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Needed: New Policies Toward Cambodia
| Article
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17853 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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3 / 1990 |
3,878 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence W. Reed
Lawrence W. Reed is president of the Mackinac Center, a public
policy research organization based in Midland, Michigan. In
August, he traveled throughout Cambodia for 11 days, funded by
a grant from the International Freedom Foundation. This
piece is adapted from an article in the winter issue of
International Freedom Review. |
When the U.S. role in Southeast Asia came to an abrupt and ignominious end with the fall of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the spring of 1975, Americans psychologically turned away and washed their hands of the region. Recriminations quickly gave way to a national, self-imposed detachment.
Even more than Vietnam, the tiny domino of Cambodia - only briefly on the front burner during America's Indochina involvement - was put out of sight and out of mind. Not until the early 1980s did Americans - nor, indeed, most of the world - come to understand so much as the smallest dimension of the horror that happened after 1975. Now the world has come to know Cambodia as the scene of one of history's most savage killing machines - the Khmer Rouge communists.
That killing machine, ousted by the Vietnamese in 1979, is on the move again. With the failure of peace talks in mid-1989, civil war resumed. Late October brought word that Khmer Rouge guerrillas had captured a district capital in northwestern Cambodia. In January, the Khmer Rouge claimed to have launched a major offensive against the country’s second-largest city, Battambang.
Understanding the complexities and contradictions that define the Cambodian experience is anything but simple. Visiting the country is almost a prerequisite, and that's what I did for 11 days last August. I saw the country's sites and people, and I heard its sounds and voices - not only with my own eyes and ears but also through those of people with a personal history with which to compare all the immediate perceptions.
My
... (1993 of 23718 Characters)
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