[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on Cambodia

[John W.]

Noam's Pen in Phnom Penh, then?  :-)



On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 1:36 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:

[I made the mistake of watching the PBS news account of this matter tonight:
> not one mention of US responsibility -- an amazing rhetorical triumph, when
> we remember that Plato described rhetoric as the art of ruling people's
> minds.  --CGE]
>
>        Khmer Rouge & Cambodia
>        Noam Chomsky interviewed by George McLeod
>        March 27, 2009
>
> Q: Top Khmer Rouge (KR) leaders are going on trial in Cambodia. You have
> some history with Cambodia and have written extensively on the KR. Do you
> believe a United Nations trial is the best way forward, or should it be left
> to the Cambodian people?
>
> NC: I think it should be left to the Cambodian people. I can't imagine a
> UN, international trial. But then it shouldn't be limited to the Cambodians
> - after all, an international trial that doesn't take into account Henry
> Kissinger or the other authors of the American bombing and the support of
> the KR after they were kicked out of the country - that's just a farce -
> especially with what we now know about the bombing of Cambodia since the
> release of the Kissinger-Nixon tapes, and the release of declassified
> documents during the Clinton years. There has been a very different picture
> of the scale and intensity of the bombing and the genocidal scale of it. For
> an international trial to omit this would be scandalous.
>
>
> Q: How far down the chain of command should the prosecutions go?
>
> NC: I think that's a decision for Cambodians to make - the questions should
> be: should [the prosecutions] be limited to KR criminals, or should it
> include criminals from the Lon Nol regime, or later, but those are decisions
> the Cambodian need to make.
>
> You can make a case for an internationally-run trial, but as I said, it
> would be absolutely farcical if it was restricted to Cambodians.
>
> The records say that the US wanted to "use anything that flies against
> anything that moves" [during the bombing of Cambodia] , which led to five
> times the bombing that was reported before, greater than all bombing in all
> theatres of WWII, which helped create the Khmer Rouge.
>
> So to try to excuse their crimes from the broader picture may be sensible
> for Cambodians who are trying to find some internal justice and
> reconciliation, but for the broader picture, it's simply farcical.
>
>
>
> Q: So you think US leaders should be tried in connection with the crimes of
> the DK regime?
>
> NC: Not just in the context of the DK regime—that's afterwards, I think
> supporting the KR after the Democratic Kampuchea regime, after they were
> kicked out - or supporting the Chinese invasion to punish Vietnam for the
> crime of driving them out, that's a crime in itself. But the much worse
> crime was by Kissinger-Nixon, and its pretty hard to disagree with analysts
> like Ben Kiernan ... who released the documentation during the Clinton years
> - their conclusion was that this bombing, which really had genocidal intent
> -anything that flies against anything that moves - essentially changed the
> KR from a small group into a mass army of what they call enraged peasants
> bent on revenge. How could you omit that when you are discussing the Khmer
> Rouge atrocities?
>
>
> Q: Are you saying the KRT is a show trial?
>
> NC: These trials altogether have a very strange character - the most
> serious of all the tribunals since WWII was the Nuremberg trials, and that
> was a well-designed, carefully executed legal proceeding.
>
> But if you look at it closely, it was a farce - that was implicitly
> conceded to allow the Nazi war criminals to be tried. They were some of the
> worst monsters in history - and there is no doubt they were guilty - they
> had to define a notion of war crime, and it was post-facto - they were being
> tried for crimes after they committed them.
>
> The trial had a very clear definition of war crime - it was crimes that you
> committed, and that [the allies] didn't.
>
> So for example, the bombing of urban centers was not considered a crime and
> the reason is very explicit - the allies did more of it than the Germans.
>
> The bombing of Japan frankly leveled the country and was not considered a
> crime because [the allies] did it. In fact, German war criminals were able
> to exonerate themselves if their defense was able to demonstrate that their
> counterparts in the West did the same thing.
>
> For example, a German submarine admiral who did commit war crimes by normal
> standards was freed from those charges when he brought into evidence
> testimony from an admiral in the British and American navy saying ‘yeah
> that's what we did too'. This was recognized, and chief prosecutor Jackson,
> he made a very eloquent speech to the tribunal where he said we were handing
> the defendants here a poisoned chalice, and if we sip from it, we must
> suffer the same punishment or else the trial is meaningless.
>
> Well, we have sipped from that chalice numerous times since - the chief
> crime was the crime of aggression - the supreme international crime, and
> count the times the US and Britain have been guilty of outright aggression.
> Have they been tried?
>
> It's a farce - victor's justice - and if you run through the rest of the
> trials, they pretty much have the same properties. In fact, I can't think of
> one that has been honest in this respect - the only ones I can think that
> have been honest are the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions like in South
> Africa, El Salvador or Guatemala, where they brought out what happened and
> identified the perpetrators. And in many cases, it was done very honestly,
> and by the victims - they're the ones that testified.
>
>
> Q: Then why are the KR on trial and not other murderous political leaders?
> Some Israeli generals for example have been accused of crimes against
> humanity as well.
>
> NC: An Israeli general would never be tried because they are backed by the
> US. These things reflect power systems. Very often the people that are tried
> deserve to be tried and sentenced, but the structure of the trials has
> exonerated the powerful.
>
> In fact the position is extreme - the US is the most powerful country in
> the world and it's also the most extreme in rejecting any form of judicial
> control - the US is the only country that rejected a World Court decision
> that rejected the unlawful use of force. And that's why an Israeli general
> can't be tried - if an Israeli was brought to the Hague, the US might invoke
> Europeans call The Netherlands Invasion Act. The US has legislation
> authorizing the President to use force to rescue any American brought to the
> Hague.
>
>
> Q: So you're saying that this trial is not about justice?
>
> NC: There is an element that it's about justice ... You take Nuremberg
> again; there is no doubt that the accused were guilty - but is it justice?
> You take the foreign minister Ribbentrop - one of the crimes for which he
> was sentenced, was that he supported a pre-emptive strike against Norway.
> Well, at a time Norway was a threat to Nazi Germany of course, and he
> ordered a pre-emptive strike. But what did Colin Powell do? Iraq was no
> threat.
>
>
> Q: You were heavily criticized for some of your views of the KR, and some
> accused you of being favorable to the KR. Were you unfairly criticized?
>
> NC: It's ridiculous - in fact, there has been a massive critique of some of
> things that Edward Herman and I wrote - and my view is that they were some
> of the most accurate things that were written in history [of Cambodia].
>
> Nobody has been able to find a missed comma, which is not surprising.
> Before we published the chapter - we had it reviewed by most of the leading
> specialists on the topic, who made some suggestions, but basically nothing.
>
> Our main conclusion was: You have to tell the truth - don't lie about our
> crimes denying them, and don't lie about their crimes exaggerating them. In
> fact, what we actually did ... the main thesis is a comparison between
> Cambodia and East Timor. And it's a natural comparison - massive atrocities
> going on in the same part of the world - the same years - East Timor went on
> for another 25 years afterwards, and relative to population, they were about
> at the same scale. And what we found was that there was massive lying, but
> in opposite directions. In the case of East Timor, it was ignored and
> denied. In the case of Cambodia, it was wild accusations without a particle
> of evidence. So what was the fundamental difference between the two cases -
> in Indonesia we were responsible, and we could have done something. But in
> the other case, an enemy was responsible.
>
>
> Q: But at the end of the East Timor occupation in the Clinton years, didn't
> the US urge Indonesia to pull out of East Timor?
>
> NC: Absolutely not - those are some of the most grotesque propaganda lies
> of the current period - the US supported the invasion fully - it provided
> decisive support for it, military, diplomatic and so on, and the British
> joined it, and it started to peak in 1978, and the massacres escalated in
> 1999, right before the referendum, the US continued to support it fully,
> Britain continued to support it fully, and they were much worse than
> anything reported in Kosovo at the same period. And the US continued to
> support it, even at the height of the massacres in Dili in late August, 1999
> - finally, Clinton came under such intense domestic pressure - much from the
> right wing and the Catholic Church, that he just told the Indonesians
> quietly, "okay, the game is over" and they went home - instantly. That shows
> what could have been done for the past 25 years. And Britain lagged - it
> kept supplying Indonesia with military hardware, even after the UN
> peacekeeping force went. I mean, these are the most outrageous claims.
>
>
> Q: A major trade delegation recently visited Cambodia from Israel. Should
> Cambodia be embracing this, or do you back a boycott of Israeli trade and
> investment?
>
> NC: It's the same moral issue that arises all the time - even with the
> trials. I mean yes, Israel is doing terrible things. Why? Because the US is
> supporting it - its like Indonesia and East Timor - as soon as Clinton told
> the Indonesians that its over—they didn't have bomb or boycott - they just
> told them its over,. They withdrew instantly. If the US stopped providing
> decisive military, economic, ideological support, Israeli couldn't do what
> it's doing. Well why doesn't anyone talk about boycotting the US? Because
> it's too powerful.
>
>
> Q: You seemed to defend the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979,
> despite UN resolutions passed against the Vietnamese. In contrast, you
> criticise the Israelis for their occupation on the grounds of UN resolutions
> passed against the Israelis. Why were you able to look the other way with
> the Vietnamese?
>
> NC: I didn't defend it, I criticized it. If you look at that same book that
> Herman and I wrote in 1979 - it criticizes the invasion. It's not a very
> harsh criticism because it did have a very positive consequence - it got rid
> of the KR, and if you look at it, the Vietnamese had plenty of provocation -
> the KR were attacking across the border and killing Vietnamese. By our
> standards it was fully justified, nevertheless, we did criticize it. If you
> want to look at humanitarian interventions since the war - I mean
> interventions that had a humanitarian consequence whatever their motive was
> - there are really only two major examples. The Indian invasion of East
> Pakistan in 1971 and the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. And they are never
> touted because the US was against them.
>
>
> Q: You have obviously been one of the top critics of US policy - do you
> think the Obama administration marks a change from past administrations?
>
> NC: I can't see anything - I mean he is escalating the war in Afghanistan
> and Pakistan, I mean Bush started it in 2004, but he is continuing it -
> there is no indication that I can see. I mean the Bush administration was
> kind of off the spectrum - they were extreme in their arrogance and brazen
> contempt for the world. But the second Bush term kind of moderated it - they
> kicked out the more extreme people - Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and it sort of
> went more towards the centrist position.
>
> And Obama is moving forward toward the familiar centrist position - he is
> very misinterpreted. I mean, you can't blame him - for example, it is
> claimed that he was a principal opponent of the Iraq war - but was he? His
> criticism of the war was that it was a strategic blunder - you could have
> read that in Pravda [newspaper] in 1985 about the invasion of Afghanistan.
>
>
> Q: What do you think the Obama administration is up against with the
> economic crisis? How bad do you think it will get?
>
> NC: Nobody really knows - a lot of the sophisticated money managers think
> it may level off by the fall and start recovering. On the other hand, there
> are sensible economists that think it will go much deeper. And the Obama
> administration is being very delicate in the moves it is making. It is
> moving in ways that don't interfere with the basic structure of the system
> that created the crisis. You can see with the bonuses that are enraging
> everyone. I mean there is a way to deal with the bonuses - the way that
> congress is dealing with it to tax them, it's probably unconstitutional.
>
> But there is a very simple way of doing it - the government basically owns
> AIG by now - it has controlling shares. It could simply divest the financial
> section that is responsible for the crisis and separate it from AIG, and
> keep the functional part going. And the other part can just fend for itself,
> and the executives can try to get their bonuses from a bankrupt section -
> that ends that problem. But that would interfere with the corporate
> structure, which Obama won't do.
>
>
>
> Q: Do you believe it turn will turn into another great depression?
>
> NC: I think that's very unlikely it would go that far - for one thing,
> there are built-in safeguards from the New Deal period. However, it's not
> certain. This morning in the financial press, China is calling for
> replacement of the dollar as the reserve currency.
>
> Nobody really knows what is going to happen.
>
> http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21031
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