Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [211]
6.2.9. SUMMARY
Summarizing, prior to “the decade of the genocide,” media treatment of Cambodia was as predicted by the propaganda model, and the same is true, quite dramatically, during the two phases of this terrible period and since. During phase I, refugee testimony was considered uninteresting, and little is known today apart from the fact that there was obviously vast slaughter and destruction; this phase does not enter the record as a “holocaust” or exercise in “genocide,” and the source is forgotten. During phase II, the myth of the “gentle land” was extended through 1975, and the U.S. role and responsibility for what then took place was also quite commonly effaced, although some did not sink to this level of vulgarity. Refugee testimony was eagerly sought, although only if it lent support to the STV, and evaluations by State Department specialists and other knowledgeable commentators that gave a more nuanced (and in retrospect, essentially accurate) picture were dismissed as lacking utility. There was massive outrage, reaching its peak in early 1977 when the death toll was still well below that of phase I, with a record of deception that is highly illuminating.117 As something like the STV came to be realized in 1977–78, its horrors were downplayed in official government circles, and subsequent U.S. support for Pol Pot arouses little notice.
Phase III proceeded along a dual course. In a fanciful reconstruction that maintains the level of integrity shown throughout, it is alleged that “left-wing skepticism” so dominated Western opinion and governments that there was “silence” throughout the DK period; the wide acceptance of this thesis, despite the quality of the evidence provided and its manifest absurdity, counts as yet another example of how readily the most implausible contentions can become doctrine, as long as they are serviceable. In Indochina, a new phase of Western concern about the victimization of Cambodia began, with outrage now directed not against Pol Pot but against the new oppressors who overthrew him. The United States took a leading role in orchestrating the new concern, which combined Chinese and U.S. interest in “bleeding Vietnam” with a renewed exhibition of the Western conscience, properly bounded to exclude phase I and its long-term effects, and bypassing the U.S. role in support of Pol Pot—in part via its Chinese allies, who have been admirably frank in explaining their stand. This carefully channeled benevolence succeeded in the goal of keeping the Pol Pot forces active and injuring Vietnam and also, incidentally, the suffering people of Cambodia who are the objects of our profound concern. The relief effort in 1979–80 did succeed in aiding Cambodians in distress, but it has also sustained the Pol Pot forces and thereby impeded Cambodia’s recovery and, perhaps, its independence, although about this we can only speculate.
Putting aside the undoubtedly sincere reactions of many people who were exposed to evidence of properly selected atrocities that passed through the media filter, the only rational conclusion from this illuminating record is that the West was consumed with horror over Khmer Rouge atrocities during phase II not because of a sudden passion for the fate of the suffering people of Cambodia—as the record during phase I, and elsewhere, makes sufficiently clear—but because the Khmer Rouge had a useful role to play: namely, to permit a retrospective justification for earlier French and American crimes in Indochina,