Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [195]
It will come as no surprise that his appeal went unanswered. Furthermore, this material has been suppressed up to the present time, apart from the dissident literature.46 The standard position within the mainstream, adopted by defenders of the bombing and critics as well, is that “Sihanouk did not protest” (William Shawcross). When the “secret bombings” became public knowledge in 1973, it was claimed that Sihanouk had privately authorized bombing of Vietnamese bases near the border areas. True or false, that is irrelevant to the suppression of Sihanouk’s impassioned appeals, which referred to the bombing of Khmer peasants. Furthermore, as we observed in earlier discussion, “while commentators and media analysts may draw whatever conclusions they please from the conflicting evidence available, this does not entitle them to suppress what is, by any standards, crucial evidence, in this case, Sihanouk’s attempt to arouse international protest over the U.S. bombing of the civilian society.”47
Reviewing this period in his Cambodia Year Zero, François Ponchaud remarks that Sihanouk called the U.S. bombings of “Vietcong bases” a “scandal and a crime over Radio Phnom Penh, but nobody was deceived.” Ponchaud and his readers, however, are deceived: Sihanouk publicly denounced the bombing and other attacks on Khmer peasants, and not only over Radio Phnom Penh but in quite public documents and appeals to the international press. In his Sideshow, Shawcross says only that Cambodia “continued to denounce” American air and artillery attacks through 1969, but “made no public protest that specifically mentioned B-52 attacks” (p. 94)—true, but irrelevant for the reasons repeated in the last paragraph.48
In May 1969, William Beecher reported B-52 raids on “Vietcong and North Vietnamese supply dumps and base camps in Cambodia,” citing U.S. sources. Beecher stated that “Cambodia has not made any protest,” disregarding Sihanouk’s appeals and his protest against the murder of “Khmer peasants, women and children in particular,” not Vietnamese military bases. Beecher also commented that “in the past, American and South Vietnamese forces had occasionally fired across the border and even called in fighters or helicopter gunships to counter fire they received from enemy units there,” ignoring the somewhat more important fact that U.S. aircraft and U.S.–ARVN–South Korean forces had been attacking Cambodian villages, according to the “friendly” government of Cambodia. The headline for his article states falsely: “Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested.” Beecher’s article caused consternation in Washington, setting off the first stage of what later became the Watergate scandal. As we have commented elsewhere, “It is remarkable that Beecher’s unique though quite inadequate account is now held up as evidence that the press maintained its honor throughout this period, despite the crimes of Richard Nixon.”49
Once again, the U.S. escalation of the war against Cambodia in 1969 coincided with similar efforts in Laos and Vietnam. The general reaction was similar throughout, and remains so. The post-Tet accelerated pacification campaign, which thoroughly demolished the civilian base of the NLF, was regarded as so uninteresting that it is passed over in virtual silence in the popular retrospectives. As for the wars in Laos and Cambodia, Elterman comments, after reviewing the major media coverage, that apart from the “alternative press,” they were virtually “invisible” in the press in 1969 when they were expanding to new heights as the U.S. Air Force was shifted from North Vietnam to Laos and Cambodia after the “bombing halt.”50
In March 1970, Cambodia was drawn irrevocably into the carnage sweeping