Re, I followed that conflict, and anyone who tries to blame the USA for the countless atrocities (that killed almost a quarter of the Cambodian population) committed by the Kymer Rouge can only have one objective in mind.
*** Probably the same type of person that is a Holocaust Denier ***
* The Administration's determination, during the last days of Pol Pot's life, to coordinate the capture and trial of the Cambodian leader was driven in part by misgivings over past American support that had helped Pol Pot remain free since 1979, when the Khmer Rouge Government was overthrown by the Vietnamese.
* In one of the cold war's proxy battles, the United States took China's side against the Soviet Union, which meant accepting the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate Government of Cambodia in opposition to the Vietnamese-imposed regime in Phnom Penh. Previously, the United States had sided with China to punish the Soviet Union for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
It was not until last year, long after the Vietnamese had withdrawn, that the United States gave the green light to go after the elusive Khmer Rouge leader. By then the cold war had ended, peace had been secured for Cambodia and Pol Pot had lost any value in the power politics of the region.
* American diplomats have long called Cambodia one of the lost causes of United States foreign policy. The secret bombing of the Cambodian border region in 1969 became one of the potential articles of impeachment against former President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.
* "There's certainly a major American responsibility for this whole situation,'' said Stephen Heder, an American scholar on Cambodia and lecturer at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. ''A war-crimes trial could have posed a problem for the U.S. because it could have raised questions about U.S. bombing from 1969 through 1973."
* And to insure that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would fight the Vietnamese occupiers, the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid.
''I encourage the Chinese to support Pol Pot,'' said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser at the time. ''The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.''
At the United Nations, the United States, along with most countries of Europe and Asia, gave the Cambodia seat to the Khmer Rouge Government by itself and, after 1983, in coalition with other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian groups.
All attempts even to describe the Khmer Rouge regime as genocidal were rejected by the United States as counterproductive to finding peace. Only in 1989, with the beginning of the Paris peace process, was the word genocide spoken in reference to a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million people.
After the 1991 peace plan led to Cambodian elections, Pol Pot lost the protection of his major Chinese and Thai sponsors, but by then Cambodian leaders were reluctant to call for his trial.
Nearly every major figure in the Phnom Penh Government had been aligned with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge at one point in his career, and they did not want to reopen questions about the regime.
