John Pilger -- journalist -
From Pol Pot to ISIS: The blood never dried
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 wages his seventh war
against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and
Francois Hollande promises a "merciless" attack on the rubble of Syria,
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.
updates this prescient essay on the root causes of terrorism and what we
can do about it.
