Cambodian History: 1950s-1980s

US Troops 1970

boatsie — Sun, 25 May 2008 09:13:49 +0000

April 24-30, 1970: Nixon Orders Invasion of Cambodia; Kissinger Staffers Resign Rather than Participate in Coordination

sEL(’1626004942-37123′,’37123′)

On April 24, President Nixon orders US and South Vietnamese troops to secretly invade the “Parrot’s Beak” region of Cambodia, thought to be a Viet Cong stronghold. The decision is controversial. Nixon knows that many senior military officials, as well as his Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, will oppose the operation, so he carefully keeps Laird ignorant of the invasion plans. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger privately alerts Laird to some of the less controversial elements of the operation (but not the use of US forces in the invasion), and Laird recommends advising Congress of the imminent military action. Kissinger says Nixon will handle that himself. (Nixon only tells one Congressman, Senator John Stennis (D-MS), the hawkish chairman of the Armed Services Committee.) As the evening wears on, Nixon repeatedly calls Kissinger’s office, barking out contradictory orders and hanging up, as he flip-flops on whether to actually go through with the plan. “Our peerless leader has flipped out,” Kissinger tells his staff. Nixon calls Kissinger with further orders and tells him, in a slurred, perhaps inebriated voice, “Wait a minute, Bebe has something to say to you.” Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, Nixon’s longtime friend and millionaire political and personal financier (who has been thoroughly informed of the operation when many senior government and officials have not), takes the phone and says, “The president wants you to know that if this doesn’t work, Henry, it’s your ass.”
Staffers Resign – Kissinger, who has himself kept his staff ignorant of the invasion, tells one staffer, William Watts, to coordinate the National Security Council’s work on the invasion. But Watts, outraged at the secret invasion of a neutral nation, refuses. “Your views represent the cowardice of the Eastern establishment,” Kissinger snaps. Watts comes towards Kissinger as if to strike him, then turns and walks out of the office. Watts resigns his position minutes later. Kissinger’s military aide, Alexander Haig: tells Watts: “You can’t resign.… You’ve just had an order from your commander in chief.” Watts retorts, “F_ck you, Al, I just did.” Two other Kissinger staffers, Anthony Lake and Roger Morris, also resign over the invasion.
Others Informed – The plans are finalized by Nixon and Kissinger, with Rebozo sitting in on the discussion. Only on the evening of April 26 do Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers, and other Cabinet officials learn of the plans to invade Cambodia. Rogers is horrified; Laird is ambivalent, but furious that he was left out of the decision-making process. The invasion takes place on April 28. Congress and the press learn of the invasion on April 30. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 199-206]

Entity Tags: Melvin Laird, Anthony Lake, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Charles ‘Bebe’ Rebozo, John Stennis, Roger Morris, William Watts, National Security Council, Richard Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, William P. Rogers

Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate

I was a Naval Operations Center watchstander for River Division 552 in Tra Cu, Vietnam in 1969/70 – I was only 18 at the time. Another lifetime ago. I was stationed in Tra Cu for 9 months. I was transfered to support the PBR Mobile Base 2 in Tan An for 2 months and then to Headquarters of operation Giant Slingshot in Ben Luc for a month.

Riv Div 552 was part of Operation Giant SlingShot

Operation Giant Sling Shot was primarily a U.S.Navy Operation to cut off supplies coming down from the Parrot’s Beak region of Cambodia towards Saigon. This operation stationed half a dozen PBR divisions on the Vam Co Tay and Vam Co Dong Rivers. These PBR divisions monitored traffic on the river. Tra Cu was situated on a canal running off of the Vam Co Dong River.
The base was little more than a few hootches and sandbaged bunkers a few feet above sea level. The other half of Tra Cu was occupied by a Green Beret forward camp attached to an ARVN unit. I had forgotten but was reminded that the navy seals and the 9th Infantry Division also periodically staged operations out of Tra Cu

Operation Slingshot

Culture

boatsie — Sat, 24 May 2008 20:01:47 +0000

Culture

Childraising

Pol Pot

boatsie — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:57:32 +0000

Pol Pot came to power in April 1975 and set about creating what the Khmer

Rouge saw as a rural Utopia without money, or private property. The cities

were emptied and Cambodia’s history began again at Year Zero.

There are few clues in his childhood to explain the violence he unleashed in

later life. His father was a moderately wealthy farmer and his mother had

connections at the royal court in Phnom Penh. At the age of six he was sent

to the city for his education and later attended a boarding school for

bright students.

In 1948 he was among the first students sent on government scholarships to

go to university in France.

His political ideas began to form in Paris where he aimlessly studied radio

engineering, failing to get a degree but becoming drawn to the optimistic

vision of communism then circulating. In an interview in October 1997, Pol

Pot said he began reading about the French revolution, spending his

scholarship money on second-hand books and copies of the French Communist

Party newspaper, L’Humanite.

Opposition to French rule in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos was centred in the

Indochina Communist Party, which attracted many students at the time. With

Communist victories in China and across Eastern Europe, Marxism seemed the

way to liberate Cambodia from the French. Pol Pot began to attend study

sessions organised by the French Communist Party.

Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in 1953, just before the country won its

independence under King Sihanouk, who abdicated to take up a position as

head of government. It was at this time that his revolutionary fervor

developed, he later said.

Shocked on his return by the poverty of his relatives, he was driven to

political action. In 1956, he began teaching at a private college, where

according to his biographer, David Chandler, he was remembered for his mild,

affable manner and his knowledge of French literature. He was already

leading a clandestine life in the Indochina Communist Party, building up

networks of supporters. In 1960, Sihanouk, later Prince Sihanouk, launched a

crackdown on the Communists during which the party’s secretary, Tou Samouth,

disappeared. Pol Pot stepped into his shoes and emerged as the head of the

party’s Cambodian section.

He later went to China, where the Cultural Revolution was swirling. Pol Pot

was said to have been impressed by Mao Zedong’s vision of permanent

revolution, his harnessing of young impressionable minds, and the

destruction of all vestiges of history.

began fight about Sinanouk, went to VN to gain support given none; told to wait until NVN had defeated US

The armed struggle began in 1968 when Khmer Rouge guerrillas clashed with

the army and police. The situation in Cambodia began to unravel, and in 1969

the United States began its secret bombing of Vietnamese bases in Cambodia.

At the beginning of 1970, Sihanouk left for his annual cure at a spa in

France and was deposed by his chief general, Lon Nol. The new right-wing

regime in Phnom Penh galvanised the Chinese and Vietnamese, previously only

lukewarm supporters of Pol Pot, and they stepped up help.

Sihanouk was set up in Beijing as the nominal head of a united front against

Lon Nol, while Pol Pot took command at a headquarters in north-eastern

Cambodia. He had just a few thousand men under arms but with Vietnamese

weapons and training they were becoming a more effective force. Vietnamese

troops, tempered by years of war in their own country, held off offensives

by Lon Nol.

US bombers took an enormous toll, beating back Khmer Rouge attacks on Phnom

Penh in 1973. A year later the guerrillas formed a noose around the capital.

Its population had swollen as people fled there to escape US bombings and

the rigid social control imposed in areas under the Khmer Rouge.

The Four Year Plan

(final assault on phnom penh in 1975 as lon nol flees to exile and us embassy is evacuated. 17 april young kr in black pjs order 2 million to evacuate. they are all considered enemy)

The four-year plan under which Cambodia would make its great leap forward to socialism by 1979. Rice yields would be

tripled to three tonnes a hectare and a vast area would be planted in the

malarial jungles of north-eastern Cambodia. Those forced out of the cities,

known as “new people” because they were supposed to abandon all links with

the past, were sent to these areas to dig canals and clear fields .

Hundreds of thousands died of disease, hunger and beatings. Of a population

of seven million, as many as two million died. The Khmer Rouge cadres saw

them as expendable, telling them: “Keeping you is no gain. Losing you is no

loss.”

Stubbornly ignorant of the realities of Cambodian agriculture, Pol Pot

believed rice exports would finance his new vision of a developed Cambodia.

Food production collapsed.

Believing that the family stood in the way of his radical vision of

socialism, he tried to break down the capitalist structure by splitting

families and forcing people to eat in communal halls.

Driven by the virulent Maoism of its isolated leaders and their vision of a

racially pure country, the revolution destroyed everything Cambodians held

dear, unravelling the connections of Buddhism, village life, friends and

family.

By 1977, Pol Pot’s paranoia had started to fuel a series of rampaging,

self-destructive purges. The deaths and torture at Tuol Sleng, a school

turned into an interrogation centre named S-21, would be one of the most

macabre legacies. About 16,000 people, many of them Khmer Rouge cadres and

their families, passed through Tuol Sleng, where they were photographed and

their confessions kept in well-ordered files.

(as gentle and unassuming to create a system under which family life was

erased, children became torturers, and even loyal followers of the regime

were bludgeoned to death in their thousands)

Khmer Route in News

Biography

Early history

boatsie — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:36:02 +0000

904: Stœ̆ng Trêng province transferred from Laos to Cambodge.

1949: At independence, Cambodia had fourteen provinces: Battambang, Kompong Cham, Kompong Chhnang, Kompong Speu, Kompong Thom, Kampot, Kandal, Kratie, Pursat, Prey Veng, Siem Reap, Stung Treng, Svay Rieng, and Takeo.

~1962: Môndól Kiri, Rôtânôkiri, and Kaôh Kŏng provinces, and Phnom Penh autonomous municipality, split from neighboring provinces. At about that time, the capital of Kândal moved from Phnom Penh to Ta Khmau.

1976: Khmer Rouge abolished provinces and created seven zones (Northern, Northeastern, Northwestern, Central, Eastern, Western, and Southwestern) and two special regions (Kracheh Special Region Number 505 and Siemreab Special Region Number 106). The zones were divided into numbered damban (regions).

1977: Siemreab Special Region Number 106 abolished.

1979: Zones abolished and provinces reinstated when the Khmer Rouge fell to the Kampuchean National United Front.

~1980: Preăh Vihéar province split from Stœ̆ng Trêng.

~1983: Kâmpóng Saôm autonomous municipality (formerly Sihanoukville) split from Kâmpôt province.

1988: Bântéay Méanchey formed from part of Bătdâmbâng and small parts of Poŭthĭsăt and Siĕmréab-Ŏtdâr Méanchey provinces. At that poin

At the beginning of the 20th century, most of Cambodia was part of French Indo-China, a French protectorate; the rest of it was in Siam. In 1907, the British and French delimited their respective “spheres of influence” in Siam. The French part, consisting of most of what are now the provinces of Bântéay Méanchey, Bătdâmbâng, Ŏtdâr Méanchey, and Siĕmréab, was quickly annexed to French Indo-China. French Indo-China at that time comprised the territories of Annam, Cambodge (Cambodia), Cochinchine (Cochin-China), Kouang-Tchéou-Wan (Kwangchowan), Laos, and Tongking. Kwangchowan was leased from China. In 1946, France surrendered its lease. On 1949-07-19, French Indo-China was granted independence as three Associate States of the French Union: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. On 1970-10-09, Cambodia changed its name to the Khmer Republic. On 1979-01-08, it changed once again, to Kampuchea. In the 1980s, each political faction wanted to impose its preferred name, and the rest of the world has quietly gone back to using Cambodia.

From: http://www.statoids.com/ukh.html

Thailand under Shinouk

boatsie — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:34:55 +0000

During the 1960s the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk was successful in colonizing frontier regions, especially in the northwest, with army veterans or poor farmers from more crowded parts of the country.

Until the mid-1970s, the vast majority of Cambodia’s people inhabited the central lowland region, where the rural village was second only to the family as the basic social unit. The typical Cambodian village in those days was made up of ethnically homogeneous people and had a population of fewer than 300 persons. The village (phum) was part of a hamlet or community (khum) with which it shared one or more Buddhist temples (wat), an elementary school, and several small shops. Cambodian villages usually developed in a linear pattern along waterways and roads, but often houses also were dispersed through the countryside on largely self-contained paddy farms. Houses in Cambodia generally were built on wooden pilings and had thatched roofs, walls of palm matting, and floors of woven bamboo strips resting on bamboo joists. More prosperous houses, while still on pilings, were built of wood and had tile or metal roofs.

y intensive in Batdâmbâng, Kâmpóng Cham, Takêv, and Prey Vêng provinces. Cambodia traditionally has produced only one rice crop per year because it has lacked the extensive irrigation system needed for double cropping.

n the traditional Cambodian society, men must enter the monkhood for at least three months during their lifetime, often at the age of twelve or thirteen. During this time, they learn Buddhist philosophy, social morality, and practice chanting. The wat (temples) where they study are centers of Cambodian life, not only for prayer but also for education, medical care, and administrative organization. Since the 1950s, the Buddhist education has been systematically organized to include general modern knowledge from the primary level of education to the university level. The religious institution where Buddhist knowledge could be acquired included the High School of Pali, the Buddhist Institute, and the Buddhist University. The monks (bonzes) who reside in these wat are at the highest level for achieving nirvana. They wear their distinctive saffron robes and shaven heads, and set out each morning to collect food from the local people.

traditional cambodian transportation

boatsie — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:23:51 +0000

origins of cambodian genocide

boatsie — Sat, 24 May 2008 05:56:05 +0000

overview and analysis of the role US intervention in SE Asia on the genocide in Cambodia.

This sideshow
to the war in Vietnam, begun in 1965
under the Johnson administration,
had already seen 475,515 tons of ord-
nance dropped on Cambodia, which
had been a neutral kingdom until
nine months before the phone call,
when pro-US General Lon Nol seized
power. The first intense series of bomb-
ings, the Menu campaign on targets
in Cambodia’s border areas — labelled
Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Dinner, Des-
sert, and Snack by American command-
ers — had concluded in May, shortly
after the coup.
imposed an end to the bombing on Aug-
ust 15, 1973, amid calls for Nixon’s im-
peachment for his deceit in escalating
the campaign.
Thanks to the database, we now
know that the US bombardment start-
ed three-and-a-half years earlier, in
1965, under the Johnson administration.
What happened in 1969 was not the
start of bombings in Cambodia but the
escalation into carpet bombing. From
1965 to 1968, 2,565 sorties took place
over Cambodia, with 214 tons of bombs
dropped. These early strikes were likely
ese border, his own assurances to the
public that bombing would not take
place within a kilometre of any village,
and military assessments stating that
air strikes were like poking a beehive
with a stick. He responded hesitantly:
in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear
anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done.
Anything that flies, on anything that
moves. You got that? ” The response
from Haig, barely audible on tape,
sounds like laughter.
years to be nearly five times greater
than the generally accepted figure. To
put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons
into perspective, the Allies dropped just
over 2 million tons of bombs during all
of World War II, including the bombs
that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively.
Cambodia may well be the most heav-
ily bombed country in history.
A
single B-52d “Big Belly” payload
consists of up to 108 225-kilogram
or 42 340-kilogram bombs, which are
period as “fewer than five thousand
The town of Chantrea in southern Cambodia
was destroyed by 2,245 tons of US ordnance.
Stated one survivor: “The people were
angry with the US, and that is why so many
of them joined the Khmer Communists.”
walrus_cambodiabombing_oct06