Decades after the Vietnam War, much of Southeast Asia is still settling the unfinished scores of the conflict. The Khmer Rouge needs no introduction. Images of skulls shaped into an upward triangular pile is something that refuses to escape the depths of the human mind. Millions perished during the years that had defined the shortly lived onslaught of the Khmer Rouge. No one was spared and any and everyone became a subversive suspect. Wearing a pair of glasses would be reason enough to be tagged as a subversive. Anyone that could read outside of official channels could challenge the principles of the revolution. The punishment for subversive activities usually resulted in executions which were often facilitated on the spot.
How does a revolutionary political platform turn into something that degenerates into a bloodthirsty force of murderous rage? Ever since the invention of gunpowder it has always been much easier to shoot first and ask questions later. If society is thought to require a massive transformation for the common good it is believed that anyone that stands in the way of progress becomes a personification of the enemy. Creating an enemy is all too easy because the only thing we require is to attack the differences of our peers. Those differences are fashioned as white lies which is why an entire population becomes so credulous in believing them. What we have is a diabolical tactic of mind control that isn’t an exclusive byproduct of the underdeveloped world.
Mainstream historical interpretations of the Vietnam War leave out inconvenient truths simply because they are too controversial to address. For example, when the United States expanded the war into neighboring Laos and Cambodia, ideal conditions were created for the Khmer Rouge to rise and seize power in the nation of the latter. A weakened Cambodian monarch was viewed with a great deal of contempt for allowing aerial bombardments of villages, farmland, and other aspects of civilian infrastructure. The Khmer Rouge took advantage of these popular animosities and from there Pol Pot formed a revolution out of the proverbial gun barrel.
With that in mind why doesn’t the International Criminal Court summon top American military commanders from that period of the Vietnam War as indirect accomplices of the Khmer Rouge? After all, didn’t the American military brass create the ideal conditions for the Khmer Rouge to thrive? From there it becomes possible to apply the same concept and hold America accountable for its actions in Iraq all under the same alias of malignant manipulation; in reiteration, the latter often sows the seeds of instability which leads to atrocities.
Unfortunately, the decrepit cronies of the Khmer Rouge exploit legal proceedings as a means of shielding themselves from cross examinations in a conniving effort to escape evidence that could directly implicate each individual crony under the alias of crimes against humanity. Whenever a lesser nation is subjugated by a superpower’s aggressive foreign policy, innocents pay with their own blood because dictators are brought in to level the geo-political status quo in favor of the former.
-Image is Courtesy of The Borgen Project-