Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [205]
The current U.S. support for the Khmer Rouge merits little attention in the media, just as little notice is given to the Vietnamese position: a political settlement among Cambodians excluding Khmer Rouge leaders Pol Pot and his close associate Ieng Sary.90 As noted earlier, U.S. aid to the Khmer Rouge is reported by congressional sources to be extensive. Furthermore, the Reagan administration, following “Chinese rather than Southeast Asian inclinations,” has refused to back the efforts of its Southeast Asian allies “to dilute the strength of China’s ally, the deposed Pol Pot regime, by giving greater weight to non-Communist guerrillas and political groupings.”91 Nayan Chanda reported in 1984 that the United States had “more than doubled its financial assistance to the resistance forces,” mainly through funds earmarked for humanitarian assistance that permit U.S. allies to divert funds to arms purchases, a familiar ploy.92 While it is claimed that the funds are limited to the (generally ineffectual) non-Communist resistance, this is a shallow pretense. “Both Sihanouk’s army and Son Sann’s KPNLF,” the two components of the non-Communist resistance, “are completely discounted in Phnom Penh,” James Pringle reports from Phnom Penh in the Far Eastern Economic Review. “‘All they do is sit drinking coca-cola on the border,” said one well-informed Soviet bloc diplomat.” From the Thai border areas, Barbara Crossette reports that “Trucks loaded with men and boys, 150 or 200 at a time, pull away from settlements controlled by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and rumble into Cambodia,” where the supplies are carried “into the Cambodian interior to stockpile supplies for the Khmer Rouge,” in the expectation that they will be able to prevail by military force and terror once the Vietnamese withdraw as demanded by the United States. A spokesman for the Sihanoukist National Army in Bangkok comments that “The main problem we now have is how to get the Vietnamese to pull out without bringing back the Khmer Rouge,” the probable consequence of U.S. policy. Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke comments that the U.S. aid “will end up going to Pol Pot and his people,” a fact noted also by several journalists. Sydney Schanberg’s Cambodian associate Dith Pran, whose story of suffering under DK terror was the basis for the widely publicized film The Killing Fields and much media commentary, found somewhat greater difficulty in reaching the public with his view that “Giving U.S. weapons [to the Khmer resistance] is like putting gasoline on a fire,” and is the last thing Cambodia needs. David Hawk alleges that “it is common knowledge that Reagan-administration political officers and defence attachés from the US Embassy in Bangkok have visited Khmer Rouge enclaves.”93
The reasons for supporting the Thai-based DK coalition go beyond their “continuity” with the Khmer Rouge regime. A more fundamental reason was outlined by our ally Deng Xiaoping in 1979: “It is wise to force the Vietnamese to stay in Kampuchea because that way they will suffer more and more and will not be able to extend their hand to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.”94 This motive of “bleeding Vietnam” to ensure that it does not recover from its victimization at the hands of the West has additional advantages. By acting in such a way as to enhance suffering and repression in Indochina, we demonstrate retrospectively the “benevolence” of our “noble crusade” of earlier years.
As we discussed earlier, the Cambodians were “worthy victims” when they were being terrorized by the Khmer Rouge under phase II of the genocide, and they achieved this status once again after the Vietnamese invasion brought phase II of the genocide to an end, although with a change in the cast of characters, as the United States joined China in support of the Khmer Rouge.