Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [199]
Running through the columns seriatim for relevant material, number 5 (May 11) quotes a Western European diplomat who says that “American men in American planes are bombing the hell out of this place,” and notes that the U.S. aircraft “do not always receive accurate answers” about civilians in the targeted areas “from the Cambodian commanders” who direct the jet fighter-bombers. The Cambodians, then, are to blame for the civilian casualties that must result, although “no reliable figures are available” and refugees are not asked to supplement with their personal knowledge. The next two columns (May 24, 27) are the only ones concerned directly with the effect of the bombing in the countryside. The first reports “extensive” destruction from bombing that has wiped out “a whole series of villages” along the main highway, with often not even a piece of a house left standing for miles, while “a few people wander forlornly through the rubble, stunned by what has happened, skirting the craters, picking at the debris.” A group of villagers from Svay Rieng Province, abutting Vietnam, report the destruction of seven villages, with many killed. “The frightened villagers uprooted by the bombing have a great deal to say,” Schanberg comments, but we do not read it here. Rather, he explains that “There is no doubt that the Seventh Air Force is making a marked effort to avoid civilian casualties—at least outside the eastern third of the country, which is solidly held by the enemy”; and if there are casualties it is the fault of Cambodian military officials who request air strikes with “almost no concern about civilian lives or property.” The second column informs us that “the refugees frequently tell about the bombing,” which has destroyed villages and “terrified all the rest of the villagers,” a Western diplomat reports. But the refugees are granted only two phrases, an “incongruously polite” request that “I would be very glad if the Government would stop sending the planes to bomb,” and a plea from a monk to ask the United States and other governments: “Don’t destroy everything in Cambodia.”
We hear no more from the refugees until column 15 (July 26), a graphic account of “a terror attack on the civilian population”—by Communist forces who shelled the outskirts of Phnom Penh. A weeping child describes how her little brother’s hand was cut off, and the bloodstained road and doorsteps testify to Communist barbarity, as distinct from the operations of the scrupulous American command. Column 19 (Aug. 5) tells of thousands of new refugees “fleeing from enemy assaults,” and column 21 (Aug. 7) describes Cambodian soldiers looting a recaptured village that “looked as if struck by a storm with a tongue of fire,” with many houses “smashed in by shells,” but no word from the victims, who had fled. Then follow three columns (Aug. 7, 9, 12) describing in extensive detail the bombing of the village of Neak Luong—in error—killing many government soldiers and their families. This is the sole example of American bombing that was shown in the film The Killing Fields, the only depiction there of phase I of the genocide, a memory that is acceptable since it was plainly an error.
We located eighteen additional reports datelined Cambodia, from March 25 through August 18.68 One quotes a villager who says “The bombers may kill some Communists but they kill everyone else, too” (Browne, April 11), but we found no other examples of reactions by the victims, although there is a picture of a Cambodian soldier weeping for his wife and ten children killed in the bombing of Neak Luong by error (Aug. 10).
In forty-five columns, then, there are three in which victims of U.S. bombing are granted a few phrases to describe what is happening in