I remember the morning that the news broke that we'd bombed Cambodia. I was
living in Levittown at the time and there was a peace group there, believe it
or not. That morning, phone calls were made and a demonstration hastily
organized with people marching with signs, protesting the bombing. We marchdd
along Hempstead Turnpike, a big ugly main road with lots of stores and an
island in the middle. We marched on that island and people driving by, honked
their horns in support. I came home from the demonstration to find that my
husband had taken our six year old daughter to the candy store and bought her
what she requested, a toy gun. I walked in, saw that toy gun, and broke it to
pieces. My daughter and my husband, thought I was a mad woman.
Miriam .
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 1:08 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: US Bombing Devastated Cambodia in 1970s, Now US
Is Demanding They Pay Back Millions in 'War Debt'
Have we no shame?
What was the name, and who declared war on Cambodia?
My vote...if I ever had a vote...is to not permit the government from
collecting this money, or any money spent on War, because it will only be spent
on more War, and that will make Americans less secure.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/12/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
US Air Force B-52 dropping bombs over Southeast Asia in the 1960s. (photo:
Public Domain)
US Bombing Devastated Cambodia in 1970s, Now US Is Demanding They Pay
Back Millions in 'War Debt'
By Lindsay Murdoch, The Age
12 March 17
Half a century after United States B-52 bombers dropped more than
500,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia's countryside Washington
wants the country to repay a $US500 million ($662 million) war debt.
The demand has prompted expressions of indignation and outrage from
Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
Over 200 nights in 1973 alone, 257,456 tons of explosives fell in
secret carpet-bombing sweeps - half as many as were dropped on Japan
during the Second World War.
The pilots flew at such great heights they were incapable of
discriminating between a Cambodian village and their targets, North
Vietnamese supply lines
- nicknamed the "Ho Chi Minh Trail."
The bombs were of such massive tonnage they blew out eardrums of
anyone standing within a 1-kilometre radius.
War correspondent James Pringle was two kilometres away from a B-52
strike near Cambodia's border.
"It felt like the world was coming to an end," he recalls.
According to one genocide researcher, up to 500,000 Cambodians were
killed, many of them children.
The bombings drove hundreds of thousands of ordinary Cambodians into
the arms of the Khmer Rouge, an ultra-Marxist organisation which
seized power in
1975 and over the next four years presided over the deaths of more
than almost two million people through starvation disease and execution.
The debt started out as a US$274 million loan mostly for food supplies
to the then US-backed Lon Nol government but has almost doubled over
the years as Cambodia refused to enter into a re-payment program.
William Heidt, the US's ambassador in Phnom Penh, said Cambodia's
failure to pay back the debt puts it in league with Sudan, Somalia and
Zimbabwe.
"To me, Cambodia does not look like a country that should be in
arrears.buildings coming up all over the city, foreign investment
coming in, government revenue is rapidly rising," Mr Heidt was quoted
as saying by the Cambodia Daily.
"I'm saying it is in Cambodia's interest not to look to the past, but
to look at how to solve this because it's important to Cambodia's
future," he said, adding that the US has never seriously considered
cancelling the debt.
Cambodia's strongman prime minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge
commander who defected to Vietnam, hit back, saying "The US created
problems in my country and is demanding money from me."
"They dropped bombs on our heads and then ask up to repay. When we do
not repay, they tell the IMF (International Monetary Fund) not to lend
us money," he told an international conference in early March.
"We should raise our voices to talk about the issue of the country
that has invaded other (countries) and has killed children."
Mr Pringle, a former Reuters bureau chief in Ho Chi Minh City, said
no-one could call him a supporter of Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia
with an iron-fist for three decades.
But he said on this matter he is "absolutely correct."
"Cambodia does not owe a brass farthing to the US for help in
destroying its people, its wild animals, its rice fields and forest
cover," he wrote in the Cambodia Daily.
American Elizabeth Becker, one of the few correspondents who witnessed
the Khmer Rouge's genocide, has also written that the US "owes
Cambodia more in war debts that can be repaid in cash."
Mr Hun Sen pointed out that craters still dot the Cambodian
countryside and villagers are still unearthing bombs, forcing mass
evacuations until they can be deactivated.
"There are a lot of grenades and bombs left. That's why so often
Cambodian children are killed, because they don't know that they are
unexploded ordnance," he said.
"And who did it? It's America's bombs and grenades."
A diplomat posted in Phnom Penh between 1971 and 1974 told Fairfax
Media the food the US supplied Cambodia came from excess food stocks.
"I remember well that shipments of maize were made," he said.
"Cambodians do not eat maize so it was fed to the animals."
He pointed out that the US refused to normalise relations with Vietnam
until it accepted to take on the US debt of the former southern
regime.
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