsky's admission that he is not an expert in policy, and his
> continued emphasis on critiquing media methods show that he is not
> dismissed as a pure apologist like the Stalinist figures you mention
> (who, by the way, were prevalent until Kruschev's speech in 1956).
"Pure apologist"? Would it be somehow less damning if we found him to
be an apologist for Stalinism, but only incidentally or imperfectly?
In fact, I don't think Chomsky is an apologist for Stalinism per se.
While I've made the case that he was an apologist for totalitarian
communism, I think this was incidental to his other beliefs and
interests. It makes no practical difference to our judgment of his
accuracy or credibility, but it does suggest a different understanding
of Chomsky as a thinker and as an intellectual phenomenon.
Viewed charitably, he was an idealist frustrated by the obvious
imperfections of his own society. Certain Stalinist states were able
to prey on that idealism by presenting an appealing Potemkin-village
picture of a society that compared favorably to ours.
Naturally he would want to defend this vision, since it provided hope
that his idealism could be realized. Sadly, the vision was false, and
by defending it and disparaging contrary evidence, Chomsky was
eulogizing a Stalinist regime and concealing its crimes.
(This doesn't vitiate the analogy to Stalin's apologists in the 1920s
and 1930s, or Hitler's apologists in recent decades. I'm sure many of
them were motivated by sincere but misplaced idealism, too.)
Viewed less charitably, Chomsky was hostile to American society, for
reasons rational or otherwise. He adopted America's enemies simply
because, if America's enemies were good, that provided another argument
that America itself was bad. It just happened to be the case that
America's enemies were totalitarian communists.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and in fact I
think both are true. The gravemen of his critique seems to have
shifted in the latter 1970s, from misplaced idealism to bitter
alienation. The themes in his work change perceptibly, but become
ossified and repetitive by the early 1980s. That's why I think the
late 1970s are the most interesting period of Chomskyana to study.
For example, I think it's interesting that this is the period when
his "critique of the media" first becomes a major theme. Before this
he'd only made occasional, perfunctory references to alleged US
propaganda. Yet in his books, articles and letters circa 1977-1979 it
suddenly becomes the dominant theme, the "propaganda model" in embryo.
I think it's no accident (pardon the cliche) that he started attacking
alleged US "propaganda" just as negative reports were pouring out of
the communist regimes in Indochina. To preserve his myth-image of
these regimes, and of US opposition to them, he needed some mechanism
to exclude these negative reports.
By dismissing these reports as "propaganda", he both disputed the
evidence and turned the accusation back against American society.
Eventually, the volume of evidence that had to be excluded became so
great that a "system" or "model" was necessary to explain how so much
false or unsubstantiated evidence could have been so widely circulated.
(The simpler explanation was that this evidence was widely circulated
precisely because it was true and well-substantiated. However, this
implied that Chomsky had been wrong about these regimes, and was
therefore beyond the bounds of thinkable thought.)
Put simply: Chomsky's critique of the news media is itself a principal
mechanism of his apologism. Therefore the fact that his work
emphasizes this critique is not evidence that he isn't an apologist.
(By analogy: Holocaust revisionists dismiss evidence of the Holocaust
as Jewish propaganda, the product of Jewish hegemony over the media and
academia. Certainly it would make no sense to cite this assertion as
evidence that these revisionists were media critics and not Nazi
apologists.)
> Your
> comparisons are ludicrous and clearly demonstrate your desire to
> demonize Chomsky with any cheap shot possible. Of course, such
> comparisons should be expected from individuals lacking scholarly
> persistence or credibility.
It has not been my intent to "demonize" Professor Chomsky, and I
apologize if my comments have created that impression. On the
contrary, I would not find him so fascinating if I did not view him
with a certain sympathy. I don't think he's a monster; I just think
he's wrong. But he's wrong in interesting ways that are worth
exploring.
Readers can judge for themselves whether my comments have been
mere "cheap shots". They also must evaluate my "scholarly
credibility". For myself, I find your resort to name-calling
unpersuasive to say the least.
As for "persistence"... well, I'm not even sure what you mean by this.
Frankly I think I'd be a lot better off if I did something more
productive rather than "persisting" in these dialogues. But I enjoy
them, so I persist. (I'm persistent, but not responsible... ;-)
James A. Donald
On Wed, 12 Jul 2000 17:23:39 GMT, Charles P. Kalina
<cka...@capaccess.org> wrote:
> These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and in fact I
> think both are true. The gravemen of his critique seems to have
> shifted in the latter 1970s, from misplaced idealism to bitter
> alienation. The themes in his work change perceptibly, but become
> ossified and repetitive by the early 1980s. That's why I think the
> late 1970s are the most interesting period of Chomskyana to study.
>
>
> Put simply: Chomsky's critique of the news media is itself a principal
> mechanism of his apologism. Therefore the fact that his work
> emphasizes this critique is not evidence that he isn't an apologist.
In his seventies work, Chomsky is simply defending the indefensible,
so his work is easy to analyze. We know that the position he is
arguing is the complete opposite of the truth, which makes it easy to
expose the flaws in his argument and identify the tricks he uses.
However his later work, after the fall of communism, also has some
significance. Seeing the whole picture enables us to separate
deception from self deception, gives us some insight into what Chomsky
genuinely believed.
When the Soviet Union weakened and fell, Chomsky's internal vision of
the world required things to get worse in Latin America, rather than
better, since Chomsky's world view had the US, rather than the Soviet
Union, intervening in Latin America and aggressing against it, while
the Soviet Union was defending and supporting the Latin Americans
against the US. Instead there was an outbreak of democracy and
prosperity. Chomsky then produced some articles and a book explaining
that this outbreak of peace and prosperity was realy an outbreak of
poverty and dictatorship.
This shows that he did indeed sincerely believe in his internal vision
of the world. On the other hand it also shows that he did not believe
in the account of the world that he had been giving. Since in his
account of the world the Soviet Union played no role whatsoever in
Latin America, the weakening and fall of the Soviet Union could have
no effect on Latin America, and therefore should in no way discredit
his account.
If he sincerely believed in his account of the world, he might need to
rewrite history and current events to show the US doing evil in Latin
America, but would have no need to rewrite current events to show that
evil in Latin America increased, rather than decreased when the Soviet
Union fell.
The fact that he found it necessary to rewrite this fact shows that he
was aware of the extensive Soviet meddling in Latin America, and
approved it, while in his writings he denied it.
On the one hand, he was sincerely deluded, and genuinely wrong. On
the other hand, he did not say what he believed, nor believe what he
said. From his post fall writings, we can infer that among other
things he did not believe that US dominance was as complete as he
claimed, nor did he believe Soviet dominance and influence as
irrelevant and insignificant has he claimed to believe.
From time to time, I have attempted to give the long explanation of
what commies secretly believe and intend, but no one ever gets it,
except other ex commies.
So I will now give the short account.
Commies think they will rule well, but they mean to rule.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
QqjYY0DoQQj7SvE8YyoS19HTpIpV3ztDAjxxtW3A
4phjlOwkV5eEZuLo2Je3Ruh2R6+2mDTqMsvTobIfn
Seth Kulick
James A. Donald <jam...@echeque.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>From time to time, I have attempted to give the long explanation of
>what commies secretly believe and intend, but no one ever gets it,
>except other ex commies.
[...]
James, this is one of the finest postings that you have ever made.
One for the ages! You are one scary dude.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Seth Kulick "The hypnotic splattered mist
University of Pennsylvania was slowly lifting" - Bob Dylan
sku...@linc.cis.upenn.edu http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~skulick/home.html
James A. Donald
On 17 Jul 2000 03:13:48 GMT, sku...@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Seth Kulick)
wrote:
> James, this is one of the finest postings that you have ever made.
> One for the ages! You are one scary dude.
Thank you.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
Cw9A3jsPYePmDhNi/dP2sMPPjgEM7t0xYFOpfenB
4Baeez92VNY9uFjy8XDuhqHmkKa1eYmqiN6rGq3/F
Seth Kulick
>On 17 Jul 2000 03:13:48 GMT, sku...@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Seth Kulick)
>wrote:
>> James, this is one of the finest postings that you have ever made.
>> One for the ages! You are one scary dude.
>
>Thank you.
>
You're welcome. I only wish that I had seen your work in your Spart
days, or whatever it was you said you were in. It must have been
awe-inspiring. Carry on, comrade!
jvi...@yahoo.com
I find Chomsky interesting not for the details he provides but for the
things he makes you think about. Several of my favourite examples...
Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran, and the Kurds, even as we
(and everyone else it would seem) were arming him. Then he invaded a
small fiefdom and became the next Hilter over night without any real
comments or discussion in the media.
Similarities between Vietnam and Afganistan. That is install puppet
regime, be invited in, ... ;)
The idea that the US enforces international law, yet when you look at
the records...
The talk of atrocities in Cambodia. So far I've never seen it
mentioned that the US killed 600,000 Cambodians. When Chomsky said
this I thought the guy was nuts. I looked up the information, and
found it detailed by several CIA historians, talk about hiding facts in
the open. Why wouldn't the media at least mention this in passing,
that's spooky.
che...@my-deja.com
time an locations that the killing took place?
From 1964-70, I saw only one time that the local news had reported when
the bombing took place on Chantrea. If you take Chantrea casualties as
base and the population distribution along those borders, you might get
some idea of how many khmer were killed from 1964-70.
From 1970-75, how many khmer were killed, according to those CIA
historians?
In article <8l4oqo$cb$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
Dan Clore
>
> 600,000 cambodians were killed by the US? Can you tell me the period of
> time an locations that the killing took place?
> From 1964-70, I saw only one time that the local news had reported when
> the bombing took place on Chantrea. If you take Chantrea casualties as
> base and the population distribution along those borders, you might get
> some idea of how many khmer were killed from 1964-70.
> From 1970-75, how many khmer were killed, according to those CIA
> historians?
The "secret bombing" took place from 1969 through 1973. Maps are given
in William Shawcross's book _Sideshow_, revealing that some of the most
heavily-populated areas of the countryside were carpet-bombed in this
campaign. A majority of this is nowhere near the Ho Chi Minh trail and
Vietnamese sanctuaries that were the alleged targets. Figures like
600,000 though, represent deaths not just from the bombing but from the
whole civil war in the period. (This appears to be a kind of
part-for-whole synecdoche.)
elvis impersonator
jvi...@yahoo.com fanclub, said this:
>The talk of atrocities in Cambodia. So far I've never seen it
>mentioned that the US killed 600,000 Cambodians. When Chomsky said
>this I thought the guy was nuts. I looked up the information, and
>found it detailed by several CIA historians, talk about hiding facts in
>the open. Why wouldn't the media at least mention this in passing,
>that's spooky.
have you got any sources for this to hand?
--
don't forget to pack a wife
Charles P. Kalina
jvi...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Several of my favourite examples...
> Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran, and the Kurds, even as
> we
> (and everyone else it would seem) were arming him.
If Chomsky does say this, he's wrong. "We" (presumably meaning the
USA) did not arm Iraq in any reasonable sense of the term.
Iraqi military power (including their WMD research) was built mainly on
Soviet hardware or Chinese knock-offs. The Soviets even let the Iraqis
use airbases inside the USSR to strike targets deep inside Iraq.
Iraq also bought some French equipment (such as the Exocet missile used
against USS Stark). Notice that today, in the UN Security Council,
these three -- the Russians, Chinese and French -- are the ones pushing
for a rapprochment with Iraq (vice the US-backed embargo).
Finally, Iraq also bought an assortment of low-end military equipment
from various third-world suppliers, such as their infamous long-range
artillery from South Africa.
To my knowledge, however, the Iraqi arsenal contained not a single
piece of equipment given by, purchased from, or even manufactured in
the United States.
Nor is there any evidence that, when it appeared Iran would defeat
Iraq, the US even considered using military force to preserve the Iraqi
regime.
Compare this to our relationship with the other Gulf Arab states. We
sold them arms, trained their forces, helped them build defense-related
facilities, and so forth. For example, we sold F-15s and E-3s to the
Saudis -- over strong objections from Israel, incidentally. Their air
base at Dahran could have accomodated the entire Saudi Air Force
several times over; it was built on the assumption that the US would
deploy forces there during a crisis.
If we "armed" Iraq, it was only by conducting normal commerce with it,
which created profits that the Iraqi regime could use to buy arms.
Perhaps we ought not have traded with Iraq. On the other hand, the
same people who complain that we once armed Iraq (which must
necessarily refer to our economic trade with it) are now complaining
that our economic sanctions are starving the country. Likewise, if we
had taken a more openly hostile stance towards him, the same people who
condemn us for coddling him would now condemn us for provoking him.
You just can't please some people.
Now, we may grant that politically, the US tilted towards Iraq for much
of the Iran-Iraq war. We may also say that US political leaders were
slow to recognize Iraq as a threat. But to be far, we must also grant
that none of our Arab allies in the region took that threat seriously,
either.
(US CENTCOM, on the other hand, was wargaming Iraq-Kuwait scenarios as
early as 1988. So much for the canard that "the military is always
fighting the last war.")
To the extent we did tilt towards Iraq, that tilt was entirely
justified by circumstances during the Iran-Iraq war. For most of the
war it looked like Iran (which was, unlike Iraq, implaccably hostile to
the United States) would win. So, like the Gulf Arab states
themselves, we tended to support Iraq as an obstacle to Iranian
hegemony.
Remember, also, that while Iraq was the initial aggressor, Baghdad was
willing to end the war after its early offensive was turned back. The
war continued chiefly because Tehran insisted on unreasonable terms,
and it ended only when Iran dropped those demands. There were no "good
guys" (Henry Kissinger famously said that the best outcome would be for
both sides to lose), so it made sense to back the bad guy who seemed
less threatening at the time.
> Then he invaded a
> small fiefdom and became the next Hilter over night without any real
> comments or discussion in the media.
Why should this seem strange? The Iraqi regime were always bad guys.
What changed is that they stopped being bad guys we could deal with,
and started being bad guys we couldn't deal with. This isn't a
particularly dramatic change, nor is it difficult to understand.
American news media serve an American audience, and usually cover
foreign news only to the extent it involves or affects Americans. By
those criteria, Iraq simply wasn't newsworthy until it did (or
threatened to do) something that prompted a major US military
deployment.
Now, we may certainly question whether the public is well-served by
news media that ignore foreign affairs unless and until the US is
directly and immediately involved. But that's what they do, and I
think the best explanation is that there simply isn't an audience for
seemingly-obscure foreign affairs stories -- not Chomsky's Byzantine
hypotheses of corporate media manipulation.
For that matter: did Chomsky write much about Iraq prior to summer
1990?
Charles P. Kalina
[Iraq addressed at length separately]
> Similarities between Vietnam and Afganistan. That is install puppet
> regime, be invited in, ... ;)
Yes, there are superficial similarities between the US in Vietnam and
the Soviets in Afghanistan. By fixating on these superficial
similarities, Chomsky insinuated that the US was no different that the
Soviet Union (at least in its foreign policy), except perhaps that it
was more hypocritical.
But does the analogy have substance? If not, then Chomsky is
not "making us think"; he's manipulating the reader into accepting a
falsehood.
Someone (John O'Sullivan?) once pointed out that when an oncoming bus
looks like it's about to hit an old lady, it's OK to shove her to
safety, but it isn't OK to shove her in front of the bus. Clearly we
wouldn't say that both must be equally bad because they both involve
shoving an old lady.
By the same argument: it's one thing to send troops to a foreign
country to save it from Stalinist totalitarianism (the US in Vietnam).
It's something very different to send troops to a foreign country to
establish or preserve Stalinist totalitarianism (the Soviets in
Afghanistan). It's obvious nonsense to demand that we, or the media,
should ignore this distinction.
In any case, Chomsky's point about the American news media isn't
correct. They did not ignore the alleged similarity; on the contrary,
they frequently spoke of Afghanistan as the Soviets' Vietnam.
Nor do the media generally eschew the term "invasion" when discussing
US military action. The press apparently use the term "invasion" to
describe the sudden introduction of large numbers of troops. Our
Vietnam build-up was too gradual to be so described, but our actions in
Grenada and Panama were routinely described as "invasions".
In other words, Chomsky did what he usually does, as we saw in his
comparison of Cambodia and East Timor: he picked two isolated data
points that did not provide an adequate test of his hypothesis, but
which pointed to the conclusion he wanted.
As an aside, we may also note that Chomsky gave credence to Soviet
propaganda rationales for the invasion of Afghanistan, something he
certainly never did with the thinking behind US policy in Vietnam.
(Granted, he qualified this endorsement with the usual doublespeak and
equivocation. He repeated them uncritically, and gratuitously repeated
after each one that they were all "true", which plants in the reader's
mind the idea that these should be relevant to our judgment of Soviet
policy. Then he casually declares that none of these facts should be
relevant to our judgment of Soviet policy.)
Charles P. Kalina
[material on Iraq and Afghanistan addressed separately]
> The talk of atrocities in Cambodia. So far I've never seen it
> mentioned that the US killed 600,000 Cambodians. When Chomsky said
> this I thought the guy was nuts. I looked up the information, and
> found it detailed by several CIA historians, talk about hiding facts
in
> the open. Why wouldn't the media at least mention this in passing,
> that's spooky.
I'm curious what your sources are for this estimate.
The only unclassified CIA document I have on hand is "Kampuchea: A
Demographic Catastrophe". This was published by the CIA National
Foreign Assessment Center, way back in May 1980. It does contain an
estimate that vaguely resembles yours. Perhaps your CIA historians
were using this figure?
Specifically: its description of the "Lon Nol Regime (1 July 1970 to
17 April 1975)" cites "an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 war-related
deaths" (p.2). Note that this estimate covers "war-related deaths",
and includes periods of time when the US was not directly involved in
Cambodia (or even Indochina).
This means it includes Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, no doubt a
considerable number, perhaps even a substantial majority of the total
death toll.
To be fair, it also includes Cambodians killed by either the United
States or the Lon Nol government. Unfortunately we don't know what
percentage of those deaths can be attributed to each belligerent. It
also does it distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, nor
does it tell us how many non-combatants were killed deliberately versus
the number killed incidentally.
Based on what we know about the Khmer Rouge, I don't think it's
unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths were
due to Khmer Rouge terror against civilians, whereas deaths caused by
US and allied forces were a relatively small percentage and were mainly
combat-related.
But I admit, that's just my guess, and in any case my source is dated.
Perhaps if you provide a specific citation, readers can better evaluate
your claim that "the US killed 600,000 Cambodians."
(After all, you can hardly condemn the press for failing to report
a "fact" that you yourself haven't substantiated.)
Nathan Folkert
> In any case, Chomsky's point about the American news media isn't
> correct. They did not ignore the alleged similarity; on the contrary,
> they frequently spoke of Afghanistan as the Soviets' Vietnam.
Oh, please, Charles. They've also referred to Israel's occupation of
Southern Lebanon as "Israel's Vietnam" and argued against our involvement
in Yugoslavia because it would be "another Vietnam". The "similarity"
they see is a prolonged, expensive, and ultimately losing battle, which is
of course not the analogy that Chomsky is making at all since it is a
largely meaningless comparison.
An analogy consist of more than just two situations being compared. It
also is intimately tied to the comparison itself -- which, from the looks
of it, most of your analyses completely ignores.
Nathan Folkert
nfol...@cs.stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~nfolkert
*******************************************************
* The Danes came to Ireland with nothing to do *
* But dream of the plundered old Irish they slew, *
* "Yeh will in yer vikings," said Brian Boru, *
* And threw them back into the ocean! *
*******************************************************
* The Sea, oh the Sea, is the gradh geal mo croide *
* Long may it stay between England and me! *
* It's a sure guarantee that some hour we'll be free. *
* Oh, thank God we're surrounded by water *
*******************************************************
- The Sea Around Us
Michael Carley
>In article <8l4oqo$cb$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> jvi...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> Several of my favourite examples...
>> Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran, and the Kurds, even as
>> we
>> (and everyone else it would seem) were arming him.
>If Chomsky does say this, he's wrong. "We" (presumably meaning the
>USA) did not arm Iraq in any reasonable sense of the term.
`We' did, shipping US-designed equipment through third parties such as
a Chilean arms dealer called Carlos Cardoen. You might also take a
look at http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/ND93/pizzo.html
--
O makers of motorbikes and tractors! Builders of the Belfast and the
Titanic! Constructors of the Harlandic diesel electric locomotive
commissioned by the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway Company!
http://www.mme.tcd.ie/~michael/ (Reverse my username to reply)
loosel...@my-deja.com
Charles P. Kalina <cka...@capaccess.org> wrote:
> This means it includes Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, no doubt
a
> considerable number, perhaps even a substantial majority of the total
> death toll.
Of which more in a moment...
> To be fair, it also includes Cambodians killed by either the United
> States or the Lon Nol government. Unfortunately we don't know what
> percentage of those deaths can be attributed to each belligerent. It
> also does it distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, nor
> does it tell us how many non-combatants were killed deliberately
versus
> the number killed incidentally.
Which of course makes all the difference? I confess to finding this
argument hard to follow: is it somehow more moral to kill
civilians 'accidentally' by dropping high explosive without warning on
their homes?
> Based on what we know about the Khmer Rouge, I don't think it's
> unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths were
> due to Khmer Rouge terror against civilians, whereas deaths caused by
> US and allied forces were a relatively small percentage and were
mainly
> combat-related.
Based on what we know about the US military, I don't think it's
unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths...
Do you see the problem? Certainly the behaviour of the US in vietnam
and in the phase of the secret bombing indicates that a concern for
civilian casualties was not high on it's list of priorities in the
period under discussion.
> But I admit, that's just my guess, and in any case my source is dated.
> Perhaps if you provide a specific citation, readers can better
evaluate
> your claim that "the US killed 600,000 Cambodians."
My guess is that no one will ever know. I do feel that bombing peasant
societies is bad form though (as is executing chunks of your own
population.) I doubt you would disagree with me here.
> (After all, you can hardly condemn the press for failing to report
> a "fact" that you yourself haven't substantiated.)
Chomsky (Detering Democracy) reports the 600,000 figure in the New York
Times. John Pilger (twice journalist of the year, produced the BBC
documentary 'Year Zero') in 'Hidden Agendas' quotes a figure of 750,000.
Pilgeer also provides a reference to a CIA report which seems to
indicate the role the US bombing played in creating support for the
Khmer Rouge.
Charles P. Kalina
loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > To be fair, it also includes Cambodians killed by either the United
> > States or the Lon Nol government. Unfortunately we don't know what
> > percentage of those deaths can be attributed to each belligerent.
It
> > also does it distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, nor
> > does it tell us how many non-combatants were killed deliberately
> versus
> > the number killed incidentally.
> Which of course makes all the difference? I confess to finding this
> argument hard to follow: is it somehow more moral to kill
> civilians 'accidentally' by dropping high explosive without warning on
> their homes?
Yes, absolutely, it makes a difference whether killing is deliberate or
accidental. This is true whether we are discussing a single victim or
a large number.
Of course, it doesn't make a difference to the victims, who are dead
regardless. But it does make a difference in our moral (and legal)
judgment of the alleged perpetrators.
For example: consider a motorist who strikes and kills a pedestrian.
Certainly the law (and common sense) make a distinction based on
whether the collision was deliberate homicide, or the product of
criminal negligence, or pure accident.
By definition, war kills people in a big way. Sometimes you kill the
wrong people. Targets are misidentified, bombs and shells go astray,
and so forth. You may even kill your own soldiers by mistake
("fratricide" or "friendly fire"). You try to avoid it, but in any
large military operation, it's going to happen sooner or later.
When you have non-combatants in the area of operations, some of them
are going to get hit. You certainly try not to hit them, you try to
minimize the risk to civilians and other non-combatants, but inevitably
you will not succeed 100% of the time. (Especially when the enemy
deliberately hides among non-combatants and uses "human shields".)
Yes, I think we can and should make a clear distinction between that
sort of accident, versus deliberate atrocity or culpable negligence.
(This also affects our judgment of the question below. Even a major
bombing campaign would have a hard time killing 600k people by
accident. If that many Cambodians really were killed by US bombing, it
suggests criminal negligence at best, deliberate targeting at worst.)
> > Based on what we know about the Khmer Rouge, I don't think it's
> > unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths
were
> > due to Khmer Rouge terror against civilians, whereas deaths caused
by
> > US and allied forces were a relatively small percentage and were
> mainly
> > combat-related.
> Based on what we know about the US military, I don't think it's
> unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths...
Really? Well.
We know that the Khmer Rouge come from an ideological tradition with a
history of mass murder. We also know with certainty that they killed
some large number of people once they took power -- serious estimates
are 1-2 million; Chomsky's estimate is about half that.
Now, I don't know if there there has been any specific research
concerning the number of Cambodian civilians killed by the Khmer Rouge
before they actually occupied Phnom Penh. I'm not even sure such
research is really possible, except for crude estimates that can always
be disputed, just as we are doing now.
However, I think it beggars the imagination to suppose that the Khmer
Rouge were basically nice, humane guys until 17 April 1975 -- when they
suddenly, for no discernable reason, became homicidal fanatics who
started killing their countrymen en masse.
It seems more plausible to suggest that their behavior was consistent,
and that before taking power they acted (in the areas they controlled
or influenced) much as they did after taking power. Certainly this
would explain why refugees continued packing into Phnom Penh even after
the bombing stopped.
(It also explains Chomsky's otherwise-exculpatory observation that some
rural areas were not hit particularly hard by KR terror; they had
already been terrorized before April 1975.)
What about the hated US military?
During World War II, the combined air forces of the Allies deliberately
carpet-bombed densely-populated urban centers in Germany. Yet it's
generally agreed that not more than a million Germans were killed by
Allied bombing throughout the war.
On the other hand, in Cambodia the United States bombed sparsely-
inhabited areas of jungle along the Vietnamese border (and for a
shorter period of time). I'm sure that some non-zero number of
Cambodian non-combatants were caught in the bombing. But it's hard to
imagine that there were even 600k Cambodians living in the areas we
bombed.
Again, I don't know whether there is specific and reliable research on
this topic, so we can't do more than guess. Stalin blamed the Ukranian
famine on capitalist wreckers. Even today, there are Nazi apologists
who claim that the Jews died in the camps only because of wartime
privation caused by Allied bombing. No doubt it's even easier to shift
blame from the Khmer Rouge to their enemies, given the more muddled
nature of the evidence available.
In any case, my point stands: assuming the previous article was citing
this estimate, it is an estimate of total war-related Cambodia deaths --
caused by both sides, including combatant and non-combatant deaths,
and with no distinction between war crimes and casualties caused
accidentally.
Contrary to what the previous author suggested, it is not an estimate
of the number of Cambodians killed by the United States specifically.
To say that it is, we must assume (as the source does not) that the
Khmer Rouge -- despite their subsequent record of brutality -- killed
no significant number of Cambodians before marching into Phnom Penh.
Surely, no matter how much you want to believe that the United States
was just as bad as the Khmer Rouge, you must agree that this
assumption, necessary to your argument, is implausible?
> Do you see the problem? Certainly the behaviour of the US in vietnam
> and in the phase of the secret bombing indicates that a concern for
> civilian casualties was not high on it's list of priorities in the
> period under discussion.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Without a detailed study of the targeting
process that went into the bombing, I can't say whether or not concern
for civilian casualties played an appropriate role in planning and
executing the operation.
If one believes that the bombing ought never to have been done in the
first place, one is likely to think that since the level of concern was
too low to prevent the bombing entirely, it was (eo ipso) lower than it
should have been.
Does anyone have reliable casualty figures for comparable US bombing
missions during this period? For example, we dropped a lot of bombs on
North Vietnam; are their any independent estimates of how many
civilian causalties this caused? For that matter, what did the North
Vietnamese themselves claim? This might shed some light on whether the
600k estimate for the Cambodian bombing is plausible.
However, the point remains that it is not directly supported by the CIA
source that I cited. I am still not sure whether the original
contributor to this discussion was citing this source, or a different
one. Presumably we will hear from him anon.
> > But I admit, that's just my guess, and in any case my source is
dated.
> > Perhaps if you provide a specific citation, readers can better
> evaluate
> > your claim that "the US killed 600,000 Cambodians."
> My guess is that no one will ever know. I do feel that bombing
peasant
> societies is bad form though (as is executing chunks of your own
> population.) I doubt you would disagree with me here.
The purpose of US operations in Cambodia was to eliminate the safe
havens used by an insurgency committed to the creation of a Stalinist
state by violent means. This may or may not have been tactically wise,
but I don't think it was presumptively immoral or unjustified.
I gather you're trying (a la Chomsky) to construct an argument which
equates the US bombing to the actions of the Khmer Rouge. Your
estimate that the US killed 600k Cambodians is roughly the same as the
estimates for Khmer Rouge killings advanced by Chomsky. Your phrasing
("bombing peasant societies") implies that we targeted Cambodian
society as such, not VC/NVA sanctuaries and lines of communication
within Cambodia.
If this were an accurate picture of what took place in Cambodia during
the 1970s, your implied equation would have merit. To coin a phrase,
that's a big "if". I would argue that it is hypothesis contrary to
fact; that it is not an accurate description, and that by equating the
US to the Khmer Rouge, you are either defaming the US, excusing the KR,
or both.
> Chomsky (Detering Democracy) reports the 600,000 figure in the New
York
> Times. John Pilger (twice journalist of the year, produced the BBC
> documentary 'Year Zero') in 'Hidden Agendas' quotes a figure of
750,000.
> Pilgeer also provides a reference to a CIA report which seems to
> indicate the role the US bombing played in creating support for the
> Khmer Rouge.
Chomsky has a habit of distorting his more mainstream sources, and I
have specifically discussed at some length his past distortion of
material from the New York Times. "Beating the text until it
confesses." While I have not tracked down this particular reference, I
would not be surprised to find similar distortion in this instance.
Specifically, I suspect Chomsky is doing precisely what you attempted
to do in this instance: taking an estimate for all war-related deaths
and simply attributing all those deaths to the US bombing. As I
recall, this is more or less what he does with a similar estimate in
_Manufacturing Consent_.
Since my hypothesis about Chomsky has now generated a prediction, I
suppose it behooves me to test it. I don't have a copy of Deterring
Democracy; can you provide a specific citation?
(On the other hand, if the New York Times did report that the US
bombing killed 600k Cambodians, doesn't this make hash of the
propaganda model? Isn't this precisely the sort of unfavorable fact
that's supposed to be suppressed?)
Unfortunately I am not conversant with Pilger nor with the work you
cite. I do recall some unfavorable comments about him in this forum,
and since Chomsky does not write in a vacuum I assume there are others
that share his biases. Perhaps Pilger is one? But I must leave it to
others to address his credibility as a source.
Charles P. Kalina
yelr...@maths.tcd.ie wrote:
> `We' did, shipping US-designed equipment through third parties such as
> a Chilean arms dealer called Carlos Cardoen. You might also take a
> look at http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/ND93/pizzo.html
Pizzo's Mother Jones article states that between 1985 and 1989, Iraq
diverted $5 billion in US-guaranteed loans from agriculture to military
spending. By itself this isn't surprising. In fact, it might be a
cautionary lesson for those who think that lifting sanctions will
alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people.
Pizzo suggests that the diversion was actually a covert attempt by the
Reagan and Bush administrations to give Iraq money for weapons. His
only source for this is Christopher Drougal, a bank official who was
indicted for bank fraud and offered this covert-operations story as his
defense.
Without prejudging Drougal's criminal trial, it isn't hard to imagine
why a defendant might fabricate something like this. It's an
interesting story, and of course we can't possibly prove it isn't true,
but by itself it isn't remotely sufficient grounds to declare with
certainty that "the US armed Iraq".
Pizzo also claims that "hundreds of U.S. government documents" support
Drougal's claim, but his one example isn't very convincing. He notes
the existence of a 1987 memo briefing Bush for a meeting with the Iraqi
ambassador, though he does not describe its contents. He notes that
Bush and the ambassador discussed both the loans and the war.
Well, duh. When the Vice President meets with an ambassador, he's
going to be briefed beforehand. If the US is underwriting a loan to
that country, they'll discuss the loan. If that country is at war,
they're going to talk about how the war is going. Neither the
existence of the briefing memo nor the topics discussed at the meeting
support Drougal's theory that the loans and the war effort were
directly related.
Pizzo's insinuation that they do is mere conspiracy theory, which he
tries to support by putting a sinister spin on ordinary events (e.g.
Drougal's plea-bargain) and not-very-large coincidences. Presumably
this weak evidence is actually the best he has available, since
supposedly he is citing only one example out of "hundreds".
No doubt the usual suspects will find this convincing -- the American
left has lately developed a habit of accepting exculpatory conspiracy
theories from criminal defendants. And of course there are a lot of
people devoted to the proposition that anything bad must ultimately be
traced back to the United States. But I don't think this is adequate
justification for your statement that the US did, in fact, arm Iraq.
I'm not familiar with Carlos Cardoen, and if you could provide more
information or a reference for this information, I'd be grateful.
However, the fact remains that no US-designed equipment ever showed up
in the Iraqi inventory. Military references from the 1980s (Janes,
etc) indicate that the Iraqis had Soviet, Chinese, French, Italian,
South African, and even British equipment (the latter having been
acquired before the Ba'ath coup). Yet not a single sidearm, canteen or
rucksack from the United States.
If the Iraqis were buying US equipment via this Carlos Cardoen, it
seems they have grounds to demand their money back. ;-)
Matt
<cka...@capaccess.org> wrote:
> Now, I don't know if there there has been any specific research
> concerning the number of Cambodian civilians killed by the Khmer Rouge
> before they actually occupied Phnom Penh. I'm not even sure such
> research is really possible, except for crude estimates that can always
> be disputed, just as we are doing now.
>
> However, I think it beggars the imagination to suppose that the Khmer
> Rouge were basically nice, humane guys until 17 April 1975 -- when they
> suddenly, for no discernable reason, became homicidal fanatics who
> started killing their countrymen en masse.
>
> It seems more plausible to suggest that their behavior was consistent,
> and that before taking power they acted (in the areas they controlled
> or influenced) much as they did after taking power. Certainly this
> would explain why refugees continued packing into Phnom Penh even after
> the bombing stopped.
I found an interesting record in the Cambodia Genocide Program's
database that I saved on my computer. It seems relevant here, but the
reason I saved it was because it described a State Department
intelligence report. Chomsky claimed US intelligence supported his
story, contrary to the mass media, but so far as I can tell US
intelligence sources were extremely critical of the Khmer Rouge.
Unfortunately I haven't seen the report to which this record refers. It
sounds promising though. I don't know if it is related to "A
Demographic Catastrophe."
Here is the record from the CGP database (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/).
Title [200]
Political change in wartime; the Khmer Krahom revolution in Southern
Cambodia, 1970-1974
Summary/Allegations [330]
This account by a American Foreign Service Office is of considerable
historical significance. Quinn interviewed Cambodian refugees who fled
into South Vietnam in 1973-74 from areas under Khmer Rouge control in
southeastern Cambodia. ("Krahom" is the Khmer-language term for "red,"
or in French "rouge.")
Summary/Allegations [330]
This article, an edited version of a lengthy report to the U.S.
Department of State, analyzes the extreme and brutal social revolution
which the Khmer Rouge began in 1973 in areas under their cont rol --
policies extended after 1975 to the entire country and population. From
these earliest refugee accounts of Khmer Rouge brutality Quinn was able
to distill almost the full set of Khmer Rouge policies: forced labor,
forced population movements, the collectivization and State organization
of agricultural production, the extreme hostility to religion and ethnic
minorities, and the murderous revolution within the revolution. That is,
factions of the Khmer Rouge loyal to Pol Pot began killing off
theirSihanoukist and Vietnamese allies in the 1970-75 civil war against
the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime so that when the Khmer Rouge side won the
civil war the Pol Pot faction would come out in complete control.
Quinn's analysis, which was publicly available to Cambodia specialists,
provides the policy program or plan that makes sense of the earliest
refugee horror stories. (David Hawk).
Record ID [001] BCH097
Language [101] Item is in original language: in English
Note (Source/Provenance) [317] Bibliographic record from: Holocaust
and genocide bibliographic database. -- Jerusalem : Institute on the
Holocaust and Genocide, 1994 (ver 2.2)
Item in [463] U.S. Naval War College Review, 1976 Mar.
Geographic Area [660] a-cb---
Intellectual Responsibility - Personal Name [700] Quinn, Kenneth
Cataloguing Agency [801] Australia, BISA, 1997
--
"Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity."
-- Marshall McLuhan
Adam Bayliss
on Kalina's part is the exclusion of a federal judge's findings on the
case in the above objections. Simply click on the link in the above
post and see for yourselves, Kalina's nationalism has once again caused
his arrows to miss thier mark.
Adam
Charles P. Kalina
Readers can indeed review the article for themselves, and determine
whether or not I have missed the mark in my critique of it.
Regarding your specific allegation: I did not "exclude" the material
regarding the federal judge. I saw no point in addressing the entire
article point-for-point, nor did I think I was obliged to do so. No
doubt if you were expecting such a critique, you would have found it
lacking, which may account for what you call "many tiny oversights".
Readers will note that prosecutors objected that the judge in question
was biased, and he was removed from the case. The author insinuates
that this was part of the cover-up. Again, readers can make up their
own minds whether this is a reasonable statement, or merely self-
referential conjecture.
One additional point struck me today, after I posted my last article:
Pizzo claims that the Clinton administration abetted the cover-up
because it didn't want to embarass Republicans on the eve of the NAFTA
vote. (NAFTA is quickly becoming an all-purpose bogeyman for the
left.) But this is utter nonsense for three reasons.
First, Republicans already supported NAFTA. Clinton didn't need to win
Republican votes. He needed to win over a large enough minority of
Democrats so that, combined with the Republicans, he'd pass the
legislation. He could have unleashed embarassing information about
Bush (assuming such information existed) without serious risk to
Republican votes. Even if he wanted to keep his fingerprints off it,
it could have been leaked to sympathetic publications, something his
administration often did.
Second, Clinton has shown no reluctance to attack, embarass, or
otherwise pick fights with Republicans on issues of importance to him.
Clinton would certainly have welcomed the opportunity to discredit the
Bush administration -- especially given who's on the Republican ticket
this year.
Third, even if Clinton had wanted to avoid embarassing Republicans
around the time of the NAFTA vote, he would certainly have kept the
investigation open so that he'd have something up his sleeve, something
he could use to embarass them later.
Prizzo's conjecture requires an afwul lot of hidden collusion between
people with no obvious interest in (or habit of) colluding. That's why
I said it reduces to conspiracy theory.
loosel...@my-deja.com
> loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > Which of course makes all the difference? I confess to finding this
> > argument hard to follow: is it somehow more moral to kill
> > civilians 'accidentally' by dropping high explosive without warning
on
> > their homes?
>
> Yes, absolutely, it makes a difference whether killing is deliberate
or
> accidental. This is true whether we are discussing a single victim or
> a large number.
Note that I use the word accidental in quotes.
> Of course, it doesn't make a difference to the victims, who are dead
> regardless. But it does make a difference in our moral (and legal)
> judgment of the alleged perpetrators.
>
> For example: consider a motorist who strikes and kills a pedestrian.
> Certainly the law (and common sense) make a distinction based on
> whether the collision was deliberate homicide, or the product of
> criminal negligence, or pure accident.
This is disingenous Charles. We are not talking about a motorist
striking someone on a road (whether accidental or deliberate). We are
talking about the consequences of dropping bombs on an area known to be
populated by civilians. Not to put too fine a point on it but that is
going to kill civilians.
By way of example the British Government will charge a member of the
IRA who plants a bomb which kills a civilian, though intended to
destroy property, with murder.
> By definition, war kills people in a big way. Sometimes you kill the
> wrong people. Targets are misidentified, bombs and shells go astray,
> and so forth. You may even kill your own soldiers by mistake
> ("fratricide" or "friendly fire"). You try to avoid it, but in any
> large military operation, it's going to happen sooner or later.
You realize of course that exactly the same argument could be used to
justify the Oklahoma bombing, or Omagh, or the bombing of Afghans by
the Soviet forces. I choose those examples firstly because none of
them involve a declared war, secondly because I'm sure there's at least
one of them that you wouldn't like to defend.
> When you have non-combatants in the area of operations, some of them
> are going to get hit. You certainly try not to hit them, you try to
> minimize the risk to civilians and other non-combatants, but
inevitably
> you will not succeed 100% of the time. (Especially when the enemy
> deliberately hides among non-combatants and uses "human shields".)
Please. Loading B52's with iron bombs and dropping them on
agricultural land is not exactly surgical strike material. We are not
talking about war in general here (which is unquestionably a messy
business.) We are not even (as pointed out above) talking about a war
as such. We are talking about a massive bombing campaign directed
against agricultural land. Again, you seek to justify actions, which
if carried out by 'enemies' I suspect you would not agree with.
How do you feel about the Oklahoma bombing?
> Yes, I think we can and should make a clear distinction between that
> sort of accident, versus deliberate atrocity or culpable negligence.
Killing all those people in that Serbian Radio station might be an
accident. Killing your own troops is an accident. Using the
word 'accident' to describe the killing of civilians by a campaign of
aerial boming over a period of years is simply a perversion.
> (This also affects our judgment of the question below. Even a major
> bombing campaign would have a hard time killing 600k people by
> accident. If that many Cambodians really were killed by US bombing,
it
> suggests criminal negligence at best, deliberate targeting at worst.)
Ah. Ok. So you feel that way about 600,000 human souls. What do you
think is the acceptible lower limit then? If you respond to any part
of this post please respond to this.
> > Based on what we know about the US military, I don't think it's
> > unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths...
>
> Really? Well.
Really. The figures for Vietnam are pretty frightening you know.
> We know that the Khmer Rouge come from an ideological tradition with a
> history of mass murder. We also know with certainty that they killed
> some large number of people once they took power -- serious estimates
> are 1-2 million; Chomsky's estimate is about half that.
Source? On Chomsky's estimate that is?
I have no doubt that the Khmer Rouge were very bad indeed. Personally
I think the support afforded them by the US and the west in general
after the Vietnamese invasion drove them from power was a particularly
sickening episode. How do you feel about that?
> Now, I don't know if there there has been any specific research
> concerning the number of Cambodian civilians killed by the Khmer Rouge
> before they actually occupied Phnom Penh. I'm not even sure such
> research is really possible, except for crude estimates that can
always
> be disputed, just as we are doing now.
Ah, you've mistaken me. I've no intention of disputing estimates.
That really smacks too much of the tactics of Holocaust revisionism.
Does it matter if the US military killed 300,000 or 600,000? If Pol
Pot killed 1,000,000 or 2,000,000? Vast numbers of people were killed
by both, both largely escaped any consequences.
> However, I think it beggars the imagination to suppose that the Khmer
> Rouge were basically nice, humane guys until 17 April 1975 -- when
they
> suddenly, for no discernable reason, became homicidal fanatics who
> started killing their countrymen en masse.
Indeed. It's not an argument I'd have any truck with.
> It seems more plausible to suggest that their behavior was consistent,
> and that before taking power they acted (in the areas they controlled
> or influenced) much as they did after taking power. Certainly this
> would explain why refugees continued packing into Phnom Penh even
after
> the bombing stopped.
That, famine, landmines, disease, the dollar economy. Lots of reasons
but I broadly agree with the point you're making. The Khmer Rouge were
butchers. We can agree on that I hope.
> (It also explains Chomsky's otherwise-exculpatory observation that
some
> rural areas were not hit particularly hard by KR terror; they had
> already been terrorized before April 1975.)
Speculative and (in this instance) irrelevant.
> During World War II, the combined air forces of the Allies
deliberately
> carpet-bombed densely-populated urban centers in Germany. Yet it's
> generally agreed that not more than a million Germans were killed by
> Allied bombing throughout the war.
Source? As far as I remember more were killed in Dresden than in
Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined? This may be a poor comparison because
of other factors (education, protection afforded by the urban
landscape, presence of early warning systems and air raid shelters,
types of ordinance used, lack of development in the 'science of
bombing', those off the top of my head.)
> Again, I don't know whether there is specific and reliable research on
> this topic, so we can't do more than guess. Stalin blamed the
Ukranian
> famine on capitalist wreckers. Even today, there are Nazi apologists
> who claim that the Jews died in the camps only because of wartime
> privation caused by Allied bombing. No doubt it's even easier to
shift
> blame from the Khmer Rouge to their enemies, given the more muddled
> nature of the evidence available.
The US was never the enemy of the Khmer Rouge strictly speaking.
Indeed, at times it has been more than willing to play the role of
friend.
Nothing in my articles is intended to shift the blame from the Khmer
Rouge. I'm not even particularly concerned that people such as
yourself accept that the US had a major role in the direction Cambodian
society took. I'm simply offering an opposing point of view to the
rather pernicious idea that the Khmer Rouge sprang fully formed from
the ground and proceded to slaughter large numbers of people. That is
true revisionism.
> In any case, my point stands: assuming the previous article was
citing
> this estimate, it is an estimate of total war-related Cambodia
deaths --
> caused by both sides, including combatant and non-combatant deaths,
> and with no distinction between war crimes and casualties caused
> accidentally.
Sure, whatever. There is a good book by a french guy, Lyotard,
called 'The Differend'. You might find it interesting.
> Contrary to what the previous author suggested, it is not an estimate
> of the number of Cambodians killed by the United States specifically.
> To say that it is, we must assume (as the source does not) that the
> Khmer Rouge -- despite their subsequent record of brutality -- killed
> no significant number of Cambodians before marching into Phnom Penh.
>
> Surely, no matter how much you want to believe that the United States
> was just as bad as the Khmer Rouge, you must agree that this
> assumption, necessary to your argument, is implausible?
It's always reassuring when people tell me what I want to believe.
Strictly I don't believe in good and evil. Both the US and the Khmer
Rouge were brutal, both were responsible for the slaughter of
1,000,000 - 2,000,000 people in Cambodia (the Khmer Rouge did not
spring from a vacuum), both escaped unpunished.
What I do find interesting is the ideological contortions people are
prepared to perform to escape these rather obvious conclusions.
> > Do you see the problem? Certainly the behaviour of the US in
vietnam
> > and in the phase of the secret bombing indicates that a concern for
> > civilian casualties was not high on it's list of priorities in the
> > period under discussion.
>
> Perhaps, perhaps not. Without a detailed study of the targeting
> process that went into the bombing, I can't say whether or not concern
> for civilian casualties played an appropriate role in planning and
> executing the operation.
Shawcross' 'Sideshow' covers this ground apparently. I've not read it.
May I suggest that you appear willing to speculate when it will serve
your side of the argument but refuse when it will not and offer my
compliments on your acumen?
> If one believes that the bombing ought never to have been done in the
> first place, one is likely to think that since the level of concern
was
> too low to prevent the bombing entirely, it was (eo ipso) lower than
it
> should have been.
I was under the impression it was called 'secret bombing' for a reason.
> However, the point remains that it is not directly supported by the
CIA
> source that I cited. I am still not sure whether the original
> contributor to this discussion was citing this source, or a different
> one. Presumably we will hear from him anon.
I don't know either. Chomsky suggests 'manufacturing consent' as a
source but I no longer have my copy. OTOH why people think totting up
figures proves one side to be better than another is entirely beyond me.
One point I took from PEHR II's section on Cambodia was the one I've
iterated at several points in this post: that the events in Cambodia
were consequent on the US involvement there and cannot be separated
from it.
> I gather you're trying (a la Chomsky) to construct an argument which
> equates the US bombing to the actions of the Khmer Rouge. Your
> estimate that the US killed 600k Cambodians is roughly the same as the
> estimates for Khmer Rouge killings advanced by Chomsky. Your phrasing
> ("bombing peasant societies") implies that we targeted Cambodian
> society as such, not VC/NVA sanctuaries and lines of communication
> within Cambodia.
No, I'm not and I don't read Chomsky that way either (though I can
understand why you find such a reading attractive.)
> If this were an accurate picture of what took place in Cambodia during
> the 1970s, your implied equation would have merit. To coin a phrase,
> that's a big "if". I would argue that it is hypothesis contrary to
> fact; that it is not an accurate description, and that by equating
the
> US to the Khmer Rouge, you are either defaming the US, excusing the
KR,
> or both.
You have stated these things rather than argued them. I understand
that the US may have felt it perfectly within reason that it bomb
neutral third world countries to stave off defeat in a war it was
losing. I can understand that you find the US factual role
unpalatable. I have no moral agenda whatsoever.
I just find it interesting dude.
> > Chomsky (Detering Democracy) reports the 600,000 figure in the New
> York
> > Times. John Pilger (twice journalist of the year, produced the BBC
> > documentary 'Year Zero') in 'Hidden Agendas' quotes a figure of
> 750,000.
> > Pilgeer also provides a reference to a CIA report which seems to
> > indicate the role the US bombing played in creating support for the
> > Khmer Rouge.
>
> Chomsky has a habit of distorting his more mainstream sources, and I
> have specifically discussed at some length his past distortion of
> material from the New York Times. "Beating the text until it
> confesses." While I have not tracked down this particular reference,
I
> would not be surprised to find similar distortion in this instance.
One man's distortion is another's true facts.
> Specifically, I suspect Chomsky is doing precisely what you attempted
> to do in this instance: taking an estimate for all war-related deaths
> and simply attributing all those deaths to the US bombing. As I
> recall, this is more or less what he does with a similar estimate in
> _Manufacturing Consent_.
Ah. Now that's remarkably close. I think what Chomsky does is not (as
you suggest) attempt to attribute all deaths to the US. Instead I
think he points out that the exclusion of the US role in those deaths
is indicative of a propagandic media.
Incidentally I found a book surveying the British press which seems to
be heading for remarkably similar conclusions to those of Chomsky
('Power Without Responsibility' James Curran, Jean Seaton ISBN: 0-415-
06450-3) though independently (Chomsky is not cited.)
> Since my hypothesis about Chomsky has now generated a prediction, I
> suppose it behooves me to test it. I don't have a copy of Deterring
> Democracy; can you provide a specific citation?
I fucked up actually. The bit I got the NYT reference from is actually
Chomsky complaining that the NYT ignores the US role (DD p.72 Vintage
UK edition). My bad. I expect James will now accuse me of lying.
> (On the other hand, if the New York Times did report that the US
> bombing killed 600k Cambodians, doesn't this make hash of the
> propaganda model? Isn't this precisely the sort of unfavorable fact
> that's supposed to be suppressed?)
See above.
It's worth noting though that the propaganda model allows Bad Things to
be revealed when they are far enough removed in time for them to be
harmless to entrenched power (not exactly much point in doing
Kissinger /now/ is there, though it was entertaining seeing him being
dragged over the coals by the BBC last year.)
> Unfortunately I am not conversant with Pilger nor with the work you
> cite. I do recall some unfavorable comments about him in this forum,
> and since Chomsky does not write in a vacuum I assume there are others
> that share his biases. Perhaps Pilger is one? But I must leave it to
> others to address his credibility as a source.
Pilger's certainly left wing. He's very definately not a fan of the
Khmer Rouge however. He's an australian journalist. Here are the high
points from his bio in Hidden Agendas:
Journalist of the Year (UK's journalism's highest award) twice
International Reporter of the Year
United Nations Association Media Peace Prize winner
Reporter sans Frontieres award (French)
American Television Academy Award ('Emmy') winner
Richard Dimbleby Award (British Academy of Film and Television Arts)
He worked as a war correspondent in Vietnam and Cambodia.
R.A. Johnson
Charles P. Kalina <cka...@capaccess.org> wrote in message
news:8lhrae$t4i$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
............................
> Iraqi military power (including their WMD research) was built mainly on
> Soviet hardware or Chinese knock-offs. The Soviets even let the Iraqis
> use airbases inside the USSR to strike targets deep inside Iraq.
>
> Iraq also bought some French equipment (such as the Exocet missile used
> against USS Stark). Notice that today, in the UN Security Council,
> these three -- the Russians, Chinese and French -- are the ones pushing
> for a rapprochment with Iraq (vice the US-backed embargo).
>
> Finally, Iraq also bought an assortment of low-end military equipment
> from various third-world suppliers, such as their infamous long-range
> artillery from South Africa.
>
> To my knowledge, however, the Iraqi arsenal contained not a single
> piece of equipment given by, purchased from, or even manufactured in
> the United States.
This is patently wrong and is easily verifiable by the public record, almost
1/2 of Iraq's armorment was manufactured in the US, 1/4 of this was
purchased directly from the US during their war with Iran, the other 1/4 was
purchased on a very fertile military black market (most of this was also
purchased directly from the US verifieable when the records become
de-classified). This can be easily verified from almost all news sources'
stories at the time of the war, of which, ironically, is sourced from the
state department itself. Indeed, the Iraqis had an impressive mixed-bag of
weapons from all parts of the world as Charles stated, but 1/2 of it was US
made (Talk about creating demand from the US military-Industrial
complex...US planes blowing up US-made tanks).
It's clear that a number of well intended policies toward Iraq (and its
people) have not had the intended effect, however our ignorance of the
predominant culture in the area has caused more problems for the Iraqi
people than any other one thing. But yes, the US, as well as almost every
other military power, armed Iraq.
Dan Clore
So far so good.
> > > Based on what we know about the Khmer Rouge, I don't think it's
> > > unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths
> were
> > > due to Khmer Rouge terror against civilians, whereas deaths caused
> by
> > > US and allied forces were a relatively small percentage and were
> > mainly
> > > combat-related.
> > Based on what we know about the US military, I don't think it's
> > unreasonable to suppose that a majority of those 600k-700k deaths...
>
> Really? Well.
>
> We know that the Khmer Rouge come from an ideological tradition with a
> history of mass murder. We also know with certainty that they killed
> some large number of people once they took power -- serious estimates
> are 1-2 million; Chomsky's estimate is about half that.
Citation?
> Now, I don't know if there there has been any specific research
> concerning the number of Cambodian civilians killed by the Khmer Rouge
> before they actually occupied Phnom Penh. I'm not even sure such
> research is really possible, except for crude estimates that can always
> be disputed, just as we are doing now.
>
> However, I think it beggars the imagination to suppose that the Khmer
> Rouge were basically nice, humane guys until 17 April 1975 -- when they
> suddenly, for no discernable reason, became homicidal fanatics who
> started killing their countrymen en masse.
>
> It seems more plausible to suggest that their behavior was consistent,
> and that before taking power they acted (in the areas they controlled
> or influenced) much as they did after taking power.
As a matter of fact, we have a great deal of information on how the
Khmer Rouge acted before taking power. Their actions then were primarily
geared to gaining recruits from the population, so they were currying
favor and trying to avoid alienating them. Typical activities were
setting up cooperatives, redistributing land taken from feudal landlords
to the local peasants, setting up democratic elections for village
governments (the first democratic elections ever held in Cambodia), and
so on. There was also definitely terror, which increased in direct
proportion to the intensity of the bombing (unable to fight back against
the bombing, their frustration got taken out on those who were available
to take it out on), but in general they did in fact behave quite
differently. In 1973 in particular their policies hardened, as the
bombing reached its most intense phase.
> Certainly this
> would explain why refugees continued packing into Phnom Penh even after
> the bombing stopped.
Bombing and other attacks never did stop -- the Lon Nol regime continued
to carry them out on its own, though without B-52s -- until the Khmer
Rouge finally took Phnom Penh. Consider as well that while about 100,000
sought refuge in cities in 1974, the total who became refugees in the
period 1970-75 is over 3 million. It is clear that refugee movement
slowed down after the carpetbombing ceased.
> (It also explains Chomsky's otherwise-exculpatory observation that some
> rural areas were not hit particularly hard by KR terror; they had
> already been terrorized before April 1975.)
>
> What about the hated US military?
>
> During World War II, the combined air forces of the Allies deliberately
> carpet-bombed densely-populated urban centers in Germany. Yet it's
> generally agreed that not more than a million Germans were killed by
> Allied bombing throughout the war.
>
> On the other hand, in Cambodia the United States bombed sparsely-
> inhabited areas of jungle along the Vietnamese border (and for a
> shorter period of time). I'm sure that some non-zero number of
> Cambodian non-combatants were caught in the bombing. But it's hard to
> imagine that there were even 600k Cambodians living in the areas we
> bombed.
Now we come to the real meat of the issue. As it happens, this claim is
absolutely, utterly false. The US carpetbombed some of the most
heavily-populated areas of the Cambodian countryside, much of it nowhere
near the Ho Chi Minh trail or the Vietnamese border. (Maps of the
bombing, released under FOIA, are included in Shawcross's _Sideshow_.)
William Harben, working in the US embassy in Phnomh Penh, tried putting
a "box" made by a B-52 strike on a map of Cambodia that it was almost
impossible to do so without including at least one village. He also says
he got reports of "wholesale carnage" including one funeral procession
in which hundreds died during a bombing strike.
Consider also some of the other effects of the bombing. Over 3 million
(about half) of the country's inhabitants became refugees (interviews by
Kenneth Quinn among others established that most gave the carpetbombing
as primary reason for fleeing). Other went the other way, and the Khmer
Rouge, who numbered about 800 in 1970, soom had tens of thousands of
cadre. The bombing killed about 75% of the draft animals in the country.
1100 of the 1400 rice mills were destroyed. The list goes on and on.
Even assuming that the US did in fact confine its bombing to the Ho Chi
Minh and so on (which we know to be false), the issue of the US's moral
culpability for these deaths would still be there. Why were the
Vietnamese in Cambodia in the first place? Because the US had invaded
Vietnam.
> Again, I don't know whether there is specific and reliable research on
> this topic, so we can't do more than guess. Stalin blamed the Ukranian
> famine on capitalist wreckers. Even today, there are Nazi apologists
> who claim that the Jews died in the camps only because of wartime
> privation caused by Allied bombing. No doubt it's even easier to shift
> blame from the Khmer Rouge to their enemies, given the more muddled
> nature of the evidence available.
>
> In any case, my point stands: assuming the previous article was citing
> this estimate, it is an estimate of total war-related Cambodia deaths --
> caused by both sides, including combatant and non-combatant deaths,
> and with no distinction between war crimes and casualties caused
> accidentally.
>
> Contrary to what the previous author suggested, it is not an estimate
> of the number of Cambodians killed by the United States specifically.
> To say that it is, we must assume (as the source does not) that the
> Khmer Rouge -- despite their subsequent record of brutality -- killed
> no significant number of Cambodians before marching into Phnom Penh.
>
> Surely, no matter how much you want to believe that the United States
> was just as bad as the Khmer Rouge, you must agree that this
> assumption, necessary to your argument, is implausible?
It is true that these estimates are for total war-related deaths in the
period, not just the bombing. It seems to be used as a sort of
part-for-whole synecdoche for the war.
> > Do you see the problem? Certainly the behaviour of the US in vietnam
> > and in the phase of the secret bombing indicates that a concern for
> > civilian casualties was not high on it's list of priorities in the
> > period under discussion.
>
> Perhaps, perhaps not. Without a detailed study of the targeting
> process that went into the bombing, I can't say whether or not concern
> for civilian casualties played an appropriate role in planning and
> executing the operation.
The targeting process was basically this: they bombed the hell out of
anything and everything in the countryside. In addition, if Lon Nol
requested that a site be bombed, it was bombed, without even a check as
to what was there. (These were apparently most often civilian political
opponents of Lon Nol.) In short, concern for civilian casualties played
no role at all in the "targeting process" that went into the bombing.
If this were the purpose of the US operation in Cambodia, they would
surely have been quite different. In actual fact, they resulted in the
creation of a Stalinist state under the Khmer Rouge, by giving the Khmer
Rouge, formerly a few hundred guerrillas hiding in the jungle, the
followers they needed to do so.
> I gather you're trying (a la Chomsky) to construct an argument which
> equates the US bombing to the actions of the Khmer Rouge. Your
> estimate that the US killed 600k Cambodians is roughly the same as the
> estimates for Khmer Rouge killings advanced by Chomsky. Your phrasing
> ("bombing peasant societies") implies that we targeted Cambodian
> society as such, not VC/NVA sanctuaries and lines of communication
> within Cambodia.
We have maps of the bombing. We also have maps showing the VC/NVA
sanctuaries and lines of communication within Cambodia. The overlap is
rather slight.
> If this were an accurate picture of what took place in Cambodia during
> the 1970s, your implied equation would have merit. To coin a phrase,
> that's a big "if". I would argue that it is hypothesis contrary to
> fact; that it is not an accurate description, and that by equating the
> US to the Khmer Rouge, you are either defaming the US, excusing the KR,
> or both.
If this is so, then the maps released under FOIA have already defamed
the US.
> > Chomsky (Detering Democracy) reports the 600,000 figure in the New
> York
> > Times. John Pilger (twice journalist of the year, produced the BBC
> > documentary 'Year Zero') in 'Hidden Agendas' quotes a figure of
> 750,000.
> > Pilgeer also provides a reference to a CIA report which seems to
> > indicate the role the US bombing played in creating support for the
> > Khmer Rouge.
>
> Chomsky has a habit of distorting his more mainstream sources, and I
> have specifically discussed at some length his past distortion of
> material from the New York Times.
And when you finally presented this material, it turned out that he had
done no such thing. I wouldn't bring this up if I were you.
> "Beating the text until it
> confesses." While I have not tracked down this particular reference, I
> would not be surprised to find similar distortion in this instance.
>
> Specifically, I suspect Chomsky is doing precisely what you attempted
> to do in this instance: taking an estimate for all war-related deaths
> and simply attributing all those deaths to the US bombing. As I
> recall, this is more or less what he does with a similar estimate in
> _Manufacturing Consent_.
>
> Since my hypothesis about Chomsky has now generated a prediction, I
> suppose it behooves me to test it. I don't have a copy of Deterring
> Democracy; can you provide a specific citation?
>
> (On the other hand, if the New York Times did report that the US
> bombing killed 600k Cambodians, doesn't this make hash of the
> propaganda model? Isn't this precisely the sort of unfavorable fact
> that's supposed to be suppressed?)
>
> Unfortunately I am not conversant with Pilger nor with the work you
> cite. I do recall some unfavorable comments about him in this forum,
> and since Chomsky does not write in a vacuum I assume there are others
> that share his biases. Perhaps Pilger is one? But I must leave it to
> others to address his credibility as a source.
Sources I used here are Shawcross's _Sideshow_, Kiernan's _How Pol Pot
Came to Power_, and Ablin & Hood's _The Cambodian Agony_.
Charles P. Kalina
100...@elaine37.Stanford.EDU>,
Nathan Folkert <nfol...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Charles P. Kalina wrote:
> > In any case, Chomsky's point about the American news media isn't
> > correct. They did not ignore the alleged similarity; on the
contrary,
> > they frequently spoke of Afghanistan as the Soviets' Vietnam.
> Oh, please, Charles. They've also referred to Israel's occupation of
> Southern Lebanon as "Israel's Vietnam" and argued against our
involvement
> in Yugoslavia because it would be "another Vietnam". The "similarity"
> they see is a prolonged, expensive, and ultimately losing battle,
which is
> of course not the analogy that Chomsky is making at all since it is a
> largely meaningless comparison.
> An analogy consist of more than just two situations being compared.
It
> also is intimately tied to the comparison itself -- which, from the
looks
> of it, most of your analyses completely ignores.
OK, I'll grant that the media use "Vietnam" in a superficial sense,
whereas Chomsky uses it to suggest a more essential similarity. But
the problem remains that the similarity doesn't really exist; he
manufactures it by propaganda, equating things that aren't equivalent
and then condemning everyone else for failing to treat them as if they
were equivalent.
The fact is that Afghanistan _wasn't_ comparable to Vietnam, except
superficially. In that sense the media's superficial use of the
analogy was more honest and less misleading that Chomsky's attempt to
fill it with real substance.
Charles P. Kalina
"R.A. Johnson" <ajoh...@speakeasy.org> wrote:
> This is patently wrong and is easily verifiable by the public record,
almost
> 1/2 of Iraq's armorment was manufactured in the US, 1/4 of this was
> purchased directly from the US during their war with Iran, the other
1/4 was
> purchased on a very fertile military black market (most of this was
also
> purchased directly from the US verifieable when the records become
> de-classified). This can be easily verified from almost all news
sources'
> stories at the time of the war, of which, ironically, is sourced from
the
> state department itself. Indeed, the Iraqis had an impressive mixed-
bag of
> weapons from all parts of the world as Charles stated, but 1/2 of it
was US
> made (Talk about creating demand from the US military-Industrial
> complex...US planes blowing up US-made tanks).
Well... You make some very specific claims and allude to corroborating
sources and you say it's easily verified, so I'm reluctant to say
flatly that your comments are false, because I assume you must have
some basis for them.
But the fact remains that every open-source reference I have consulted
lists no US equipment whatsoever in the Iraqi inventory. Not half
their inventory: zero, zilch, nada. I've studied the Iran-Iraq war
and I have never read any reference to US equipment in the Iraqi
inventory.
Unless you can provide a specific, credible reference which says that
Iraq had some significant quantity of US military hardware I must stand
by my original assertion. Heck, I'd settle for just the nomenclature
of some pieces of equipment they supposedly got. What kind of planes?
What tanks?
Iran had lots of American equipment from before the revolution, maybe
half their inventory or more. Perhaps Iraq captured some war materiel
from Iran, or bought some American hardware on the open market. But
we'd be talking about a small amount of gear, not enough to show up in
the usual open-source references -- certainly not half the Iraqi
inventory. You can't keep that much heavy equipment secret.
Adam Bayliss
Gonzalez's testimony on this matter:
Charles P. Kalina
While I'm grateful for the link, Rep. Gonzalez's speech does not really
shed much light on the matter.
Before you get to anything related to Iraq or BNL, you have to wade
through ten minutes of Rep. Gonzalez patting himself on the back for
how much he cares about the poor and downtrodden. Then you have to
puzzle your way through some weird historical allusions that reach all
the way back ancient Mesopotamia, some of which seem of dubious
relevance (or accuracy).
When we strip away this dross, we're left with even less substance than
we found in Pizzo's (mercifully more succinct) Mother Jones piece.
Rep. Gonzales simply lists Iraq's relationship with the west before
1990, and then blames it all on the United States, as if (for instance)
France is our puppet state and wouldn't sell someone Exocet missiles
unless we told them to.
Adam Bayliss
aware of the BNL's actions.
Charles P. Kalina
If by "states" you mean "asserts", that is certainly true.
If you mean to suggest that it supports that assertion by proof or even
a coherent argument, well...
Charles P. Kalina
Matt <matt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> Here is the record from the CGP database (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/).
> Political change in wartime; the Khmer Krahom revolution in Southern
> Cambodia, 1970-1974
> Summary/Allegations [330]
> This account by a American Foreign Service Office is of considerable
> historical significance. Quinn interviewed Cambodian refugees
[etc]
Now I'm confused. This summary suggests that Quinn identified
extensive Khmer Rouge terror... but in another response to my article,
Dan Clore wrote that Quinn's interviews establish US bombing as the
primary reason Cambodians became "refugees". (Strictly speaking, he
means displaced persons; refugees are DPs who cross borders.)
Surely, Mr. Clore would not be misrepresenting his source?
mond...@my-deja.com
In article <397EE3...@columbia-center.org>,
Adam Bayliss
>
> In article <398098CB...@students.wisc.edu>,
> Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> > It clearly states the impossibility of the Bush administration not
> being
> > aware of the BNL's actions.
>
> If by "states" you mean "asserts", that is certainly true.
>
> If you mean to suggest that it supports that assertion by proof or even
> a coherent argument, well...
>
that hard to follow, he rambles no more than any other politician.
Here's a quote for those with less than comprehensive reading skills:
"Not to be overlooked is BNL-Atlanta's $5 billion in supposedly
unauthorized loans to Iraq--well over $1 billion in commercial loans
which were issued during the Bush
administration. While the intelligence community has remained silent on
what it knew about BNL's activities prior to the raid on BNL-Atlanta in
August 1989, it is safe to assume
that it would have been highly unusual for our intelligence community
not to have noticed thousands of communications between Iraq's highest
profile military organizations
and BNL in Atlanta, GA. The same can be said of Iraq's front company in
Ohio called Matrix-Churchill. "
While there's no presentation of a check "From: George To: Iraq",
Gonzalez's meaning is clear. How could someone who had served as a CIA
director for four years, i.e. Bush, not have knowledge of a 5 billion
dollar deal for funding Iraqi military endeavors? Answer: He was
completely aware of the deal and did nothing to stop it. You think
private companies can make billion dollar deals with foreign governments
without the CIA knowing about it, especially in lieu of the purpose of
these loans? Come on Kalina, stop being so dense.
Adam
Dan Clore
That's a good question. Those who carried out the actual bombing often
asked it. There still has been no adequate reply as to the purpose of
the bombing. Many have however speculated on the question, and one
common answer is that since bombing of Vietnam had cooled off, the
generals needed to either find some justification for keeping so many
bombers active or lose the bombers.
Dan Clore
Is this the strongest response you can muster after I documented so many
outright falsehoods in your post? I suppose it is. Yes, Quinn identified
Khmer Rouge terror, especially in response to the bombing. He also
documented that the bombing itself was the *primary* reason for most
refugees, Khmer Rouge terror being the secondary reason. Since your
claim was that the Khmer Rouge terror was surely the primary reason, the
bombing being either a secondary reason or not a reason at all, that is
quite damning for your argument.
mond...@my-deja.com
cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> asked it. There still has been no adequate reply as to the purpose of
> the bombing. Many have however speculated on the question, and one
> common answer is that since bombing of Vietnam had cooled off, the
> generals needed to either find some justification for keeping so many
> bombers active or lose the bombers.
So they butchered tens of thousands of people in order to keep their
toys?
Charles P. Kalina
Adam Bayliss <raba...@students.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Here's a quote for those with less than comprehensive reading skills:
> "Not to be overlooked is BNL-Atlanta's $5 billion in supposedly
> unauthorized loans to Iraq--well over $1 billion in commercial loans
> which were issued during the Bush
> administration. While the intelligence community has remained silent
on
> what it knew about BNL's activities prior to the raid on BNL-Atlanta
in
> August 1989, it is safe to assume
> that it would have been highly unusual for our intelligence community
> not to have noticed thousands of communications between Iraq's highest
> profile military organizations
> and BNL in Atlanta, GA. The same can be said of Iraq's front company
in
> Ohio called Matrix-Churchill. "
The key here is Rep. Gonzalez' comment that "it is safe to assume" our
intelligence agencies not only knew this information, but drew from it
the inferences that Rep. Gonzalez (with the benefit of hindsight and
some tendentious theorizing) draws.
Conspiracy theorists like to use US intelligence agencies to plug holes
in their argument. The lack of hard evidence can be attributed to
agency secrecy, and of course the agencies themselves can neither
confirm nor deny. You can attribute just about any perfidy to the CIA,
NSA, etc., without fear of contradiction.
As I said: this speech provides neither evidence nor a coherent
argument supporting the allegation that the US -- knowingly and
deliberately -- "armed Iraq". The passage you cite is merely wild
speculation and conspiracy theory, expressed with rather less elegance
and brevity than the previously cited (but equally inadequate) article
from Mother Jones.
Charles P. Kalina
to separate out this bit. I have been composing a reply to his other
comments and will post it in due course. Meanwhile, my thanks to Mr.
Fused for his interesting and intellectually challenging comments.
In article <8llcvp$ieo$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <8lkgvl$sid$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Charles P. Kalina <cka...@capaccess.org> wrote:
> > During World War II, the combined air forces of the Allies
> > deliberately
> > carpet-bombed densely-populated urban centers in Germany. Yet it's
> > generally agreed that not more than a million Germans were killed by
> > Allied bombing throughout the war.
> Source? As far as I remember more were killed in Dresden than in
> Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined? This may be a poor comparison
because
> of other factors (education, protection afforded by the urban
> landscape, presence of early warning systems and air raid shelters,
> types of ordinance used, lack of development in the 'science of
> bombing', those off the top of my head.)
Germany overall suffered 750k-1 million casualties from strategic
bombing. Dresden suffered about 50k fatal casualties, compared to 118k
at Hiroshima and 74k at Nagasaki. That does not include victims of
long-term effects from the atomic bombs, which are difficult to
quanitfy. My source for these numbers is my beloved Oxford Compantion
to World War II (Dear and Foot, eds).
David Irving, undoubtedly the historian of Nazi Germany most
sympathetic to his subject, wildly inflated the estimate of the death
toll in his book on Dresden, and his number got into respectable
circulation. Perhaps you were thinking of this estimate.
Considering Irving's later embrace of Holocaust Denial, it's not
difficult to see a connection. By inflating supposed Allied crimes
(e.g. mass bombing) and minimizing Nazi ones, he called into question
the typical moral judgment of the Second World War. (My contention is
that Chomsky does much the same thing regarding the conflict in
Indochina.)
The problem here is that nobody has provided any support for the
estimate of 600,000 civilian casualties. I am trying to establish a
baseline that will allow us to judge, absent any specific evidence,
whether this estimate is credible or not. Granted, the Second World
War may not be the best comparison, but it's the last war for which we
have some reasonably good estimates of civilian bombing deaths.
Perhaps we could use South Vietnam, although the data here is less
reliable. In 1975, a Congressional committee estimated that from 1965-
1974, there had been 430,000 South Vietnamese civilian deaths from all
war-related causes. Deaths specifically attributable to US bombing may
have been one-third of this total number. This translates into an
average of approximately 43,000 civilian deaths per year, or 3600 per
month, from all war-related causes, of which some fraction were due to
US bombing.
The United States bombed Cambodia for approximately 22 months --
sixteen months in 1969-70, and six months in 1973. If we apply the
rate from South Vietnam, we'd expect 79,000 civilian casualties from
all war-related causes during these 22 months. Actually we'd expect
somewhat fewer deaths, because for most of the 1969-70 bombing there
wasn't a significant ground war, as there was in South Vietnam. The
number specifically attributable to US bombing would be smaller still.
(As an aside: if these figures are correct, the civilian casualty rate
in the Vietnam war compares to that of the Second World War, and
compares very favorably to the rate in Korea.)
These figures suggest that the number of Cambodian civilians killed by
US bombing should be estimated in the tens of thousands. For the
600,000 figure to be credible, Cambodian civilians must have died from
US bombing at almost eight times the rate that South Vietnamese
civilians died from all war-related causes, and perhaps twenty to
thirty times the rate that South Vietnamese civilians died from bombing
specifically. This does not seem very plausible.
Note that so far, the only source which even remotely supports the
600,000 estimate is one that I provided, which estimates that there
were 600,000 war-related deaths in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge took
power. However, this estimate does not include the first period of
bombing, only the second one.
If this source is the basis for the 600,000 estimate, that means US
bombers must have been killing 100,000 Cambodian civilians per month.
This compares to the rate at which Nazi Germany killed Jews during the
height of the Holocaust.
This may have been technically feasible, if the US Air Force did
nothing else but bomb Cambodian population centers for those six
months. If true, it would be prima facie evidence that the bombing was
not only negligent, but a deliberate campaign of extermination.
But it also means we must believe that US bombers killed Cambodian
civilians at a rate several hundred times greater than the rate at
which they killed South Vietnamese. I must confess that this puts a
strain on my powers of imagination.
Edward S. Herman and other anti-war luminaries claimed a much higher
war-related death toll among South Vietnamese civilians -- something
like 250,000 per year. Even if we run the numbers using this
(inflated) rate and the 22 month duration, however, we still get only
480,000 Cambodian civilian casualties from all causes, of which US
bombing would account for only a portion.
And again: If we're only talking about the 1973 bombing, then at this
higher rate we'd still only expect 125,000 civilian casualties from all
war-related causes for those six months, less than a quarter of the
600,000 estimate that has been suggested just for casualties from
bombing specifically.
Needless to say, this is all very crude numerical guesswork, but absent
any specific evidence for the 600,000 figure, it can give us a rough
sense of whether it's credible or not. Clearly, unless we get some
very convincing evidence to support that estimate, it isn't credible.
Charles P. Kalina
cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> mond...@my-deja.com wrote:
> That's a good question. Those who carried out the actual bombing often
> asked it. There still has been no adequate reply as to the purpose of
> the bombing. Many have however speculated on the question, and one
> common answer is that since bombing of Vietnam had cooled off, the
> generals needed to either find some justification for keeping so many
> bombers active or lose the bombers.
For the sake of argument, even stipulating that the US deliberately or
recklessly bombed civilians in Cambodia, this explanation isn't very
credible.
For one thing, the Chiefs could have achieved precisely the same result
by sending the bombers against some uninhabited parts of the Cambodian
hinterland, and claiming these were hitherto-undiscovered communist
base areas. For that matter, they could have sent the bombers against
real base areas, many of which were in relatively uninhabited areas.
(To be slightly facetious: they could even have had the bombers take
off and orbit over the ocean for a few hours -- and then told everyone
they were conducting vital bombing missions. Sort of a "secret
bombing" in reverse, but substantially cheaper, since you aren't
actually wasting any bombs.)
Not only would bombing populated areas expose them to war crimes
charges; more to the point, the resulting public opprobrium would
hardly constitute good PR for the bomber fleet. If anything, it would
create public pressure to get rid of these horrible weapons, not to
keep them.
If we're talking about major end items, like bombers, the Vietnam War
was actually bad for procurement. Money spent on fuel, parts and ammo
was money that couldn't be spent on tanks, planes and ships. In
business terms, the war drained funds from capital investment in favor
of increased operating expenses and overhead.
Generals may like having their toys, but from a budgetary standpoint,
they don't like using them unless someone's going to pay the costs. By
1973, Congress was in no mood to spend more on the bomber force, and
sending those bombers against Cambodia was certainly not going to
change their minds.
Of course, the simplest explanation for why the US deliberately bombed
Cambodian civilians is that... it didn't. So all this is hypothesis
contrary to fact.
Charles P. Kalina
touched on some subjects that demand detailed accounting if we are to
avoid deceptive oversimplicification. But if I've failed to address
anything Mr. Clore or other readers consider important, I invite them
to bring it to my attention again.
As always, my thanks to Mr. Clore for an intellectual challenge that is
difficult enough to be interesting, but not so difficult that it can't
be overcome.
In article <397EE3...@columbia-center.org>,
cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> Charles P. Kalina wrote:
> > We know that the Khmer Rouge come from an ideological tradition
with a
> > history of mass murder. We also know with certainty that they
killed
> > some large number of people once they took power -- serious
estimates
> > are 1-2 million; Chomsky's estimate is about half that.
> Citation?
Chomsky, citing Vickery in _Manufacturing Consent_, at p.263:
"Vickery's analysis is the most careful attempt to sort out the
confused facts to date. He accepts as plausible... about
750,000 'deaths in excess of normal and due to the special conditions
of DK,' with perhaps 200,000 to 300,000 executed and a total population
decline for this period of about 400,000."
From this I get a total death toll, under the Khmer Rouge, of 750,000 --
although I confess I'm not entirely clear what he means by "deaths in
excess of normal" versus "executions" versus "total population
decline". Perhaps I'm just thick, but I suspect this is deliberate
obfuscation intended to avoid a clear statement of Khmer Rouge guilt.
He goes on to claim that this is only slightly more than the number of
deaths for which the United States. Moreover, he adds that some of the
Khmer Rouge death toll actually "must be attributed to conditions left
by the war". Since he he holds the United States solely responsible
for the war, this means that part of the Khmer Rouge death toll must
actually be transferred to the US column.
So far as I can tell, Chomsky endorses no other estimate of the Khmer
Rouge death toll. Most "Standard Total View" estimates range from 1-2
million, with a middle range around 1.5 million, which is twice the
Vickery/Chomsky figure.
[...]
> As a matter of fact, we have a great deal of information on how the
> Khmer Rouge acted before taking power. Their actions then were
primarily
> geared to gaining recruits from the population, so they were currying
> favor and trying to avoid alienating them. Typical activities were
> setting up cooperatives, redistributing land taken from feudal
landlords
> to the local peasants, setting up democratic elections for village
> governments (the first democratic elections ever held in Cambodia),
and
> so on. There was also definitely terror, which increased in direct
> proportion to the intensity of the bombing (unable to fight back
against
> the bombing, their frustration got taken out on those who were
available
> to take it out on), but in general they did in fact behave quite
> differently. In 1973 in particular their policies hardened, as the
> bombing reached its most intense phase.
So, if I may summarize, Mr. Clore's response is:
1) Yes, the Khmer Rouge were basically nice guys.
2) Our bombing drove them nuts.
3) Therefore we are to blame for the bad things they did.
Let's consider these points in turn.
First, Mr. Clore lists several alleged positive achievements of the
early Khmer Rouge. He also implies that he could list more ("...and so
on") were he so inclined. Supposedly these were "typical
activities". Without knowing where he got this information, I can't
possibly evaluate it, and past experience does not inspire confidence.
To the skeptical reader, these sound rather like euphemisms for
totalitarian communism. Remember Orwell's "comfortable English
professor"; one imagines him describing Soviet collectivization
as "setting up cooperatives" and "redistributing land taken from feudal
landlords to the local peasants". Perhaps he might also remark that
the Bolsheviks set up the first democratic (after a fashion) elections
in Russia's history.
Mr. Clore also admits, en passant (much as Orwell's professor does),
that "there was also terror". Note that unlike their alleged positive
achievements, he doesn't explore these in any detail. Note also that
rather than attributing this to the Khmer Rouge as such, he uses the
passive voice: "there was terror", as if this were an ambient
phenomenon, which tends to neutralize any inference of guilt.
("Mistakes were made.")
Even so, the existence of this terror supports a more sinister
interpretation of "setting up cooperatives" and other alleged positive
achievements of the early Khmer Rouge. For instance, can you really
have free elections when the people setting them up are using terror?
That this terror "intensified" in 1973 is not in dispute. Mr. Clore
describes this as "very different" behavior -- but he has already
admitted (barely) that the Khmer Rouge used terror before 1973. Even
the positive achievements he describes appear, on closer examination,
to be forms of terror described with Orwellian euphemism.
So there really isn't much to explain. Khmer Rouge policy didn't
change. They just pursued the same policy with greater vigor and over
a greater area, as their strength grew and they conquered more of the
country. It grew more intense in 1973 because that's when their
strength was growing significantly and when they were conquering more
territory.
Remember: in 1973, the US was on its way out of Indochina, and the Lon
Nol government was teetering. The insurgents had every reason to
redouble their efforts and push for final victory, and in fact that's
exactly what they were doing in 1973. By the end of the year the
government had lost control of almost the entire country, except for
Phnom Penh and a few other population centers and major lines of
communication.
It's not surprising that the bombing coincided with an increase in
terror. As the Khmer Rouge got stronger, they could commit more
terror; as they got stronger, they went on the offensive; as they
went on the offensive, they attracted more bombing.
To say that Khmer Rouge terror increased as a _result_ of the bombing
is a canonical example of post-hoc reasoning. If US bombing had any
effect on Khmer Rouge policy -- and terror was policy, not an
irrational deviation from it -- it would have been to slow it down.
Mr. Clore's alternative theory is that the Khmer Rouge
became "frustrated" and took their frustrations out on
Cambodians "available" in the areas they controlled. Or rather, "their
frustrations got taken out"; again, it's telling that whenever Mr.
Clore describes Khmer Rouge terror he resorts to the passive voice.
Readers are left to wonder why Khmer Rouge fighters didn't vent their
alleged frustrations by pressing the attack on the Lon Nol government,
which at least had some connection to the people doing the bombing, and
why instead they attacked the people, whom (according to another part
of Mr. Clore's argument) they were simultaneously trying to win over.
He adduces no support for his "frustration" theory, nor can he: it's
mere psychobabble, contrived to explain a nonexistent sea-change in
Khmer Rouge behavior that he invented because he apparently needs some
way to shift the blame for their crimes to the United States.
Lionel Abel once noted an interesting inconsistency in Chomsky's
comments. Chomsky attributes US policy and behavior to internal
factors, viz. the ideology he associated with US economic and political
structure. But when he writes about "official enemies", even the Khmer
Rouge or the Soviets, he treats it as purely reactive, mainly to
unfavorable circumstances created by the United States. As Mr. Clore
here demonstrates, this is a useful trick for shifting guilt back to
the US -- "The Devil Made Them Do It."
[...]
> Bombing and other attacks never did stop -- the Lon Nol regime
continued
> to carry them out on its own, though without B-52s -- until the Khmer
> Rouge finally took Phnom Penh. Consider as well that while about
100,000
> sought refuge in cities in 1974, the total who became refugees in the
> period 1970-75 is over 3 million. It is clear that refugee movement
> slowed down after the carpetbombing ceased.
Our specific topic (as the subject header suggests) is the number of
Cambodian casualties from US bombing. Bombing by the Lon Nol
government cannot be included in this total. Besides, mass casualties
on the order of 600,000 are only remotely plausible if we're talking
about B-52s.
Again, Mr. Clore's reasoning is post-hoc: US bombing ended in 1973,
the flow of displaced persons slowed after 1973, therefore the flow of
displaced persons slowed because US bombing ended.
No doubt many DPs were fleeing the bombing, but the ground fighting, in
which the Khmer Rouge made substantial gains, would have generated a
large number of DPs even if the US had never dropped a single bomb.
The ground fighting is also what led to the bombing, so this DP flow
inevitably coincided with the bombing whether or not that was the
primary motive for fleeing.
By the end of 1973, however, there simply weren't that many people left
who could become DPs. Everyone who was going to flee (whether from the
bombing, or ground fighting, or the Khmer Rouge) had already done so.
Therefore the flow of DPs would have tapered off even if the US had
continued bombing.
(Especially since most of the country was now held by the Khmer Rouge.
People could flee the bombing to the relative safety of Phnom Penh,
Battambang and other cities, but the Khmer Rouge were hardly going to
let significant numbers of people escape to government-held areas.)
By analogy: Before the Second World War started, more than 70% of
German Jews fled Nazi Germany, a plurality of them in 1938-1939. After
1939, almost none fled. Should we therefore conclude that the start of
the war had some positive effect on the situation of Jews in Germany?
Or should we conclude instead that those who wanted to flee had already
done so, and those who hadn't yet done so no longer had the option?
(One imagines David Irving, or someone from that crowd, listing all the
Nazis' positive achievements in the 1930s and reminding us that the
worst atrocities came only later. "There was also definitely terror,
which increased in direct proportion to the intensity of the bombing.
Unable to fight back against the bombing, their frustration got taken
out on those who were available to take it out on...")
[...]
> > On the other hand, in Cambodia the United States bombed sparsely-
> > inhabited areas of jungle along the Vietnamese border (and for a
> > shorter period of time). I'm sure that some non-zero number of
> > Cambodian non-combatants were caught in the bombing. But it's hard
to
> > imagine that there were even 600k Cambodians living in the areas we
> > bombed.
> Now we come to the real meat of the issue. As it happens, this claim
is
> absolutely, utterly false. The US carpetbombed some of the most
> heavily-populated areas of the Cambodian countryside, much of it
nowhere
> near the Ho Chi Minh trail or the Vietnamese border. (Maps of the
> bombing, released under FOIA, are included in Shawcross's _Sideshow_.)
Shawcross' maps are tiny, redrawn sketches of the ones released under
FOIA. They show almost no detail, just national borders and the Tonle-
Sap lake. Targets are marked by grey splotches, and at that scale it's
impossible to tell exactly where they're placed. We can't tell the
difference between a target on top of a population center, and a target
that just happens to be near one -- which clearly makes a difference if
we're trying to judge whether there was reckless disregard for civilian
casualties.
These maps depict only the six-month bombing in 1973, and do not
include the earlier bombing in 1969-70. My comments, and indeed the
dialogue thus far, have discussed US bombing generally, not just the
1973 bombing.
(Actually, I was thinking primarily of the earlier bombing when I wrote
my description, but I admit I didn't make this clear, and didn't quite
make the distinction even in my own mind. This was sloppy thinking on
my part.)
From these crude maps, we see that US bombing in 1973 started at the
communist base areas along the border, and then spread west into the
eastern half of the country as the year progressed.
Mr. Clore is not entirely correct, because the targets do concentrate
on the border at first, and thereafter many of the targets are still
found along the border where the VC/NVA base areas and lines of
communication were located. But he is not entirely wrong, because in
subsequent months there are also many targets farther from the border.
However, this shift is easily explained: the communists were on the
offensive, and the bombers went where the targets were. Even from
these crude maps, it's evident that the targets spread as communist
control spread. We don't know the specific target of each strike, but
it's not unreasonable to infer that communist military targets were
present in those areas, even though these ares were not along the
border.
These maps do not, therefore, support Mr. Clore's insinuation that the
US bombing, because it took place (in part) away from the Vietnamese
border, could not have been directed against legitimate military
targets.
[...]
> William Harben, working in the US embassy in Phnomh Penh, tried
putting
> a "box" made by a B-52 strike on a map of Cambodia that it was almost
> impossible to do so without including at least one village.
This anecdote appears in Shawcross, op cit, p.273:
"Harben was appalled and now did what others might have done. He cut
out, to scale, the 'box' made by a B-52 strike and placed it on his own
map. He found that virtually nowhere in central Cambodia could it be
placed without 'boxing' a village."
Mr. Clore implies that Harben's armchair analysis concerned Cambodia
generally ("on a map of Cambodia") and hence to all bombing the US
might have done there. In fact Harben's analysis refers only
to "central Cambodia", an area which is not defined, but which
presumably refers to the more densely populated core around Phnom Penh.
We don't know what template Harben used for a "B-52 strike", but I
assume he means a nine-square-kilometer area. (There are three B-52s
in one cell, and each bomber drops onto a lengthwise footprint of about
three square kilometers.) I refuse to believe you can't find empty
areas in the Cambodian hinterland where you could lay a 3x3km template
without hitting a village, but Harben's claim is more believable if
we're talking only about the more densely populated part of the country.
(By way of comparison, Cambodia's population density was about the same
as that of Honduras. If we're talking about the area around
Tegucigalpa, it's might well be hard to find an empty area suitable for
B-52 strikes. But if we're talking about the undeveloped areas -- the
FDN base areas in the 1980s, for instance -- it would be quite easy.)
Even if we knew exactly what Harben meant by "central Cambodia" and "B-
52 strike", we still couldn't tell, from Shawcross' crude maps, how
many B-52 strikes happened there. The fewer strikes, the less
persuasive is the contention that the US recklessly (or maliciously)
bombed this densely populated area. Many (most?) strikes happened
elsewhere, so his analysis doesn't apply to a significant portion of
the US bombing effort.
Shawcross, by the way, also notes that the Khmer Rouge's forced
relocations of the civilian population made it difficult to identify
just where the civilian population was. "The embassy," he writes, "had
no recent photography to show the location of new settlements in the
massive forced migrations that the Khmer Rouge were now imposing on the
areas they controlled."
(This acknowledgement is particularly worth noting since Shawcross, as
his book's subtitle indicates, otherwise tends to blame US policymakers
rather than the Khmer Rouge for "The Destruction of Cambodia".)
[...]
> > The purpose of US operations in Cambodia was to eliminate the safe
> > havens used by an insurgency committed to the creation of a
Stalinist
> > state by violent means. This may or may not have been tactically
wise,
> > but I don't think it was presumptively immoral or unjustified.
> If this were the purpose of the US operation in Cambodia, they would
> surely have been quite different. In actual fact, they resulted in the
> creation of a Stalinist state under the Khmer Rouge, by giving the
Khmer
> Rouge, formerly a few hundred guerrillas hiding in the jungle, the
> followers they needed to do so.
It's strange to argue that the United States built up the Khmer Rouge
by trying to destroy them -- while Hanoi's role in organizing,
training, arming and supporting the Khmer Rouge somehow vanishes down
the memory hole. Again, Mr. Clore's underlying value seems to be that
bad things must be traced back to the United States (and away from
leftist revolutionaries) no matter how embarassingly specious the
argument necessary.
(We might also assign some blame to those western sympathizers who
spent years telling us that these Stalinists weren't really such bad
guys and that we therefore ought not oppose them. It would be unkind
to rehearse specific names.)
[...]
> > Chomsky has a habit of distorting his more mainstream sources, and I
> > have specifically discussed at some length his past distortion of
> > material from the New York Times.
> And when you finally presented this material, it turned out that he
had
> done no such thing. I wouldn't bring this up if I were you.
Readers, as I always say, must judge for themselves. For myself, I
stand by the accusation: Chomsky habitually distorts his sources so
that they conform to his prejudices. But of course I do not imagine
that I will ever convince Mr. Clore that this is true, particularly
since he (as we see here, and as we saw in our discussion of the New
York Times editorial) engages in the same sort of distortion, thus
making Chomsky's distortions appear accurate.
Perhaps I should thank him for his kind advice, but I must admit that
when I write material for this forum, I rarely search my soul for
guidance by thinking, "What would Dan Clore do if he were me?" ;-)
Charles P. Kalina
> > For example: consider a motorist who strikes and kills a
pedestrian.
> > Certainly the law (and common sense) make a distinction based on
> > whether the collision was deliberate homicide, or the product of
> > criminal negligence, or pure accident.
> This is disingenous Charles. We are not talking about a motorist
> striking someone on a road (whether accidental or deliberate). We are
> talking about the consequences of dropping bombs on an area known to
be
> populated by civilians. Not to put too fine a point on it but that is
> going to kill civilians.
War always involves some risk to non-combatants. That risk must be
balanced against military necessity, which requires a judgment call on
the part of military decision-makers. Of course, it's easy for
spectators like us to second-guess those judgments when things go wrong.
If I understand your argument, you are alleging that in Cambodia, US
military decision-makers acted with blameworthy disregard for the risks
to Cambodian civilians (or even with deliberate malice), resulting in
the death of some very large number (600k?) of Cambodian civilians. Do
I understand you correctly?
> By way of example the British Government will charge a member of the
> IRA who plants a bomb which kills a civilian, though intended to
> destroy property, with murder.
Not a valid comparison. IRA bombs inherently put civilian life at
risk. But since the IRA is not a military force, is not at war, and
generally does not attack military targets, their bombs cannot be said
to accomplish any legitimate military objective. Therefore the risk to
civilians is not outweighed by military necessity, because no military
necessity exists.
(Maybe the IRA doesn't see it that way, but that's another can of
worms.)
> > By definition, war kills people in a big way. Sometimes you kill
the
> > wrong people. Targets are misidentified, bombs and shells go
astray,
> > and so forth. You may even kill your own soldiers by mistake
> > ("fratricide" or "friendly fire"). You try to avoid it, but in any
> > large military operation, it's going to happen sooner or later.
> You realize of course that exactly the same argument could be used to
> justify the Oklahoma bombing, or Omagh, or the bombing of Afghans by
> the Soviet forces. I choose those examples firstly because none of
> them involve a declared war, secondly because I'm sure there's at
least
> one of them that you wouldn't like to defend.
My response to your IRA analogy applies equally well to the Oklahoma
City bombing. Besides, civilian casualties were the intended result of
the attack on the Murrah Building -- not an incidental result.
Likewise: the Soviets were accused of deliberately targeting Afghan
civilians, not just of hitting some Afghans in the course of legitimate
combat operations.
Deliberately targeting non-combatants is a war crime by anyone's
definition. Not even a grey area or judgment call. However, these
cases are not appropriate analogies for US bombing in Cambodia, unless
you can show that it also targeted civilians, which remains unproven,
Mr. Clore's efforts notwithstanding.
[...]
> Please. Loading B52's with iron bombs and dropping them on
> agricultural land is not exactly surgical strike material. We are not
> talking about war in general here (which is unquestionably a messy
> business.) We are not even (as pointed out above) talking about a war
> as such. We are talking about a massive bombing campaign directed
> against agricultural land. Again, you seek to justify actions, which
> if carried out by 'enemies' I suspect you would not agree with.
War may exist de facto, even when it has not been declared de jure. If
the Vietnam conflict (including its Cambodian element) doesn't qualify
as "war as such," then I can't imagine what does. If it wasn't war, it
certainly looked a lot like it -- lots of well-organized groups of
uniformed government employees shooting at each other. (Insert your
own Post Office joke here.)
By calling the target area in Cambodia "agricultural land", I gather
you mean to suggest that its population density was high enough that it
should have precluded mass bombing. The fact that it was used
nonetheless thus shows that US forces did not give sufficient
consideration to the risk to civilian life.
VC/NLF sanctuaries were located in remote areas, but inevitably there
were some Cambodians living nearby. Shawcross cites JCS intelligence
which shows that the five base areas targeted in the MENU series in
1969 contained an average of 567 Cambodian civilians each
(median=383). The sixth, which was rejected, contained 1,640
civilians, so the cutoff must have been somewhere between 1200 and
1600. If the base area contained fewer civilians, the risk was
considered acceptable.
We can question this judgment -- but it wasn't unreasonable given the
strategic value of the targets, not to mention the rather greater risk
to civilians if the communists won, and the possibility that hitting
these targets would prevent them from winning. I think it was
reasonable to risk a relatively small number of lives in the hope that
they might save hundreds of thousands.
(Note that there was a _risk_, not a certainty, that civilians in the
base areas would be killed. Base areas actually covered dozens of
square kilometers. Bombers attacked specific military targets within
those base areas, which might have been several kilometers from
civilian habitation. For security reasons, VC/NVA camps, depots and
other military installations were usually isolated from the local
population.)
[...]
> Ah. Ok. So you feel that way about 600,000 human souls. What do you
> think is the acceptible lower limit then? If you respond to any part
> of this post please respond to this.
That's not a fair question. It's like asking, "How much cancer is
acceptable?" The only possible answer is "None whatsoever". To name a
specific quantity would imply that we can view a certain level of
cancer with equanimity or indifference, that we need not be concerned
until we exceed that level. We should take every reasonable step to
remove carcinogens from our environment and our lives, but even if we
do, some people will still get cancer. So it is with civilian deaths
in wartime. We should take every reasonable step to prevent them, but
we must also recognize that they will happen even so.
A more reasonable question is: Did the US, when bombing in Cambodia,
take every reasonable step to minimize risks to civilians?
My point was not that lower numbers would be "acceptable", but that an
extremely high number of civilian dead (say, 600,000) would constitute
prima facie evidence of US negligence or deliberate malice. The lower
the number, the less it can be used, by itself, as evidence of such
misconduct, and the more plausible is the suggestion that it was simply
the incidental result of legitimate military operations.
Of course, those who think that US military operations in Cambodia were
presumptively illegitimate will, therefore, consider no risk to
civilians to have been justified.
[...]
> I have no doubt that the Khmer Rouge were very bad indeed. Personally
> I think the support afforded them by the US and the west in general
> after the Vietnamese invasion drove them from power was a particularly
> sickening episode. How do you feel about that?
Clever attempt at intellectual jujitsu - but not the subject at hand.
If you'd like, we can open another thread to discuss the importance of
outside support for the Khmer Rouge, from various sources and at
various times. But that's a distraction from our topic here.
[...]
> Ah, you've mistaken me. I've no intention of disputing estimates.
> That really smacks too much of the tactics of Holocaust revisionism.
> Does it matter if the US military killed 300,000 or 600,000? If Pol
> Pot killed 1,000,000 or 2,000,000? Vast numbers of people were killed
> by both, both largely escaped any consequences.
False alternative. You're right that it would make no real difference
to our moral judgment if the US bombing killed only (!) 300,000
Cambodian civilians, and not 600,000. Both estimates are high enough
to constitute prima facie evidence of malice or culpable negligence.
But these are not the only two esimates we can reasonably entertain.
On the other hand, pretty much everyone agrees that the Khmer Rouge
death toll is on the order of 1-2 million, so this is not a false
alternative, though it is certainly irrelevant to our moral judgment of
the Khmer Rouge.
[...]
> > However, I think it beggars the imagination to suppose that the
Khmer
> > Rouge were basically nice, humane guys until 17 April 1975 -- when
> they
> > suddenly, for no discernable reason, became homicidal fanatics who
> > started killing their countrymen en masse.
> Indeed. It's not an argument I'd have any truck with.
Yet that is what your argument seems to require. If there were
600,000 "war-related" deaths up to the point where the Khmer Rouge took
power, and there were 600,000 deaths from US bombing, then there aren't
any "leftover" deaths that can be attributed to the Khmer Rouge.
[...]
> The US was never the enemy of the Khmer Rouge strictly speaking.
> Indeed, at times it has been more than willing to play the role of
> friend.
I hardly think it's accurate to say (even "strictly speaking") that the
US was never the enemy of the Khmer Rouge. Certainly that was not what
Chomsky wrote in the late 1970s, when he adduced negative media
coverage of the Khmer Rouge as evidence of media bias against "enemy"
regimes.
[...]
> Nothing in my articles is intended to shift the blame from the Khmer
> Rouge. I'm not even particularly concerned that people such as
> yourself accept that the US had a major role in the direction
Cambodian
> society took. I'm simply offering an opposing point of view to the
> rather pernicious idea that the Khmer Rouge sprang fully formed from
> the ground and proceded to slaughter large numbers of people. That is
> true revisionism.
To my knowledge, nobody has argued that the US had no influence on
Cambodian society. On the other hand, if you mean to suggest that US
intervention was what brought the Khmer Rouge to power... Well,
logically that means we must imagine that had we never intervened in
Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge would not have come to power, which strikes
me as implausible. But counter-factual speculation about what might
have been won't really advance the discussion any.
[...]
> May I suggest that you appear willing to speculate when it will serve
> your side of the argument but refuse when it will not and offer my
> compliments on your acumen?
There is speculation, and then there is speculation. It is one thing
to extrapolate from known facts, making educated guesses that fill in
the gaps. We know that the Khmer Rouge were butchers even before they
came to power, so it's reasonable to estimate that their atrocities
account for some large fraction of the 600,000 Cambodians reportedly
killed by "war-related causes".
It is something quite different simply to assume information that is
required by one's theory but which has no credible grounding in
established fact. We do not know that the US armed forces are mass
murderers comparable to the Khmer Rouge. That is precisely what is in
dispute, and no valid evidence has been presented to support this
contention. Therefore we cannot, absent further evidence, assume that
US bombing must have caused these alleged mass casualties.
This is especially true since these two inferences are contradictory.
If 600k Cambodians were killed during this period, and 600k Cambodians
were killed by US bombing, then it must be true that no significant
number of Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge. On the other
hand, if the Khmer Rouge killed 600k, then it must be true that no
significant number of Cambodians were killed by bombing.
Of course, the reality must lie somewhere in between, with some
Cambodians killed by bombing, and some by the Khmer Rouge. But I think
the specific ratio does affect our judgment; 50-50, 99-1, 1-99, etc.
[...]
> > I gather you're trying (a la Chomsky) to construct an argument which
> > equates the US bombing to the actions of the Khmer Rouge. Your
> > estimate that the US killed 600k Cambodians is roughly the same as
the
> > estimates for Khmer Rouge killings advanced by Chomsky. Your
phrasing
> > ("bombing peasant societies") implies that we targeted Cambodian
> > society as such, not VC/NVA sanctuaries and lines of communication
> > within Cambodia.
> No, I'm not and I don't read Chomsky that way either (though I can
> understand why you find such a reading attractive.)
Chomsky's parallelism is quite explicit, as I noted in my response to
Mr. Clore. Yours struck me as equally explicit. You even conflated
the alleged crimes of the USAF with those of the KR into a single whole
for which they were jointly responsible:
"Both the US and the Khmer Rouge were brutal, both were responsible for
the slaughter of 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 people in Cambodia (the Khmer
Rouge did not spring from a vacuum), both escaped unpunished." You
repeated a similar theme several times.
Clearly, this equates US military operations and Khmer Rouge terror. I
can't imagine any other reasonable interpretatino of this theme. If
you don't mean to suggest this conclusion, you may want to rephrase
your argument so that it does not lead to it. I invite clarification.
[...]
> You have stated these things rather than argued them. I understand
> that the US may have felt it perfectly within reason that it bomb
> neutral third world countries to stave off defeat in a war it was
> losing. I can understand that you find the US factual role
> unpalatable. I have no moral agenda whatsoever.
> I just find it interesting dude.
The problem remains: you have not established that the "US factual
role" is what you claim it to be. The original claim by
jvi...@yahoo.com alluded to unnamed CIA historians, but no actual
references have materialized, and some quick calculations on the back
of an envelope suggest that it's wildly implausible.
The closest we've come to supporting them are unspecific references
(really just allusions) to Chomsky and Pilger, who each give a similar
estimate. Since we don't know how Chomsky and Pilger derived these
estimates, all that tells us is that a couple of other people have
tossed around the same estimate, not that it has any basis in fact.
Thus, I have rejected your assertions, not because I find
them "unpalatable", but because I find them implausible and wholly
unsupported by any credible evidence. It is hardly "interesting" that
I've done so.
[...]
> One man's distortion is another's true facts.
Well, yes - there are always people who choose to believe lies. A wise
man once said, though, that it's the responsibility of the
intellectuals to seek the truth, and to expose lies. And while he
clearly said it as pure egoistic self-congratulation, the sentiment
itself is noble, and I think it is important guidance, even if our
prejudices and ideology depend on those lies. For instance, the lie
that "Washington is the torture and political murder capital of the
world", which paradoxically seems to make some people feel very good
about themselves.
[...]
> Ah. Now that's remarkably close. I think what Chomsky does is not
(as
> you suggest) attempt to attribute all deaths to the US. Instead I
> think he points out that the exclusion of the US role in those deaths
> is indicative of a propagandic media.
Chomsky's Propaganda Model generally fails because it faults the media
for excluding "facts" which he himself does not legitimately
substantiate. Typically these facts are derived from obscure sources
of dubious credibility to whom Chomsky gives uncritical credence, or
are based on distortions of more credible, mainstream sources.
This is a case in point. To say that the media "exclude" the US role
in what has been called the Cambodian Holocaust, we must first
demonstrate that the US had such a role - specifically, the role
Chomsky describes. If we ourselves can't demonstrate that it played
this role, we can't condemn the media for failing to report that it
played this role.
(By analogy: Reports related to the Nazi Holocaust don't mention the
role of Allied bombing in the Holocaust simply because nobody outside
revisionist circles thinks Allied bombing has any relevance to the
Holocaust. Revisionists will tell you that this ideological selection
process is evidence of Jewish media hegemony and a propaganda system,
but sensible people are not obliged to take this complaint seriously.)
[...]
> Pilger's certainly left wing. He's very definately not a fan of the
> Khmer Rouge however.
As I said, I can't really comment on Pilger. Since I don't know how he
calculated his estimate of the total killed by US bombing, I can't even
begin to evaluate it, but since it's even higher than the 600k figure --
which I have shown to be implausible -- it's hard to give it credence.
Besides, one need not be a "fan of the Khmer Rouge" to exaggerate the
casualties from American bombing. One need only be an opponent of the
US bombing. From your description of Pilger as a "left-winger" I
gather he can be so described. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean
he exaggerated it, but if he did so, it wouldn't be hard to explain why.
Dan Clore
> In article <3981D5...@columbia-center.org>,
> cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> > mond...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > asked it. There still has been no adequate reply as to the purpose of
> > the bombing. Many have however speculated on the question, and one
> > common answer is that since bombing of Vietnam had cooled off, the
> > generals needed to either find some justification for keeping so many
> > bombers active or lose the bombers.
>
> For the sake of argument, even stipulating that the US deliberately or
> recklessly bombed civilians in Cambodia, this explanation isn't very
> credible.
>
> For one thing, the Chiefs could have achieved precisely the same result
> by sending the bombers against some uninhabited parts of the Cambodian
> hinterland, and claiming these were hitherto-undiscovered communist
> base areas. For that matter, they could have sent the bombers against
> real base areas, many of which were in relatively uninhabited areas.
Not really: when someone at the US embassy in Phnom Penh tried putting a
B-52 "box" over a map of Cambodia, he found it was practically
impossible to do so without including at least one village. I mentioned
this before. Just about any bombing of Cambodia, anywhere, by B-52s
necessarily deliberately targets civilians.
> (To be slightly facetious: they could even have had the bombers take
> off and orbit over the ocean for a few hours -- and then told everyone
> they were conducting vital bombing missions. Sort of a "secret
> bombing" in reverse, but substantially cheaper, since you aren't
> actually wasting any bombs.)
>
> Not only would bombing populated areas expose them to war crimes
> charges; more to the point, the resulting public opprobrium would
> hardly constitute good PR for the bomber fleet. If anything, it would
> create public pressure to get rid of these horrible weapons, not to
> keep them.
As a matter of fact it did -- remember what the Kent State protests were
about? The "secret" bombing soon became secret again (as in not reported
in the US), however.
> If we're talking about major end items, like bombers, the Vietnam War
> was actually bad for procurement. Money spent on fuel, parts and ammo
> was money that couldn't be spent on tanks, planes and ships. In
> business terms, the war drained funds from capital investment in favor
> of increased operating expenses and overhead.
>
> Generals may like having their toys, but from a budgetary standpoint,
> they don't like using them unless someone's going to pay the costs. By
> 1973, Congress was in no mood to spend more on the bomber force, and
> sending those bombers against Cambodia was certainly not going to
> change their minds.
As a matter of fact Congress ordered a halt to this illegal bombing in
1973.
> Of course, the simplest explanation for why the US deliberately bombed
> Cambodian civilians is that... it didn't. So all this is hypothesis
> contrary to fact.
That may be the simplest explanation, but we already know that it is
false. The maps of the bombing were released under FOIA, and show that
they deliberately targeted many of the most heavily populated areas of
the countryside. The maps have been published in Shawcross's _Sideshow_.
In addition, we have an enormous amount of testimony from the Cambodian
civilians who were the targets of the bombing.
I really don't know if Kalina could believe the things he keeps posting.
I *do* know that he continually posts claims that are quite definitely
false. I'm trying to be civil about it, but it really does look like
he's simply lying his ass off.
Charles P. Kalina
of the vernacular -- a major public brain-fart.
In the thread "Cambodians Killed by US?", in a few separate articles
posted in the last few hours, I have said there were two periods of US
bombing in Cambodia -- one in 1969-1970 (the "Menu" operation against
base areas) and of course the 1973 bombing.
The references I checked (such as David Chandler) referred to bombing
only in these two periods, described them as fairly discrete, and
didn't mention any bombing in between. Something in the back of my
head told me this wasn't right, but I couldn't find anything to confirm
bombing between mid-1970 and early 1973. So I wrote my articles on the
understanding that there were only two separate periods of bombing, '69-
70 and the sixth month campaign in '73.
Then, having sent the articles downrange, I was flipping through
_Sideshow_ and found some statistics for Cambodia bombing missions in
1971 and early 1972. Even Shawcross doesn't emphasize these; despite
his lengthy discussion of the '69-70 and '73 bombing, he mentiones '71
and '72 only once, and only briefly. Still, there it is, and it's my
fault, first for forgetting it, and then for overlooking it when I
reread that part of the book for this discussion.
My apologies to all concerned for this rather major goof on my part.
It's terrible to grow old. Memory's the second thing to go.
This correction changes the arithmetic in my response to Mr. Fused, in
which I tried to evaluate whether the 600,000 figure was plausible.
Adding the additional months to our calculation of the anticipated
civilian death rate does get us closer to the 600,000 figure -- but not
much closer, unless we use the highest possible estimates for the rate
of civilian casualties in South Vietnam, so I don't think this
compromises the conclusion. In any case, this number-crunching was
just educated guesswork anyway, as I said, it's no substitute for
credible research on the subject, which has not yet been forthcoming.
Otherwise, I don't think adding the 1971 and early 1972 bombing
significantly alters or compromises much of what I wrote, particularly
because much of the factual dispute (primarily between myself and Mr.
Clore) revolves the around the events of 1973.
Nevertheless, I regret the error and withdraw any part of my articles
which asserts, or depends upon the assertion, that there was no US
bombing between mid-1970 and early 1973.
While I'm at it: I also noticed that I misread Shawcross' list of the
estimated number of civilians in VC/NVA base areas in Operation MENU.
I mistakenly thought that 1640 was the lowest number for a target that
was rejected, meaning the cutoff would be somewhat below 1640. It was
actually just the opposite: it was the highest number for a target
that was _accepted_, meaning the cutoff must have been somewhat above
1640. Again, it doesn't really affect the argument I was trying to
make, but it was a goof and I regret it.
I'm sure readers will soon alert me to any other errors I made in these
articles. And probably to a few that more that I didn't. ;-)
Dan Clore
> In article <397EE3...@columbia-center.org>,
> cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> > Charles P. Kalina wrote:
> > > We know that the Khmer Rouge come from an ideological tradition
> with a
> > > history of mass murder. We also know with certainty that they
> killed
> > > some large number of people once they took power -- serious
> estimates
> > > are 1-2 million; Chomsky's estimate is about half that.
> > Citation?
>
> Chomsky, citing Vickery in _Manufacturing Consent_, at p.263:
>
> "Vickery's analysis is the most careful attempt to sort out the
> confused facts to date. He accepts as plausible... about
> 750,000 'deaths in excess of normal and due to the special conditions
> of DK,' with perhaps 200,000 to 300,000 executed and a total population
> decline for this period of about 400,000."
>
> From this I get a total death toll, under the Khmer Rouge, of 750,000 --
> although I confess I'm not entirely clear what he means by "deaths in
> excess of normal" versus "executions" versus "total population
> decline". Perhaps I'm just thick, but I suspect this is deliberate
> obfuscation intended to avoid a clear statement of Khmer Rouge guilt.
Total population decline refers to the total deaths, including natural
deaths that one would expect whether the Khmer Rouge were in power or
not. Deaths in excess of normal refers to deaths from all causes
(executions, starvation, disease, overwork, etc) that would not normally
be expected (the death rate would not have fallen to zero if the Khmer
Rouge had not taken power). Executions refers to executions as opposed
to deaths from starvations, disease, overwork, etc. If you really have
trouble seeing the importance of seperating out these different things,
simply imagine a hypothetical in which they are not differentiated when
accounting for a case where the US is to blame.
> He goes on to claim that this is only slightly more than the number of
> deaths for which the United States. Moreover, he adds that some of the
> Khmer Rouge death toll actually "must be attributed to conditions left
> by the war". Since he he holds the United States solely responsible
> for the war, this means that part of the Khmer Rouge death toll must
> actually be transferred to the US column.
This is actually quite a good argument. The conditions left by the war
-- 1100 of the 1400 rice mills destroyed, 75% of the draft animals
killed, massive shortages of food, etc etc etc -- undoubtedly must have
contributed to the excess deaths during the period. It is true that you
cannot simply calculate the excess deaths and then attribute them all to
the Khmer Rouge.
> So far as I can tell, Chomsky endorses no other estimate of the Khmer
> Rouge death toll. Most "Standard Total View" estimates range from 1-2
> million, with a middle range around 1.5 million, which is twice the
> Vickery/Chomsky figure.
(The scholarly estimates I've examined have never been higher than 1.7
million, and most are around 1 million, but let that pass.) It might
interest you to know that based on the work you're citing, Vickery
claims that a figure of 1 million would be an acceptable approximation.
(The population estimates available to work with are basically guesses.)
> [...]
> > As a matter of fact, we have a great deal of information on how the
> > Khmer Rouge acted before taking power. Their actions then were
> primarily
> > geared to gaining recruits from the population, so they were currying
> > favor and trying to avoid alienating them. Typical activities were
> > setting up cooperatives, redistributing land taken from feudal
> landlords
> > to the local peasants, setting up democratic elections for village
> > governments (the first democratic elections ever held in Cambodia),
> and
> > so on. There was also definitely terror, which increased in direct
> > proportion to the intensity of the bombing (unable to fight back
> against
> > the bombing, their frustration got taken out on those who were
> available
> > to take it out on), but in general they did in fact behave quite
> > differently. In 1973 in particular their policies hardened, as the
> > bombing reached its most intense phase.
>
> So, if I may summarize, Mr. Clore's response is:
>
> 1) Yes, the Khmer Rouge were basically nice guys.
> 2) Our bombing drove them nuts.
> 3) Therefore we are to blame for the bad things they did.
As a matter of fact, this is yet another straw man argument typical of
Kalina. I did not say that the "Khmer Rouge were basically nice guys",
in fact I point out that even the "nice" things they did were done to
gain popularity, not out of good motives.
> Let's consider these points in turn.
>
> First, Mr. Clore lists several alleged positive achievements of the
> early Khmer Rouge. He also implies that he could list more ("...and so
> on") were he so inclined. Supposedly these were "typical
> activities". Without knowing where he got this information, I can't
> possibly evaluate it, and past experience does not inspire confidence.
I gave my sources, so if Kalina does not know what they are, it is not
my fault. Kiernan's _How Pol Pot Came To Power_ gives the most detailed
account for those interested.
> To the skeptical reader, these sound rather like euphemisms for
> totalitarian communism. Remember Orwell's "comfortable English
> professor"; one imagines him describing Soviet collectivization
> as "setting up cooperatives" and "redistributing land taken from feudal
> landlords to the local peasants".
This part is actually relatively plausible, so i'll deal with it below.
> Perhaps he might also remark that
> the Bolsheviks set up the first democratic (after a fashion) elections
> in Russia's history.
This would be utterly ridiculous, even the most basic knowledge of
Russian history would show it to be false.
On to the other matters though. Here is some of the material presented
by Kiernan. He cites Kenneth Quinn on elections: "From everything stated
by refugees, it appears that such elections were open and honest...
[Kiernan's ellipsis] In each village an assembly was first called and
chaired by three NUFK [Khmer Rouge] cadre from the district
administration which would be constituted through elections. They then
called for volunteers to run for the post of [subdistrict] chairman and
a secret ballot election was immediately held with each villager casting
a single vote. The candidate with a plurality won. All of the candidates
were local residents and none were members of the NUFK or [CPK]. The
newly-elected village chief was empowered to select the remainder of his
staff: a deputy, secretary, economic commissioner, cultural
commissioner, and health and social welfare commissioner. The above
election process was repeated at the [village] level to elect a
chairman, who in turn appointed a deputy and economic commissioner."
He cites a Lon Nol district chief: "The reds would sometimes pick fruit
or something, and leave payment at the foot of the tree; the locals
would think that the reds were very fair to them. In 1970-71 they did
not kill people; if they captures soldiers they would tell them to
desert and let them go home as part of their propaganda."
I suppose I could go on and citing such things, but it seems rather
pointless when Kalina will undoubtedly simply say that the source is
lying to support the Khmer Rouge, no matter who I cite.
> Mr. Clore also admits, en passant (much as Orwell's professor does),
> that "there was also terror". Note that unlike their alleged positive
> achievements, he doesn't explore these in any detail.
It didn't seem very useful to examine something in detail when it was
not in dispute. As far it goes, it was usually aimed -- excuse me, the
Khmer Rouge usually aimed this terror -- at the Vietnamese, at those the
Khmer Rouge considered traitors for whatever reason (not good reasons,
either), and usually carried out in secret. This all changed later on,
primarily in 1973.
> Note also that
> rather than attributing this to the Khmer Rouge as such, he uses the
> passive voice: "there was terror", as if this were an ambient
> phenomenon, which tends to neutralize any inference of guilt.
> ("Mistakes were made.")
Feel free to translate to the active mode.
> Even so, the existence of this terror supports a more sinister
> interpretation of "setting up cooperatives" and other alleged positive
> achievements of the early Khmer Rouge. For instance, can you really
> have free elections when the people setting them up are using terror?
They usually were not using terror *in this period*, though they did use
terror in some times and places during the period. The sort of
generalization that Kalina would like to make simply does not fit the
facts.
> That this terror "intensified" in 1973 is not in dispute. Mr. Clore
> describes this as "very different" behavior -- but he has already
> admitted (barely) that the Khmer Rouge used terror before 1973. Even
> the positive achievements he describes appear, on closer examination,
> to be forms of terror described with Orwellian euphemism.
That is utter bullshit. In fact it turned out that no matter what the
Khmer Rouge did, Kalina will somehow interpret as a form of terror. He
actually claims that he believes that giving land to peasants is a form
of terror against the same peasants. Recall that the Khmer Rouge were
doing these things *in order to gain popularity and curry favor* (it
worked).
> So there really isn't much to explain. Khmer Rouge policy didn't
> change. They just pursued the same policy with greater vigor and over
> a greater area, as their strength grew and they conquered more of the
> country. It grew more intense in 1973 because that's when their
> strength was growing significantly and when they were conquering more
> territory.
>
> Remember: in 1973, the US was on its way out of Indochina, and the Lon
> Nol government was teetering. The insurgents had every reason to
> redouble their efforts and push for final victory, and in fact that's
> exactly what they were doing in 1973. By the end of the year the
> government had lost control of almost the entire country, except for
> Phnom Penh and a few other population centers and major lines of
> communication.
>
> It's not surprising that the bombing coincided with an increase in
> terror. As the Khmer Rouge got stronger, they could commit more
> terror; as they got stronger, they went on the offensive; as they
> went on the offensive, they attracted more bombing.
This is hilarious.
> To say that Khmer Rouge terror increased as a _result_ of the bombing
> is a canonical example of post-hoc reasoning. If US bombing had any
> effect on Khmer Rouge policy -- and terror was policy, not an
> irrational deviation from it -- it would have been to slow it down.
This is hilarious again. Does Kalina have no idea where the Khmer Rouge
got all their fanatical cadre from? I'll give you all one guess.
> Mr. Clore's alternative theory is that the Khmer Rouge
> became "frustrated" and took their frustrations out on
> Cambodians "available" in the areas they controlled. Or rather, "their
> frustrations got taken out"; again, it's telling that whenever Mr.
> Clore describes Khmer Rouge terror he resorts to the passive voice.
>
> Readers are left to wonder why Khmer Rouge fighters didn't vent their
> alleged frustrations by pressing the attack on the Lon Nol government,
> which at least had some connection to the people doing the bombing, and
> why instead they attacked the people, whom (according to another part
> of Mr. Clore's argument) they were simultaneously trying to win over.
They wouldn't be left to wonder this if they had any idea at all of the
situation in Cambodia at the time. Either Kalina does not have any such
idea, or he hopes his readers do not.
> He adduces no support for his "frustration" theory, nor can he: it's
> mere psychobabble, contrived to explain a nonexistent sea-change in
> Khmer Rouge behavior that he invented because he apparently needs some
> way to shift the blame for their crimes to the United States.
Once again Kalina appears to be entirely ignorant of all the facts in
the case. We have an enormous amount of eyewitness testimony showing how
the Khmer Rouge reacted to the bombing, and likewise to show the
"sea-change" in their behavior. If Kalina is actually ignorant of all of
this, it is a purely voluntary ignorance.
> Lionel Abel once noted an interesting inconsistency in Chomsky's
> comments. Chomsky attributes US policy and behavior to internal
> factors, viz. the ideology he associated with US economic and political
> structure. But when he writes about "official enemies", even the Khmer
> Rouge or the Soviets, he treats it as purely reactive, mainly to
> unfavorable circumstances created by the United States. As Mr. Clore
> here demonstrates, this is a useful trick for shifting guilt back to
> the US -- "The Devil Made Them Do It."
Pure shadow-projection: Kalina's entire purpose here is to shift blame
for the US's actions (e.g., bombing Cambodia) onto the Khmer Rouge.
Yeah, The Devil Made Them Do It, that's right. It makes no difference to
Kalina how badly he must distort the facts or simply fabricate them in
order to do so.
> [...]
> > Bombing and other attacks never did stop -- the Lon Nol regime
> continued
> > to carry them out on its own, though without B-52s -- until the Khmer
> > Rouge finally took Phnom Penh. Consider as well that while about
> 100,000
> > sought refuge in cities in 1974, the total who became refugees in the
> > period 1970-75 is over 3 million. It is clear that refugee movement
> > slowed down after the carpetbombing ceased.
>
> Our specific topic (as the subject header suggests) is the number of
> Cambodian casualties from US bombing. Bombing by the Lon Nol
> government cannot be included in this total. Besides, mass casualties
> on the order of 600,000 are only remotely plausible if we're talking
> about B-52s.
>
> Again, Mr. Clore's reasoning is post-hoc: US bombing ended in 1973,
> the flow of displaced persons slowed after 1973, therefore the flow of
> displaced persons slowed because US bombing ended.
>
> No doubt many DPs were fleeing the bombing, but the ground fighting, in
> which the Khmer Rouge made substantial gains, would have generated a
> large number of DPs even if the US had never dropped a single bomb.
There would have been no ground fighting if not for the US bombing.
> The ground fighting is also what led to the bombing, so this DP flow
> inevitably coincided with the bombing whether or not that was the
> primary motive for fleeing.
The ground fighting did not lead to the bombing; indeed, it could not
have, since the Khmer Rouge were insignificant at the start (about 800
of them in 1979) leaving no one to indulge in ground fighting against.
> By the end of 1973, however, there simply weren't that many people left
> who could become DPs. Everyone who was going to flee (whether from the
> bombing, or ground fighting, or the Khmer Rouge) had already done so.
> Therefore the flow of DPs would have tapered off even if the US had
> continued bombing.
Only some 3.5 million or so people under the Khmer Rouge at the time.
I'm sure they all liked it really well, too.
> (Especially since most of the country was now held by the Khmer Rouge.
> People could flee the bombing to the relative safety of Phnom Penh,
> Battambang and other cities, but the Khmer Rouge were hardly going to
> let significant numbers of people escape to government-held areas.)
That at least is a plausible counterargument.
> By analogy: Before the Second World War started, more than 70% of
> German Jews fled Nazi Germany, a plurality of them in 1938-1939. After
> 1939, almost none fled. Should we therefore conclude that the start of
> the war had some positive effect on the situation of Jews in Germany?
> Or should we conclude instead that those who wanted to flee had already
> done so, and those who hadn't yet done so no longer had the option?
>
> (One imagines David Irving, or someone from that crowd, listing all the
> Nazis' positive achievements in the 1930s and reminding us that the
> worst atrocities came only later. "There was also definitely terror,
> which increased in direct proportion to the intensity of the bombing.
> Unable to fight back against the bombing, their frustration got taken
> out on those who were available to take it out on...")
Invocation of Godwin's Law noted and ignored.
[Large snip of obviously ridiculous material that needs no argument. If
anyone can truly read the snipped material and believe that Kalina is
doing anything but trying to find some way, any way, no matter how
ludicrous, to discredit the known facts in the case and replace them
with fictions, well....]
> [...]
> > > The purpose of US operations in Cambodia was to eliminate the safe
> > > havens used by an insurgency committed to the creation of a
> Stalinist
> > > state by violent means. This may or may not have been tactically
> wise,
> > > but I don't think it was presumptively immoral or unjustified.
> > If this were the purpose of the US operation in Cambodia, they would
> > surely have been quite different. In actual fact, they resulted in the
> > creation of a Stalinist state under the Khmer Rouge, by giving the
> Khmer
> > Rouge, formerly a few hundred guerrillas hiding in the jungle, the
> > followers they needed to do so.
>
> It's strange to argue that the United States built up the Khmer Rouge
> by trying to destroy them -- while Hanoi's role in organizing,
> training, arming and supporting the Khmer Rouge somehow vanishes down
> the memory hole.
The bombing could not have been an effort to destroy the Khmer Rouge,
because the Khmer Rouge were utterly insignificant until it gained its
tens of thousands of recruits from those who wished to fight back
against the bombing. Remember that the bombing began in 1969, while the
Khmer Rouge as of 1970 only had some 800 members hiding in the jungle.
They'd been there for decades without getting any substantial numbers.
By 1973 they had some 40,000. We know why they joined from their own
testimony (in many cases).
> Again, Mr. Clore's underlying value seems to be that
> bad things must be traced back to the United States (and away from
> leftist revolutionaries) no matter how embarassingly specious the
> argument necessary.
Mr. Kalina's underlying value seems to be that bad things must be traced
back to "communists", no matter how embarrassingly specious the argument
necessary and no matter whether the known facts must be somehow erased
from the record or not.
[snip]
Nathan Folkert
[snip]
> > By way of example the British Government will charge a member of the
> > IRA who plants a bomb which kills a civilian, though intended to
> > destroy property, with murder.
>
> Not a valid comparison. IRA bombs inherently put civilian life at
> risk.
American bombs, on the other hand, are extremely safe, though not
recommended for children under 3 years of age.
> But since the IRA is not a military force,
It is an "army".
> is not at war,
Neither were we.
> and
> generally does not attack military targets,
Their justification for choosing their targets is about as morally upright
as our justification for choosing our targets in Cambodia (that is, not
really at all), though they have the logistical problem of not having a
fleet of bombers at their disposal to be used against an almost entirely
defenseless population, nor fighting against a third-world state just
emerging from colonialism.
> their bombs cannot be said
> to accomplish any legitimate military objective.
>
> Therefore the risk to
> civilians is not outweighed by military necessity, because no military
> necessity exists.
>
> (Maybe the IRA doesn't see it that way, but that's another can of
> worms.)
It seems what you're saying, Charles, is that IRA terror-bombing is
incomparable to the US terror-bombing because *you* don't see them as a
military force, *you* don't think they're at war, *you* don't think their
targets have any military value, and *you* don't think any military
necessity exists for their campaign. Those are fairly high standards. I
suppose everyone will have to choose their analogies more carefully in the
future -- perhaps they can write you privately first so that you can make
sure that their analogies contradict reality in the same ways that your
arbitrary definitions do.
[snip]
> My response to your IRA analogy applies equally well to the Oklahoma
> City bombing. Besides, civilian casualties were the intended result of
> the attack on the Murrah Building -- not an incidental result.
> Likewise: the Soviets were accused of deliberately targeting Afghan
> civilians, not just of hitting some Afghans in the course of legitimate
> combat operations.
The Americans were accused of deliberately targeting Cambodian civilians,
not just of hitting some Cambodians in the course of legitimate combat
operations (and, indeed, Shawcross found excellent support for these
accusations in the declassified maps of bombing flights during Operation
Arclight into Cambodia showing attacks that were nowhere near the Ho Chi
Minh trail or which could in any way be construed as "hot pursuit", some
of which corresponded to some of the most densely populated parts of
Cambodia).
[snip a lot of very long, rather dull non-debate]
> "Both the US and the Khmer Rouge were brutal, both were responsible for
> the slaughter of 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 people in Cambodia (the Khmer
> Rouge did not spring from a vacuum), both escaped unpunished." You
> repeated a similar theme several times.
>
> Clearly, this equates US military operations and Khmer Rouge terror. I
> can't imagine any other reasonable interpretatino of this theme. If
> you don't mean to suggest this conclusion, you may want to rephrase
> your argument so that it does not lead to it. I invite clarification.
I am weary of this strawman. I know of not a single person who regularly
posts to this newsgroup who morally equates the US and the Khmer Rouge on
the atrocities that occurred in Pol Pot's Cambodia, nor anyone who
believes that the US was solely responsible for the outcome. You claim
that his argument "leads" to your fabricated conclusion. Yet there is
nothing in a condemnation of the US for its policies in Cambodia and their
possible (even likely) role in radicalizing the Cambodians that suggests
that one is equating the US with the Khmer Rouge.
[snip]
> [...]
> This is a case in point. To say that the media "exclude" the US role
> in what has been called the Cambodian Holocaust, we must first
> demonstrate that the US had such a role - specifically, the role
> Chomsky describes. If we ourselves can't demonstrate that it played
> this role, we can't condemn the media for failing to report that it
> played this role.
>
> (By analogy:
Oh boy, are we going to get yet another one of Kalina's famous bullshit
Nazi analogies? I can hardly wait.
> Reports related to the Nazi Holocaust don't mention the
> role of Allied bombing in the Holocaust simply because nobody outside
> revisionist circles thinks Allied bombing has any relevance to the
> Holocaust.
Once again, Kalina's analogy fails to be any more than surface deep, and
this in a post where he repeatedly claims that his opponent's analogies
are unfounded. Charles, just because a few of the words match doesn't
mean that the situation is in any way analogous (again, you are simply
dragging the Nazis in because it helps support your non-case against your
opponents as being morally equivalent to Holocaust deniers). The allied
bombing of Nazi Germany was concurrent with the Holocaust, while the
American bombing of Cambodia is claimed to have helped to radicalize the
Cambodians *leading to* the Cambodian auto-genocide. Temporally, your
analogy is completely irrelevant, and since causation requires a temporal
relation, it is literally impossible that the Allied bombing could play a
similar role to the American bombing in radicalizing the target.
On the other hand, a discussion of Germany and the political environment
leading up to the rise of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust almost
undoubtedly mentions the unstable situation created by the victorious
allies after WWI. The poor strategic and political planning demonstrated
at Versailles usually carries condemnation for its ill-conception, though
it does not generally carry a great deal of moral condemnation. The
Cambodian situation, of course, is entirely different, involving, as it
does, a non-warring nation and a half of a million tons of bombs, but at
least this analogy comes *somewhat* close to comparing similar situations,
as opposed to Kalina's.
It is not difficult to see Kalina's arguments for what they are --
groundless ad hominem attacks meant to garner sympathy from like-minded
participants in the debate by making a completely unjustifiable comparison
between his opponents and Nazi apologists (and, by implication, a
comparison between his opponents and the Nazis themselves). This is a
pretty immature tactic for a debater, and no one really takes it seriously
save the converted. I would normally ignore such behaviour, except that
Kalina makes such a big fuss about how his opponents' analogies or logic
don't hold that such behaviour is not merely immature but fundamentally
hypocritical and offensive.
> Revisionists will tell you that this ideological selection
> process is evidence of Jewish media hegemony and a propaganda system,
> but sensible people are not obliged to take this complaint seriously.)
[snip]
Nathan Folkert
nfol...@cs.stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~nfolkert
*************************************************
* Here we are in New South Wales, *
* Shearin' sheep as big as whales! *
* With leather necks and jaggy tails, *
* and hides as tought as rusty nails! *
*************************************************
* Though you live beyond your means, *
* Your daughters wear no crinolines, *
* Nor are they bothered by boots or shoes, *
* But live wild in the Bush with the Kangaroos! *
*************************************************
- New South Wales
Dan Clore
>
> Before anyone gets to say "Gotcha!", let me admit to -- pardon my use
> of the vernacular -- a major public brain-fart.
>
> In the thread "Cambodians Killed by US?", in a few separate articles
> posted in the last few hours, I have said there were two periods of US
> bombing in Cambodia -- one in 1969-1970 (the "Menu" operation against
> base areas) and of course the 1973 bombing.
>
> The references I checked (such as David Chandler) referred to bombing
> only in these two periods, described them as fairly discrete, and
> didn't mention any bombing in between. Something in the back of my
> head told me this wasn't right, but I couldn't find anything to confirm
> bombing between mid-1970 and early 1973. So I wrote my articles on the
> understanding that there were only two separate periods of bombing, '69-
> 70 and the sixth month campaign in '73.
I didn't even notice this, but it argues a rather abysmal level of
ignorance concerning the events you were discussing.
Nathan Folkert
> > From this I get a total death toll, under the Khmer Rouge, of 750,000 --
> > although I confess I'm not entirely clear what he means by "deaths in
> > excess of normal" versus "executions" versus "total population
> > decline". Perhaps I'm just thick, but I suspect this is deliberate
> > obfuscation intended to avoid a clear statement of Khmer Rouge guilt.
>
> Total population decline refers to the total deaths, including natural
> deaths that one would expect whether the Khmer Rouge were in power or
> not.
Total population decline would actually refer to total deaths less total
births (transnational migration may or may not be included in this
figure) -- this would be the number you would get if you subtracted the
population count from before the Khmer Rouge reign from that after the
Khmer Rouge reign.
For anyone who is interested, the following data was taken from the Census
Bureau's international population database website:
(http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbprint.html)
The columns, left to right, include the year, the crude birth rate (births
per 1000 population), the crude death rate (deaths per 1000 population),
the crude migration rate (net migrants (positive is incoming) per 1000
population), rate of natural increase as a percent, growth rate as a
percent, and total midyear population (it doesn't always jive correctly
with the other numbers, perhaps because they are not midyear statistics -
I think they're end of the year statistics). Natural increase is
population change disregarding migration, while growth includes migration.
Year Births Deaths Migrants Nat.Inc Growth Population
1962 47.81 20.53 0.00 2.728 2.729 5,760,508
1963 47.47 20.62 0.00 2.685 2.685 5,918,543
1964 47.16 20.60 0.00 2.656 2.656 6,078,725
1965 46.91 20.57 0.00 2.634 2.634 6,241,679
1966 46.74 20.54 0.00 2.620 2.620 6,407,846
1967 46.66 20.51 0.00 2.615 2.614 6,577,783
1968 46.65 20.50 0.00 2.615 2.615 6,752,061
1969 46.73 20.51 0.00 2.622 2.621 6,931,187
1970 46.95 26.62 -27.87 2.033 -0.754 6,995,637
1971 47.31 28.04 -5.49 1.927 1.378 7,017,613
1972 47.77 29.40 -5.41 1.837 1.296 7,112,055
1973 48.26 30.78 -5.35 1.748 1.213 7,201,823
1974 48.79 32.16 -5.28 1.663 1.134 7,286,828
1975 32.38 66.33 -7.60 -3.395 -4.155 7,178,995
1976 33.35 62.74 -6.36 -2.939 -3.575 6,906,393
1977 34.25 61.64 -6.68 -2.739 -3.407 6,669,338
1978 35.08 58.34 -6.35 -2.326 -2.960 6,460,117
1979 44.63 29.91 -5.93 1.472 0.879 6,392,582
1980 49.16 26.25 1.09 2.291 2.400 6,498,652
1981 47.35 22.25 6.23 2.510 3.133 6,681,289
1982 45.60 17.60 6.03 2.800 3.403 6,903,403
1983 45.91 17.59 5.83 2.832 3.415 7,142,827
1984 46.21 17.55 -22.97 2.866 0.570 7,285,535
1985 46.47 17.55 -3.83 2.892 2.509 7,399,097
1986 46.68 17.63 4.81 2.905 3.386 7,689,116
1987 46.82 17.70 4.55 2.912 3.368 7,990,249
1988 46.92 17.76 4.57 2.916 3.373 8,302,920
1989 46.94 17.80 4.12 2.914 3.326 8,627,572
1990 46.73 17.80 4.60 2.893 3.353 8,964,664
1991 46.32 17.77 4.49 2.855 3.305 9,314,674
1992 45.89 17.73 23.40 2.816 5.156 9,678,094
1993 45.44 17.62 15.22 2.782 4.304 10,055,441
1994 44.99 17.54 0.00 2.745 2.745 10,447,246
1995 36.49 11.63 0.00 2.486 2.486 10,854,065
I'm not sure how accurate these data are (for instance, in the claim that
there was no migration prior to 1970), but I thought it was interesting,
and it gives something of a comparison of what growth rates, birth rates,
death rates, and migration rates in Cambodia looked like during this
period, so that one is not simply working with absolute numbers which
offer little information in the dynamics of the local demography. Of
course, these numbers are incredibly crude, and I've no idea of the source
of their estimates.
> Deaths in excess of normal refers to deaths from all causes
> (executions, starvation, disease, overwork, etc) that would not normally
> be expected (the death rate would not have fallen to zero if the Khmer
> Rouge had not taken power). Executions refers to executions as opposed
> to deaths from starvations, disease, overwork, etc. If you really have
> trouble seeing the importance of seperating out these different things,
> simply imagine a hypothetical in which they are not differentiated when
> accounting for a case where the US is to blame.
Ignoring the difference between "deaths in excess of normal", which takes
a baseline (probably a stable death rate before or after some period, or
an estimate thereof) and compares the deathrate to that, and
"executions" is absolutely ridiculous. It would be like claiming that all
excess deaths caused by the increase in death rate during the Great
Depression in the United States were actually "executions".
[snip]
> > Note also that
> > rather than attributing this to the Khmer Rouge as such, he uses the
> > passive voice: "there was terror", as if this were an ambient
> > phenomenon, which tends to neutralize any inference of guilt.
> > ("Mistakes were made.")
The 'passive voice = totalitarian apologetics' is about the lamest
argument I've ever heard anyone make. (Not to pick on you, Charles, even
Orwell and Chomsky do it.) Linguistically, the claim is without
merit. It's like saying that 'French is an illogical language' because it
features double negation. It means nothing, and because it means nothing
it is irrefutable, serving only to frustrate those accused of it. It adds
nothing to the debate.
[snip, including yet another irrelevant Nazi analogy]
Dan Clore
> On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Dan Clore wrote:
>
> > > From this I get a total death toll, under the Khmer Rouge, of 750,000 --
> > > although I confess I'm not entirely clear what he means by "deaths in
> > > excess of normal" versus "executions" versus "total population
> > > decline". Perhaps I'm just thick, but I suspect this is deliberate
> > > obfuscation intended to avoid a clear statement of Khmer Rouge guilt.
> >
> > Total population decline refers to the total deaths, including natural
> > deaths that one would expect whether the Khmer Rouge were in power or
> > not.
>
> Total population decline would actually refer to total deaths less total
> births (transnational migration may or may not be included in this
> figure) -- this would be the number you would get if you subtracted the
> population count from before the Khmer Rouge reign from that after the
> Khmer Rouge reign.
Yeah, you're right. My bad. I've looked at quite few things on Cambodia,
and the record can be pretty gruesome. Babies who weren't born because
the birth rate fell are often accounted executions by the Khmer Rouge;
refugees who weren't counted because they had fled the country are often
accounted executions by the Khmer Rouge as well. In fairness this often
appears to be simple incompetence rather than outright dishonesty.
> > Deaths in excess of normal refers to deaths from all causes
> > (executions, starvation, disease, overwork, etc) that would not normally
> > be expected (the death rate would not have fallen to zero if the Khmer
> > Rouge had not taken power). Executions refers to executions as opposed
> > to deaths from starvations, disease, overwork, etc. If you really have
> > trouble seeing the importance of seperating out these different things,
> > simply imagine a hypothetical in which they are not differentiated when
> > accounting for a case where the US is to blame.
>
> Ignoring the difference between "deaths in excess of normal", which takes
> a baseline (probably a stable death rate before or after some period, or
> an estimate thereof) and compares the deathrate to that, and
> "executions" is absolutely ridiculous. It would be like claiming that all
> excess deaths caused by the increase in death rate during the Great
> Depression in the United States were actually "executions".
Another example. Someone -- I believe it was David Friedman, but I don't
recall at this point -- once calculated the number of deaths caused by
heart attacks that could have been prevented by beta blockers during the
period the FDA had not approved beta blockers and they were available in
Europe. It was, if I recall correctly, in the hundreds of thousands. No
one would consider these deaths to be executions. Deaths caused by the
Khmer Rouge's banning of medicine or even its failure to provide
medicine, on the other hand, are frequently considered to be executions,
nonsensical as this seems.
> > > Note also that
> > > rather than attributing this to the Khmer Rouge as such, he uses the
> > > passive voice: "there was terror", as if this were an ambient
> > > phenomenon, which tends to neutralize any inference of guilt.
> > > ("Mistakes were made.")
>
> The 'passive voice = totalitarian apologetics' is about the lamest
> argument I've ever heard anyone make. (Not to pick on you, Charles, even
> Orwell and Chomsky do it.) Linguistically, the claim is without
> merit. It's like saying that 'French is an illogical language' because it
> features double negation. It means nothing, and because it means nothing
> it is irrefutable, serving only to frustrate those accused of it. It adds
> nothing to the debate.
Actually, on that point I think a reasonable case could be made. I don't
think it's without merit linguistically, because one can freely choose
between the active and the passive voice when making these statements.
However, I suddenly notice as I write this that I just did the same
thing above in the last sentence, when supposedly I should be using the
active in order to imply guilt. Or something like that.
Charles P. Kalina
cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> I didn't even notice this, but it argues a rather abysmal level of
> ignorance concerning the events you were discussing.
To quote Homer Simpson under similar circumstances: "It seems the
classy thing to do would be not to call attention to it."
Since I've admitted having made a major brain fart, there's not much
more I can say in my own defense, except to reiterate that it doesn't
significantly compromise most of what I wrote. In particular, my reply
to you centered on the logical failures of your argument, particularly
its post-hoc reasoning, and on your description of the 1973 bombing.
These points don't change if we acknowledge that there was also bombing
in 1971 and 1972.
As I've said before, I'm certainly no Cambodia specialist. To fill
gaps in my knowledge or memory, I refer to sources intended for the
general reader -- Shawcross, Chandler, etc. These sources, without
exception, concentrate on only the two periods of US bombing. The
intervening period rates little mention, if any, and usually in
ambiguous terms. Even Shawcross gives it only six sentences in his
entire book, in a passage I unfortunately overlooked when reviewing my
sources on this point. Many of these sources (Shawcross, e.g.) are
otherwise quite tendentious in their emphasis on US bombing, so I
didn't think it was the sort of thing they'd omit or downplay.
However, there it is: memory failed me in this instance, despite my
best efforts to assist it, and if readers want to take this as evidence
of "abysmal ignorance" on my part, I don't really have much standing to
gainsay them. They can choose whether or not to be charitable.
Charles P. Kalina
100...@elaine33.Stanford.EDU>,
Nathan Folkert <nfol...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Charles P. Kalina wrote:
> > Not a valid comparison. IRA bombs inherently put civilian life at
> > risk.
> American bombs, on the other hand, are extremely safe, though not
> recommended for children under 3 years of age.
Of course American bombs put civilians at risk. Duh. Every weapon
puts noncombatants at some non-zero risk. But unless one is an
absolute pacifist, that in itself doesn't invalidate the weapon.
Again, the question is whether the risk is balanced by legitimate
military necessity.
Put differently: the fact that all guns are dangerous does not mean
there's no distinction between an Army that shoots the enemy and an
Army that shoots civilians. I'm surprised I should have to explain
this distinction.
> > But since the IRA is not a military force,
> It is an "army".
It describes itself as an "Army". So did the Symbionese Liberation
Army. So does the Salvation Army. Groups do not become military
organizations merely by adopting military nomenclature, though they may
fancy themselves to be such.
> > is not at war,
> Neither were we.
It did look strangely like a war (hence the "anti-war movement", for
instance). If your point is that it was a war de facto but not de
jure, that's a valid distinction, but irrelevant in this instance.
> > and
> > generally does not attack military targets,
> Their justification for choosing their targets is about as morally
upright
> as our justification for choosing our targets in Cambodia (that is,
not
> really at all)
So your argument, I gather, is that there is no moral distinction
between targeting a military camp used by combatants in war, versus a
marketplace used by civilians in peace?
I cannot seriously believe that this is what you meant to argue, so
presumably I am being thick, and I invite further clarification.
[...]
> It seems what you're saying, Charles, is that IRA terror-bombing is
> incomparable to the US terror-bombing because *you* don't see them as
a
> military force, *you* don't think they're at war, *you* don't think
their
> targets have any military value, and *you* don't think any military
> necessity exists for their campaign. Those are fairly high
standards. I
> suppose everyone will have to choose their analogies more carefully
in the
> future -- perhaps they can write you privately first so that you can
make
> sure that their analogies contradict reality in the same ways that
your
> arbitrary definitions do.
It may equally be said that all you have done is to declare -- quite
arbitrarily -- that in Cambodia, the US wasn't at war, that its targets
weren't military, etc. Put another way: you've simply contradicted
reality to make the analogy work, and then faulted me for contradicting
the pseudo-reality thus construted in order to falsify it.
Perhaps an absolute pacifist could argue that there really is no
distinction between war and terrorism, that all war is a crime,
that "military necessitiy" can never justify any level of risk to
civilian (or indeed, human) life. This belief has a respectable moral
pedigree and while I don't share it, I see no point in arguing against
it.
For the rest of us, we have to make distinctions -- between combat and
terrorism, between warfare and war crimes, between accident and
atrocity. Otherwise we are left with pernicious and morally untenable
conclusions that border on childish idiocy.
Maybe the IRA thinks it's a military force at war with Britain, and
that civilian marketplaces are legitimate military targets. Maybe the
Nazis thought they were in a death-struggle with "World Jewry", and
that Jews as such were therefore fair game. We can play this game ad
nauseam.
Eventually we must make distinctions bewteen valid and invalid claims,
and I have tried to draw such a distinction in the case of US bombing
in Cambodia. It was compared to IRA (or other) terrorism. I have
presented an argument as to why this analogy is not appropriate,
because the bombing did not share the essential characteristics that
make such terrorism odious -- viz. the deliberate or reckless
endangerment of civilian life and limb.
You're certainly welcome to present a counter-argument, and I remain
open to evidence that US bombing did indeed deliberatly or recklessly
harm civilians. As I've said (and to my chagrin, recently
demonstrated), I'm no expert on the war in Cambodia, and as an
interested layman I'm keen to learn more.
But we can hardly engage in a constructive dialogue if your argument
reduces -- as yours apparently does -- to "Yeah, well, sez *you*!"
[...]
> The Americans were accused of deliberately targeting Cambodian
civilians,
> not just of hitting some Cambodians in the course of legitimate combat
> operations (and, indeed, Shawcross found excellent support for these
> accusations in the declassified maps of bombing flights during
Operation
> Arclight into Cambodia showing attacks that were nowhere near the Ho
Chi
> Minh trail or which could in any way be construed as "hot pursuit",
some
> of which corresponded to some of the most densely populated parts of
> Cambodia).
Certainly, I do not deny that the US was _accused_ of deliberately
targeting Cambodian civilians. During the Vietnam War, the US was
accused of doing many evil things. Very few of these accusations were
ever substantiated -- though I grant that some people's standards of
proof may be rather lower than mine where US wickedness is concerned.
("Well, your honor, we've got hearsay and conjecture. Those are
_kinds_ of evidence..." ;-)
In this case, nobody has presented _any_ valid evidence that the US
deliberately targeted civilians. It has been claimed that 600,000
civilians were killed, and I agree that this would in itself constitute
strong evidence that the bombing either targeted civilians deliberately
or was grossly negligent. But no support has been offered for this
figure.
Mr. Clore did refer to the (rather crude) Shawcross maps you cite.
However, as I noted in my reply to him, these maps cover only the final
six-month bombing in 1973. For the first months the targets are indeed
concentrated along the border, and in subsequent months there are still
many targets in the border area.
There are indeed many targets away from the border in later months, but
these track the expansion of communist military control. Therefore
they are not evidence that the US bombing targeted civilian areas as
such, rather than communist military targets.
Shawcross does argue in the text that the US bombed areas
indiscriminately and with reckless disregard for the likelihood of
civilian casualties. But while my recollection of his book is
demonstrably imperfect, I don't recall him suggesting that the US
_deliberately_ targeted civilians.
Considering that his (quite tendentious) book argues that US bombing
was primarily responsible for the "Destruction of Cambodia", I think he
would have made this accusation if he thought there was sufficient
evidence for it.
[...]
> > Clearly, this equates US military operations and Khmer Rouge
terror. I
> > can't imagine any other reasonable interpretatino of this theme. If
> > you don't mean to suggest this conclusion, you may want to rephrase
> > your argument so that it does not lead to it. I invite
clarification.
> I am weary of this strawman. I know of not a single person who
regularly
> posts to this newsgroup who morally equates the US and the Khmer
Rouge on
> the atrocities that occurred in Pol Pot's Cambodia, nor anyone who
> believes that the US was solely responsible for the outcome. You
claim
> that his argument "leads" to your fabricated conclusion. Yet there is
> nothing in a condemnation of the US for its policies in Cambodia and
their
> possible (even likely) role in radicalizing the Cambodians that
suggests
> that one is equating the US with the Khmer Rouge.
That's absolutely true, up to a point: To condemn the US bombing and
to say that it played some role in the supposed "radicalization" of the
Khmer Rouge is not necessarily to argue that the US and the Khmer Rouge
are morally equivalent. Nor have I accused any authors of drawing such
equivalency on this basis alone.
However, it remains the fact that some authors do construct such an
equation. Half of this construction is an exaggerated description of
the US bombing, which makes it appear comparable to Khmer Rouge
terror. Perforce, this means the author must condemn the US bombing in
the strongest terms.
The other half of the argument partially rehabilitates the Khmer Rouge,
reducing their crimes and/or transferring guilt until those crimes
appear to be comparable to the (inflated) crimes of the United States.
One device for doing this is to say that the Khmer Rouge would not have
been so bad had they not been "radicalized" by US bombing.
Chomsky's later work (such as _Manufacturing Consent_, op cit)
constructs just such an equation. He adopts the lowest possible
estimate of Khmer Rouge atrocities. He compares it to the highest
possible estimate of US wrongdoing, including deaths under the KR for
which the after-effects of US wartime practices are supposedly
responsible.
He thus concludes that the Cambodian genocide took place in two roughly-
equal phases, with "Phase I" the US half of the genocide, "Phase II"
the Khmer Rouge half. His evidence of "propaganda" is that the US
media supposedly tend to place undue emphasis on (allegedly
exaggerated) accounts of Phase II, but ignore Phase I. This being a
Chomsky-oriented forum, I have tended to interpret arguments such as
that offered by Mr. Fused as being echoes of this view.
Now, Chomsky's canonical evasion is to lead readers directly to a
conclusion for which he then denies any responsibility, sanctimoniously
insisting that he never said it, and often pointing to some passing
equivocation which pointed to the opposite conclusion. Thus it's very
possible that he, and by extension his acolytes in this forum, would
deny that they are constructing such an equation. But the fact remains
that they do construct it, and we need not pretend that they don't just
because they'd rather not be held responsible for it.
(One thinks again of people like David Irving -- who exaggerates Allied
crimes, minimizes the Holocaust until it is no larger than these
exaggerated Allied crimes, but all the while insists that it's foul
slander to call him a Nazi apologist.)
Certainly, the fact that an author condemns US bombing is not
sufficient evidence that he is constructing such an argument. Most
people who condemn US bombing aren't (though the likelihood in this
forum is probably rather higher). But if the author shows some dubious
(or simply dishonest) tendency to exaggerate US bombing while
simultaneously rehabilitating the Khmer Rouge, it's not unfair to infer
that he's engaged in just such a construction.
[...]
> > (By analogy:
> Oh boy, are we going to get yet another one of Kalina's famous
bullshit
> Nazi analogies? I can hardly wait.
If you consider the analogy inappropriate, I welcome reasoned argument
explaining its deficiencies. Casual profanity, however, is less than
convincing.
> > Reports related to the Nazi Holocaust don't mention the
> > role of Allied bombing in the Holocaust simply because nobody
outside
> > revisionist circles thinks Allied bombing has any relevance to the
> > Holocaust.
> Once again, Kalina's analogy fails to be any more than surface deep,
and
> this in a post where he repeatedly claims that his opponent's
analogies
> are unfounded. Charles, just because a few of the words match doesn't
> mean that the situation is in any way analogous (again, you are simply
> dragging the Nazis in because it helps support your non-case against
your
> opponents as being morally equivalent to Holocaust deniers). The
allied
> bombing of Nazi Germany was concurrent with the Holocaust, while the
> American bombing of Cambodia is claimed to have helped to radicalize
the
> Cambodians *leading to* the Cambodian auto-genocide.
Yes, that's absolutely true: the American bombing of Cambodia
is "claimed", by certain authors, to have helped radicalize the Khmer
Rouge (did you really mean to say "the Cambodians"?) thus leading to
the Cambodian Holocaust. Again, though, people claim all sorts of
things, especially people who opposed the war in Indochina.
We have stipulated that the US bombing in 1973 was concurrent with an
increase in Khmer Rouge terror. That is the _only_ relevant fact that
is not in dispute. Indeed it is the only relevant fact that has been
offered in support of this theory that the US bombing radicalized the
KR.
However, to say that Khmer Rouge terror increased _because_ of the
bombing (whether wholly or in part) is simply post-hoc reasoning. The
hypothesis might be true, but without evidence, it's mere conjecture.
We may equally say that the bombing and the increased terror were
concurrent because they were both caused by a Z-variable -- namely the
fact that the Khmer Rouge now had sufficient organized strength both to
implement their terror program more vigorously, and to go on the
offensive, which then attracted US bombing.
This hypothesis has at least equal merit, and it accounts for one fact
which the "radicalization" hypothesis doesn't, a fact that Mr. Clore
tellingly tried to obscure. There was no sea-change in Khmer Rouge
behavior in 1973. They used terror routinely before 1973, and while it
did increase in 1973, it was only a difference of degree and not one of
kind.
Given that terror was already Khmer Rouge practice, I think the best
explanation for the 1973 increase is simply that they now had enough
strength to pursue that practice with greater vigor. The US bombing
was epiphenomenal, not causal -- another reflection of the KR's growing
strength.
> Temporally, your
> analogy is completely irrelevant, and since causation requires a
temporal
> relation, it is literally impossible that the Allied bombing could
play a
> similar role to the American bombing in radicalizing the target.
Not so. Even eschewing revisionist arguments, it's simple fact that
Nazi terror in the 1930s, bad as it was, was relatively modest --
trivial when compared to what was happening in countries that later
became our Allies (such as Stalin's USSR). Nor is there any disputing
that most Nazi atrocities, and certainly the Final Solution, happened
only after Allied bombing began.
If one wants to be charitable to the Nazis, or uncharitable to the
Allies, one may thus infer that the Nazis were "radicalized" by the
bombing. This post-hoc reasoning is precisely the same as that used to
argue that the US bombing is what "radicalized" the Khmer Rouge and has
just as much evidence to support it. Only the name of the enemy
changes.
Needless to say, this post-hoc reasoning is not valid. While Allied
bombing certainly had some incidental effects on their actions, the
Nazis were not suddenly "radicalized" in the early 1940s. The fact
that their worst atrocities were not committed until the 1940s does not
constitute evidence of any significant change in Nazi policy, ideology
or behavior at that time. The same can be said of the Khmer Rouge in
1973.
[...]
> It is not difficult to see Kalina's arguments for what they are --
> groundless ad hominem attacks meant to garner sympathy from like-
minded
> participants in the debate by making a completely unjustifiable
comparison
> between his opponents and Nazi apologists (and, by implication, a
> comparison between his opponents and the Nazis themselves).
When I say that communist apologists equate to Nazi apologists, I'm
saying precisely that. Just as I do not think all Nazi apologists are
Nazis, so I do not think all communist apologists are communists.
While my argument does imply that communism is equivalent to Nazism (we
are discussing the Khmer Rouge, after all), it doesn't mean that
communist apologists are equivalent to Nazis as such.
Put differently: People who try to rationalize atrocities may be
comparable to one another, regardless of the specific atrocities each
is trying to whitewash. But that doesn't mean that such people are
equivalent to the ones who actually commit the atrocities.
(This is why I find it hard to share the moral outrage some critics
show towards people like David Irving and Noam Chomsky. Perhaps I'm
too complacent, but I tend to view them with a sort of detached
intellectual amusement, the way one might view UFO enthusiasts or flat-
earthers.)
Again, if you believe that the analogy I have constructed does not hold
water, I welcome any intelligent analysis of its shortcomings. To
date, however, the best response (from yourself and others) has been
moral indignation and a few alleged distinctions which, upon the most
casual scrutiny, prove to be either inessential or simply incorrect.
mond...@my-deja.com
>
> It seems what you're saying, Charles, is that IRA terror-bombing is
> incomparable to the US terror-bombing because *you* don't see them as
a
> military force, *you* don't think they're at war, *you* don't think
their
> targets have any military value, and *you* don't think any military
> necessity exists for their campaign.
IRA terror-bombing is incomparable to the US "terror-bombing", because
IRA specifically targets civilians. You have to prove US did the same,
tergeted speicifically civilians, for the two to be comperable. And
you do claim that, of course. But that's the point that needs to be
proven before military can be equated with terrorists.
Furthermore, I think most people would define terrorism as attempts to
achieve political results through violent means when democratic means
are available. I'm guessing this fits the IRA and I don't know whether
it can fit the American involvement in Cambodia in any reasonable
meaning of the term.
(snip!)
mond...@my-deja.com
> > cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> > > mond...@my-deja.com wrote:
> >
Isn't the fact that, as you state, "any B-52 'box' over a map of
Cambodia" (assuming I understand this term correctly) including
military targets will also include civilan targets supports the
argument that civilian deaths were incidental? You couldn't hit
military targets without also hitting civilian targets, right? It
seems to me there's a contradiction between the terms "necessarily"
and "deliberately".
<snip>
Dan Clore
> In article <Pine.GSO.4.21.0007290225510.28183-
> 100...@elaine33.Stanford.EDU>,
> Nathan Folkert <nfol...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> > On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Charles P. Kalina wrote:
[snip]
> [...]
> > The Americans were accused of deliberately targeting Cambodian
> civilians,
> > not just of hitting some Cambodians in the course of legitimate combat
> > operations (and, indeed, Shawcross found excellent support for these
> > accusations in the declassified maps of bombing flights during
> Operation
> > Arclight into Cambodia showing attacks that were nowhere near the Ho
> Chi
> > Minh trail or which could in any way be construed as "hot pursuit",
> some
> > of which corresponded to some of the most densely populated parts of
> > Cambodia).
>
> Certainly, I do not deny that the US was _accused_ of deliberately
> targeting Cambodian civilians. During the Vietnam War, the US was
> accused of doing many evil things. Very few of these accusations were
> ever substantiated -- though I grant that some people's standards of
> proof may be rather lower than mine where US wickedness is concerned.
Indeed, since it seems that no level of evidence is good enough to
convince you that the US committed atrocities.
> ("Well, your honor, we've got hearsay and conjecture. Those are
> _kinds_ of evidence..." ;-)
>
> In this case, nobody has presented _any_ valid evidence that the US
> deliberately targeted civilians.
We did however present evidence that you cannot conduct such bombing
without targeting civilians. This evidence failed, of course, to meet
your high standards.
> It has been claimed that 600,000
> civilians were killed, and I agree that this would in itself constitute
> strong evidence that the bombing either targeted civilians deliberately
> or was grossly negligent. But no support has been offered for this
> figure.
>
> Mr. Clore did refer to the (rather crude) Shawcross maps you cite.
> However, as I noted in my reply to him, these maps cover only the final
> six-month bombing in 1973. For the first months the targets are indeed
> concentrated along the border, and in subsequent months there are still
> many targets in the border area.
This is a misrepresentation. I've just checked the maps, and they all
show substantial bombing away from the border, though the bombing does
include the border areas. I am surprised that such a skilled sophist as
Mr. Kalina would resort to such easily disproven lies.
> There are indeed many targets away from the border in later months, but
> these track the expansion of communist military control.
No they do not, and you provided no evidence for this claim, for the
simple reason that there is none, because it is false. I suggest you
look at some of the maps showing the areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge
at different times. The harshening should have taken place in 1971 or
1972 by your line of reasoning, not in 1973.
> Therefore
> they are not evidence that the US bombing targeted civilian areas as
> such, rather than communist military targets.
>
> Shawcross does argue in the text that the US bombed areas
> indiscriminately and with reckless disregard for the likelihood of
> civilian casualties. But while my recollection of his book is
> demonstrably imperfect, I don't recall him suggesting that the US
> _deliberately_ targeted civilians.
>
> Considering that his (quite tendentious) book argues that US bombing
> was primarily responsible for the "Destruction of Cambodia", I think he
> would have made this accusation if he thought there was sufficient
> evidence for it.
I'm not in the mood to go looking for such a claim. It is impossible not
to make this conclusion based on the evidence provided by Shawcross,
however, so it hardly matters.
Good.
> However, it remains the fact that some authors do construct such an
> equation. Half of this construction is an exaggerated description of
> the US bombing, which makes it appear comparable to Khmer Rouge
> terror. Perforce, this means the author must condemn the US bombing in
> the strongest terms.
You have not established this alleged exaggeration. Indeed, you've
instead simply engaged in denying the known facts about the bombing in
order to downplay its effects.
> The other half of the argument partially rehabilitates the Khmer Rouge,
> reducing their crimes and/or transferring guilt until those crimes
> appear to be comparable to the (inflated) crimes of the United States.
> One device for doing this is to say that the Khmer Rouge would not have
> been so bad had they not been "radicalized" by US bombing.
Well, they probably wouldn't, but I hardly see how that "rehabilitates"
them.
> Chomsky's later work (such as _Manufacturing Consent_, op cit)
> constructs just such an equation. He adopts the lowest possible
> estimate of Khmer Rouge atrocities.
False: _Manufacturing Consent_ does not adopt the lowest possible
estimate of Khmer Rouge atrocities. Herman & Chomsky cite Vickery's
750,000 as the most plausible. A US government publication called
_Problems of Communism_ published an estimate of 600,000 (I forget the
author's name). If the goal was to take the lowest estimate, surely they
would have adopted this one or found one even lower.
> He compares it to the highest
> possible estimate of US wrongdoing, including deaths under the KR for
> which the after-effects of US wartime practices are supposedly
> responsible.
This is flatly false as well. Herman & Chomsky in fact reject some of
the higher estimates of US wrongdoing, such as Ponchaud's 800,000 killed
by bombing (to say nothing of the Khmer Rouge's own 1 million), as
implausibly high.
> He thus concludes that the Cambodian genocide took place in two roughly-
> equal phases, with "Phase I" the US half of the genocide, "Phase II"
> the Khmer Rouge half.
Adopted from the Finnish Inquiry Commission's conclusions.
> His evidence of "propaganda" is that the US
> media supposedly tend to place undue emphasis on (allegedly
> exaggerated) accounts of Phase II, but ignore Phase I. This being a
> Chomsky-oriented forum, I have tended to interpret arguments such as
> that offered by Mr. Fused as being echoes of this view.
>
> Now, Chomsky's canonical evasion is to lead readers directly to a
> conclusion for which he then denies any responsibility, sanctimoniously
> insisting that he never said it, and often pointing to some passing
> equivocation which pointed to the opposite conclusion. Thus it's very
> possible that he, and by extension his acolytes in this forum, would
> deny that they are constructing such an equation. But the fact remains
> that they do construct it, and we need not pretend that they don't just
> because they'd rather not be held responsible for it.
>
> (One thinks again of people like David Irving -- who exaggerates Allied
> crimes, minimizes the Holocaust until it is no larger than these
> exaggerated Allied crimes, but all the while insists that it's foul
> slander to call him a Nazi apologist.)
>
> Certainly, the fact that an author condemns US bombing is not
> sufficient evidence that he is constructing such an argument. Most
> people who condemn US bombing aren't (though the likelihood in this
> forum is probably rather higher). But if the author shows some dubious
> (or simply dishonest) tendency to exaggerate US bombing while
> simultaneously rehabilitating the Khmer Rouge, it's not unfair to infer
> that he's engaged in just such a construction.
And if an author shows some dubious (or simply dishonest) tendency to
exaggerate the Khmer Rouge, while simultaneously rehabiliting the US?
This is not, however, precisely the case. The events are not exactly
concurrent: the harshening of Khmer Rouge policy *followed* the
intensification of the bombing.
> However, to say that Khmer Rouge terror increased _because_ of the
> bombing (whether wholly or in part) is simply post-hoc reasoning. The
> hypothesis might be true, but without evidence, it's mere conjecture.
I am not at all surprised that Mr. Kalina is either ignorant of the
evidence, or hoping the readers are. We have masses of testimony from
refugees and so forth describing the anger brought on by the bombing.
> We may equally say that the bombing and the increased terror were
> concurrent because they were both caused by a Z-variable -- namely the
> fact that the Khmer Rouge now had sufficient organized strength both to
> implement their terror program more vigorously, and to go on the
> offensive, which then attracted US bombing.
This however is contrary to the known facts.
> This hypothesis has at least equal merit, and it accounts for one fact
> which the "radicalization" hypothesis doesn't, a fact that Mr. Clore
> tellingly tried to obscure. There was no sea-change in Khmer Rouge
> behavior in 1973. They used terror routinely before 1973, and while it
> did increase in 1973, it was only a difference of degree and not one of
> kind.
Kalina here attempts to portray me as misrepresenting the facts, when in
actuality he is the one misrepresenting the facts. Calling it a
"sea-change" would be a gross exaggeration, but the behavior of the
Khmer Rouge, and most specifically its use of terror, did in fact
greatly change in the period 1973. There are masses of testimony to this
effect, and if we are to discount it at all as Orwellian Newspeak as
Kalina earlier suggested, then we also must assume that the parties
guilty of employing this Newspeak included the refugees who fled the
countryside, the State Department officials who interviewed them and
published the results, the Lon Nol government, etc etc etc. See
Kiernan's _How Pol Pot Came To Power_ for details. Here is a quote from
a US Defence Intelligence Agency Report from 1971: "Khmer Communist
cadres have resorted where necessary to coercion, intimidation and
assassination. Some have used their new positions to settle old scores
with government officials who formerly opposed them and labeled them
'bandits' under the Sihanouk regime. *On the whole, however, they have
attempted to avoid acts which might alienate the population*, and the
behaviour of Vietnamese Communist soldiers has generally been exemplary
when compared with South Vietnamese." [my emphasis]
> Given that terror was already Khmer Rouge practice, I think the best
> explanation for the 1973 increase is simply that they now had enough
> strength to pursue that practice with greater vigor. The US bombing
> was epiphenomenal, not causal -- another reflection of the KR's growing
> strength.
This unfortunately relies on denying known facts, shuffling chronology,
moving bombing sites, and on and on.
Dan Clore
> In article <3982A8...@columbia-center.org>,
> > > cl...@columbia-center.org wrote:
> > > > mond...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > > > Why, according to you, did the US bomb civilian Cambodians?
> > >
I don't see your point. If you bomb Cambodia with B-52s, you are
deliberately hitting civilian targets, because you can't conduct such
bombing without doing so. There were plenty of alternatives available.
T-28s and F-111s in particular frequently bombed the countryside. They
also hit plenty of civilian targets, but they at least could have
avoided it (or tried to do so).