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The Forum > Article Comments > From Pol Pot to ISIS: the blood never dried > Comments

From Pol Pot to ISIS: the blood never dried : Comments

By John Pilger, published 18/11/2015

By most scholarly measure, Bush and Blair's invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the deaths of at least 700,000 people - in a country that had no history of jihadism.

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Hi Steele,

Okay, you mean AFTER they were overthrown by the Vietnamese - that's when the US began to back the Khmer Rouge. Could there be some connection between the Yanks losing the War in 1975, and their supporting anybody and their dog against the Vietnamese, simply out of spite ?

In the light of recent developments in the South China Sea, perhaps it's not drawing too long a bow to suggest that the Chinese were prepared to support the Khmer Rouge no matter what atrocities they committed against their own people - if it meant that China could keep a toehold in the region of the South China Sea.

But the main obstacle to all that was Vietnam: its invasion of Pol Pot's Kampuchea buggered up their plans, so they had to invade Vietnam 'to reach it a lesson', as I recall: instead, the Chinese themselves got a boot up the freckle - after all, the Vietnamese had just finished fighting a 45-year War against the French, the Japanese, the French again, then the Americans and Thais and Koreans, so they were pretty tough little buggers.

And today, Vietnam is probably their most bitter enemy over the South China Sea debacle. We'll see.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 19 November 2015 11:32:08 PM
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Dear Mr Steelie.

I am certain that the article you have posted is a load of crap. The reasons why I think that are this.

The USA is a largely white protestant culture very similar to our own. Our people, (the anglosphere) do not support murderous dictators unless we think that the people who may replace them are worse. To say that the USA supported a bunch of super left wing Arjay and Steelredux clones in their insane attempts to slaughter most of the Cambodian people, so that they could turn Cambodia into an agrarian Communist country, is too ridiculous for words. Only somebody with you and your friends mindsets could even contemplate it.

Secondly, we have seen with Climate Change and the idiotic concept of the "Stolen Generations" how lefties like yourself simply invent total lies and then demand that your opponents refute your of your invented allegations. You and your kind rely upon the general ignorance of the public in areas such as climate research and Australian government policy towards helping aboriginal people, to get some mileage out of your claims. The article you presented was a perfect example of this. I am very sure of myself with every aspect of the Vietnam war, but what happened on the diplomatic side of things after the Vietnamese thankfully cleaned out the Khmer Rouge, I simply do not know.

If the yanks (and apparently, according to your article, Australia) supported the Khmer Rouge diplomatically after the Vietnamese kicked them out, then they must have had good reason to do so.

To suggest otherwise, is to suggest that the governments of the USA and Australia wants to see the world run by psychopathic nut jobs, and no matter how stupid I think our governments can be (look at Muslim immigration), I simply do not believe it.
Posted by LEGO, Friday, 20 November 2015 3:20:21 AM
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Dear LEGO,

You wrote;

"Our people, (the anglosphere) do not support murderous dictators unless we think that the people who may replace them are worse."

Very droll sir.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 20 November 2015 11:34:24 AM
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Pathetic reply, Steelie.

Another left wing lightweight.
Posted by LEGO, Friday, 20 November 2015 1:07:14 PM
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Dear LEGO,

Lightweight? My goodness dear fellow, this from a bloke who declared an entire article was a load of crap not because you had tried to refute any of it but because you have your head so far up good old Uncle Sam that you are completely blinded by the glorious light you think you see emanating from that particular orifice.

Come on mate, grow some balls. How about picking just one fact from the article that you think is most disputable and we will see how it stands up to the light of day.

Sound reasonable? To most it would but of course not to you. You are unlikely to take the challenge because facts are inconvenient to your myopic world view.

But then again who knows you might surprise me.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 20 November 2015 1:23:41 PM
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Hi Steele,

On that article of Ben Kiernan's: http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/kiernan.htm

perhaps it's just coincidental that the US support for the Khmer rouge occurred throughout the presidencies of Reagan and GW Bush. It's a lesson to all of us that opportunism is never in short supply, and that if our stances are worth anything at all, they have to be based on some defensible set of principles.

But in the real, incredibly complex world of 2015, it gets murkier; one of those principles would be that we oppose 100 % the most worst enemy of humanity, in this case ISIS. Assad, for example, is perhaps a second most worst enemy of humanity, so, ghastly as it is, Assad has to be supported against ISIS, for now. To the extent that Russia also opposes ISIS, in its support for Assad, Russia must be supported. (I can hardly believe I'm typing this). Similarly, Iran.

But we should always keep our powder dry in the event that ISIS is (temporarily) defeated: what then ? Once ISIS is wiped out for the time being, what then will the Saudis and Turkey make of the Sunni-Shi'ite dispute, with Shi'ite dominance from Iran to the Mediterranean ? Maybe that's why Obama is treading so carefully, NOT to resolve the issue in Syria ? Or am I just being paranoid ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 20 November 2015 1:55:41 PM
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