Did America, at any point in history, do something to Cambodia (details inside)

Yes, we did. I can look up the specifics (or maybe @kritiper knows them; he’s crafting a response right now), but my recollection is that the Americans pulled out and left them to their fate when the Khmer Rouge began their attacks in April of 1975. Was it also the case that some of the bombing we did in Vietnam actually struck part of Cambodia? I’m less sure of that, but something of that sort occurred.

The Khmer Rouge slaughtered about a million of their fellow countryfolk, as I recall, and we did nothing to intervene. They also forced people out of the cities, sent them to the countryside with no way to feed and house themselves, sent them to “reeducation” camps, and much, much more. Action in Vietnam received a lot of coverage, but what happened in Cambodia was basically ignored. As I understand it.

I apologize if I have my facts wrong and hope someone will set me straight. But around the 10-year anniversary of the onslaught, I read three or four books on the subject of what happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and this is how I remember it.

”... despite notable victories over the enemy, such as the (US) ARMY’s successful seizure and holding of the Ia Drang Valley in the central highlands in the late summer of 1965 (which proved the feasibility of massed helicopter transport of infantry troops), the combined US and South Vietnamese forces could not destroy the invading and infiltrating enemy forces. They could not break the enemy’s will and compel him to call a halt to the war, especially when his supply ports in North Vietnam and Cambodia and his Ho Chi Minh Trail were still politically off limits for destruction by superior American air power.”
”...by February 1968…” there was still no end in sight.
Cambodians did nothing to stop the infiltration of North Vietnamese forces into their country, and the US proceeded to attack these “off limit” troops, and bomb formerly “off limit” targets in an effort to bring the North Vietnamese to the Paris peace talks.

It is easy for some to conclude that the US was the bad guy in Viet Nam when our government, and the UN, was trying to stop the spread of Communism. It was a dirty, nasty situation, and the North Vietnamese seemed to be content to fight to the death. And the US felt compelled to take the war to the enemy, wherever he could be found, right or wrong. It was just too much for an undeclared war. And war is a dirty, nasty thing.
The biggest mistakes the US and the UN made were to not fight to win, and for President Johnson to wage the war his way from Washington, DC.

Your friend wants to claim the US as being the bad guy?? I’m sure there are those here in the US who would say the same thing about the other side.

(Quoted excerpts from History of the US ARMY by James M. Morris, Copyright 1986 by Bison Books Ltd.)

Yes. The US “did something”.

An udeclared bombing campign was carried out during the Vietnam War in 1969 -1970 under the Nixon administration. The targets were NVA and Vietcong staging and supply areas inside Cambodia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu

Estimates of non-combatant civilian casualties range from 30,000 to 100,000.

BUT – It’s interesting to me that your Cambodian friend never mentioned the Khemer Rouge when talking about the suffering and damage done to his country. Between 1975 and 1979 the Khemer Rouge extremists enslaved nearly the entire population; and starved, tortured, or exectued over 2 million Cambodian men, women and children :
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Khmer-Rouge

Yes. Nixon approved secret incursions and bombing against Cambodia.

What America did to Cambodia between March 1969 and August 1973 was to drop half a million tons of bombs onto it. This was mostly indiscriminate carpet bombing using B52 bombers. One result was a refugee crisis with 2 million people fleeing to the cities from the countryside and, as some have suggested, another was the rise of the Khmer Rouge who took control of the country in 1975.

It is an example of evil for which two men were responsible, President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor at the time, Henry Kissinger, who ordered the campaign and kept it secret from the American people and from the United States Congress.

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.” – Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour

They weren’t much of a secret. Nixon and Kissinger committed war crimes.

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1973/11/10

@flutherother You seem to be suggesting that the US bombing campaign led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge? How so?

^ That’s the general consensus. You had a country shedding French colonialism, followed by internal strife and coups, then massive carpet bombing of civilians by the US, which created support for the KR. It’s often the case that foreign destruction of a country and terrorizing its population leads to support for extremism, long-term instability, and future horrors.

@Zaku “The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide.”

Ben Kiernan author of “How Pol Pot Came to Power”.

Ah, interesting, thanks!

Thank you everyone for the answers. It sounds like a really messed up situation, and looks like my country was also involved. I think I can sympathize more with the guy’s frustration.

And yeah, I don’t remember the Kmer Rogue ever mentioned in the conversation. Maybe it just wasn’t on-topic? I hope so, because if it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t know what to think about him.

It’s also very interesting because I never knew my country did use Cambodia as a supply port. In fact, I have never heard about Cambodia’s involvement in the war before. I thought this was just the war between us and the US. Everyone else was just there by accident.

And one thing I really appreciate about America is that you can be honest about your mistakes. You can admit to what you did wrong in the past without any sugar coating. Some countries want to pretend nothing has happened at all.

@kritiper I think I need to get something out of the way: the Vietnamese fighting the war at that time didn’t think in terms of Communism vs whatever at all or at least this is what I was taught at school. To Vietnamese people this has always been a war against the US invaders. To us, the US was here because they wanted to turn us into some kind of “little America”, just like what the French did to us, and we were to prevent that from happening. Communism was just there because we needed an ideology to fight for and this was extremely necessary if you think about it. During thr French colonization, many rebellions had broken out, but none succeeded because most people didn’t really knew what they were fighting for. Only when Communism was introduced did Vietnam gain more power over the French.

I’m going to summarize this using Revolutionary War terms to help you understand the mindset better: so imagine the Vietnam war is like the Revolutionary War. What you learn in the US is that North Vietnam was the Patriots, South Vietnam was the British, and the US was the German Hessians aiding the British/South Vietnam. But what we learn here is that the US was the British, and the entire country of Vietnam was the Patriots. The Vietnamese who were against the war? They were either the Loyalists or Benedict Arnold.

Thinking of it this way, you will understand why the Viet Cong were so willing to fight to the death. I’m not saying this to defend Communism or say that what my country did was right. I’m just trying to help you understand the people’s mindset at the time, and why they did what they did.

Oh, and some facts about Vietnam and the UN: the UN was our enemy at one point during the Pol Pot reign. Vietnam was heavily involved in the war with Khmer Rogue, initially as revenge at them for raiding an area in our country. But the UN, for some reason, thought we were trying to start a riot, and decided not to form any relationship with us. That started a long period of total closure from the outside world, which was the basic of the 1980s. That is what I heard of about the Khmer Rogue, and I’m not sure if that is true.

I can only state what I have read and what I remember. Everything else is a matter of historical record. It would be interesting to know what John F. Kennedy planned to do about it, from a US perspective.
But call it what you will. So much of what one hears about it is just a matter of opinion.

@Mimishu1995 I’m going to slightly correct your comment.

“I think I need to get something out of the way: the [NORTH] Vietnamese fighting the war at that time didn’t think in terms of Communism vs whatever at all or at least this is what I was taught at school.”

For the south Vietnamese, it was very much about Communism.

@kritiper yeah, I would like to hear more about the US perspective too. Like you, I can only state what I saw and heard. I think there is one thing we can both agree on: the Vietnam war was a messy and complicated situation, and to this day there are still debates about what exactly happened.

@raum thank you for that :) Most of what I learned at school was from the North Vietnam’s perspective, so I’m not surprised that the South had a different opinion.

@raum It was the entrenched South Vietnamese money living offf of US largesse that were backing the US war. Most of the population of South Vietnam suported Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Cong fighters. That is one reason the US had such a hard time, beceause they could not figure out who was with them and who was against them..

That is also the reason for war crimes like the My Lai massacre, because US troops distrusted everyone.

I’m very amused that a white man is explaining the Vietnam war to me.

^ Ummmm…. what? @zenvelo is very much correct here.

@zenvelo is partially correct here. The US had a hard time, because they could not figure out who was with them and who was against them.

And part of the reason is that it wasn’t black and white. Supporting HCM and Viet Cong or supporting US.

Most of the population supported what HCM originally began with Viet Minh. Most American texts don’t even make a distinction between Viet Minh and Viet Cong. Or how these two groups overlapped or diverged during the war.

But to say My Lai massacre happened because they couldn’t trust anyone is absurdly reductive and dismissive that they slaughtered 500 civilians. Infants. Carved their company initials into their bodies.

It was a fucking war crime. Not just whoops, I didn’t know who to trust. Fucking infants, dude.

South Vietnam only existed for twenty years, from 1955 to 1975 and it only lasted that long because of support from the French and then the Americans. Looking back it would have been better had it never been created.

Objectively, from an American standpoint, it doesn’t make sense to intervene at the cost of so many American lives.

Though it’s like the fall of Afghanistan. The US had no business being there. But is the fall of Kabul truly better for the Afghan people?

@raum: “But to say My Lai massacre happened because they couldn’t trust anyone is absurdly reductive and dismissive that they slaughtered 500 civilians. Infants. Carved their company initials into their bodies.

It was a fucking war crime. Not just whoops, I didn’t know who to trust. Fucking infants, dude.”

Aah, yes. This is what you objected to. Of course. I agree with you 100%. The entire US project in Southeast Asia was a crime against humanity.

I was thrown off by your (what I thought could have been some multi-layered ironic) “white man is explaining the Vietnam war” comment. @zenvelo‘s reply to your inaccurate “For the south Vietnamese, it was very much about Communism” was important. I’m still unclear, to be honest, what that was about.