What do the Bushies and the Khmer Rouge share?

[Robbien]

By Nicholas Kristof

The answer: enthusiasm for water-boarding. I’m in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and dropped by the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, where I soldiered through the haunting photos of the victims and pictures of tortures. The museum is on the site of the main torture center used by the Khmer Rouge during their brutal genocide in the 1970’s, and I was with my interpreter, whose father was executed by the Khmer Rouge.

Then I came to a familiar picture: a man being water-boarded. Beside it was the actual water-board that the Khmer Rouge used. It turns out that the Khmer Rouge had the same fondness for water-boarding as an interrogation technique that Dick Cheney does.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/what-do-the-bushies-and-the-khmer-rouge-share/



America brought down to the level of the killing fields of Cambodia. And Cheney is proud of it.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Also...

A similar brand of fucking nutbars amongst their followers. The events of New Orleans/Algiers LA point that out starkly. There are others like them out there and when given the opportunity, they WILL take full advantage of it.

[HeresyLives]

2. They also share

a dislike of education and intellectuals. The Khmer Rouge made a point of going after teachers, and indeed anyone with a degree. They were to go back to the land and be peasants.

On edit:

In an attempt to rebuild a new Cambodia with new revolutionary men and women, the Khmer Rouge set out to eradicate the old elements of Cambodia’s society, including the old education system. Like their Maoist counterparts in China, the Khmer Rouge leaders emphasized manual labor and political correctness over knowledge. They claimed "rice fields were books, and hoes were pencils." As such, Cambodia did not need an educational system. The Khmer Rouge leaders deliberately destroyed the foundations of a modern education. People with higher education such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, and former college students were killed or forced to work in labor camps. The Khmer Rouge also engaged in the physical destruction of institutional infrastructure for higher education such as books, buildings, and other educational resources. It is estimated that by the end of the Khmer Rouge time, between 75 and 80 percent of Cambodian educators either were killed, died of overwork, or left the country. At least half of the written material available in the Khmer language was destroyed.

After coming to power with Vietnamese help in 1979, the government of the PRK attempted to redevelop the education system. Although significant progress was made, the process of educational redevelopment was hampered by war and lack of resources, human as well as material. The PRK government undertook a massive rehabilitation program aimed at enrolling as many students as possible. The slogan of the time was "those who know more teach those who know less." Those with almost any level of education were encouraged to work as teachers, and efforts were made to identify and encourage formers teachers, professors, and bureaucrats in the field of education to participate in this difficult endeavor. Potential teachers were given short-term training for one month, three weeks or even two weeks and then assigned teaching jobs. With many buildings destroyed, classes were taught in shacks made of leaves with dirt floors or in some places instruction was given outside under the trees.

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/khmer/Ledgerwood/education.htm

[catnhatnh]

3. Gee...I would have guessed

Both poorly buried bodies and said the difference was the Bushes weren't called to account.

[ConsAreLiars]

4. No surprise, really. And nothing new. Same rulers then and there and here and now.

Pol Pot's faction of the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian Pinkos) was supported by the US once Nixon pushed Sihanouk into exile using using a US trained General to make the coup. During the conflict that followed that coup, the US supported the anti-Vietnamese rabid nationalist Pol Pot group and used its military to defeat other tendencies within Cambodia. Oh, and as for atrocities, the US racked up a larger death count than Pol Pot (although, to be fair, Pol Pot's totals were only because he was acting as an agent of the US and thus should be added into the US numbers) and had many more imaginative ways of torturing its captives. Friendly rivals and allies when it comes to sadism and butchery. Pol Pot is gone. Those who run the US have continued doing the same all around this planet.