John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry
In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive"
bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, "Anything that flies
on everything that moves". As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war
against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the
orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for
Kissinger's murderous honesty.
As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery - including
the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields - I
am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A
telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who
had much in common with today's Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They,
too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.
According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of "fewer than 5,000
poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics,
loyalty and leaders". Once Nixon's and Kissinger's B52 bombers had gone
to work as part of "Operation Menu", the west's ultimate demon could not
believe his luck.
The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural
Cambodia during 1969-73. They levelled village after village, returning
to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left monstrous necklaces of
carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was unimaginable. A
former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors "froze up and
they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and
half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told... That
was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over."
A Finnish Government Commission of Enquiry estimated that 600,000
Cambodians died in the ensuing civil war and described the bombing as
the "first stage in a decade of genocide". What Nixon and Kissinger
began, Pol Pot, their beneficiary, completed. Under their bombs, the
Khmer Rouge grew to a formidable army of 200,000.
