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Comment by timtom123 | Hacker News Reader

Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people. "less-policed" is the entire country. ~50 years since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide.

Vietnam was by far my favorite of the three and the contrast between the three countries is stark.

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> Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people.

Probably should also include which country is responsible for the current condition of the country.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to...

Content: "Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."

I had to read up, and...my goodness.

Apparently the US bombed a neutral Cambodia secretly to incite Vietnam's neighboring countries and put pressure on them, killing 30k to 150k civilians. This caused unrest, and gave way to Khmer Rouge to sieze power, using "defense against the US" as propoganda.

Pol Pot probably was more proximally at fault.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

It's a giant mess. I don't think Pot would have gained the support/power that he did without the US indiscriminate bombing. Much like the creation of ISIS and the strengthening of the Taliban in Afghanistan, it turns out people don't like the people dropping bombs on them. They'll turn to whoever is fighting the bombers.

The US involvement in Vietnam would have already been over before the uprising of Pot had Nixon and Kissinger not skuttled peace talks to help Nixon get elected.

Iraq, for example, didn’t turn into Cambodia and conditions pre-ISIS in Syria more directly fostered its creation.

See a discussion of “proximate cause.”[1]

[1] https://legalclarity.org/what-is-the-difference-between-dire...

It’s not like Cambodia was a stable democracy before the bombings.

The Khmer Rouge and other opposition groups were fighting the government in an armed conflict since 1950. The Khmer Rouge controlled almost half of Cambodia’s territory 10 years before the bombing.

In the grand scheme of Cambodias civil war, the US bombing didn’t play that big a role at all.

You can point the fingers everywhere, you can also say the French were at fault because of the core of the Khmer Rouge group were scholarship students who were sent to France to study socialism, came back with that education and used to to establish the Khmer Rouge.

It's not exactly true, Pol Pot went to France on a scholarship to become an electrical engineer. When he came back to Cambodia, he worked as a literature teacher.

The ideological content of the Khmer Rouge is very poor overall, and is a mix between nationalism and communism aiming to "clean" the nation from western influences. Which is kind of ironic given Pol Pot's background.

While true, that's where he picked up his political views, which became radically communist.

And we dropped more bombs on poor Laos (mostly because pilots weren't supposed to land back at base with bombs still on board) than on Japan and Germany combined... they estimate it will take about 600 years to removed all the unexploded cluster bombs and children regurly get maimed and killed by them (they look like tennis balls).

The Chin, Hmong, and Lao are some of the nicest people you will ever meet, too.

Reading stuff like this and Cambodia, I truly wonder why so many Americans still hide behind "freedom" for every single atrocity their government representatives have done.

Why can't Americans (and to some extent Europeans) just come out and say, "Yea, we are often assholes and we have self interests. That's why we do these atrocities. It's not because of 'freedom'"? At least be honest.

Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean you do the right things nor does it mean you are fighting the right cause.

As an American (3rd generation), I assure you that many of us are firmly aware that this nation was built upon violence and committed violence on a grand scale. In my personal opinion, we have done a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. A lot of our statecraft was learned from the British and the French. This did not really change until after the southeast Asia debacle and things started to shift to a less cynical and more nuanced view of the world.

Unfortunately, 9/11 slammed us hard back into being angry and defensive. COVID just made it worse...

It will probably be a generation until we calm back down. Or Putin/Xi dies. Whichever comes first.

> Just because you have freedom of speech

Well, they're working on that one...

I know I'm wonderful at parties but I catch so much shit, here but not especially, when I point out the incredible wrongs and the sheer body count of America's colonialist projects here into the modern day.

It really cannot be overstated. The developing world is still developing thanks to it's own institutional issues, to be sure, as everywhere else on the globe struggles with, but America has never had a larger, stronger America come in and just fuck it right up for literally no reason apart from larger geopolitical games.

Early ancestors a few tens of thousands of years ago had a genocide only operating model that wiped out a majority of males for a couple millennia. Crazily enough, apparently Slavery was an innovation in that era.

Wait until you learn about East Timor. “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens is a short, devastating read on the man, the monster.

I think PolPot has more responsibility for this.

He's responsible, but the question is if he'd have gained the power and support without the US's meddling.

Pol Pot was not alone, revolutionary movements breed on fertile grounds.

Yes they are not on the same level, Thailand used to be far ahead but has stagnated and Vietnam has caught up, Cambodia is so far behind you cannot imagine it will ever catch up with its neighboring countries. They still use dollars as currency because the local currency is so unstable

How does Laos compare?

Sorry, I can't say. I always stayed near the water for work as a dive master or ESL teacher, so I never made it to Laos.

[flagged]

My SO's family is from the portion of Gia Lai neighboring Cambodia. Gia Lai itself is fairly poor, but ime the neighboring half of Cambodia is even poorer and desperate.

It's the same story in the Mekong Delta as well (having had to go to extended family weddings in rural An Giang).

And calling out the relative lawlessness in Cambodia is not racism in any shape or form. Based on your comment history, it seems you are reflexively defensive about Cambodia to a startling degree.

Cambodia was dealt a bad hand, but so was Vietnam and Laos as well, yet neither have the same degree of institutionalized criminality that you see in Cambodia.

The problem at the end of the day lies with the country's leadership, and a quasi-reformed Khmer Rouge member like Hun Sen just isn't the right leader to help Cambodia develop out of the LDC category.

Heck, Bangladesh (historically a peer of Cambodia) was also formed due to a tumultuous history and severe instability in the 1970s-90s, but concentrated on state capacity development - something which Cambodia's leadership thumbed their nose at in the 2010s.

> * To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism*

This is bullshit. This kind of stuff isn’t black and white. Am I racist for calling Monaco a place full of rich people? Of course not, I’m describing the situation people are in, not their characters. Same holds here.

> To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism.

"The USA is full of people who believe in freedom of speech". Racist?

Different cultures are ... wait for it ... different. There are cultures I would not want to live in.

There's a reason why so many people are desperate to get into the US.

Yes, I agree the US is an a great country. The US culture is still the most influential in the world. Everyone loves American foods, movies, and consumer products.

Cambodians love American culture. Young Cambodians are desperate to see new American movies, try American foods, and get their hands on new Apple products. They love Facebook. The majority of Cambodians favor the US over China: https://www.statista.com/chart/32058/preference-for-us-china...

Interestingly, the majority of Thais favor China over the US. The most likely reason I guess would that a very large percentage of Thais claim some form of Chinese ancestry.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597318 also. I'm sympathetic for where you're coming from, even though I don't fully understand—but this implementation is not working.

Thank you for the feedback. I got carried away. I will follow the guidelines.

Appreciated!

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