My Country Tis Of Thee...

A brief survey of the last four decades of Cambodian history is hard to stomach. The country won its independence in 1953, and enjoyed the briefest decade of prosperity and growth before getting sucked into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War, and four decades later, it still hasn’t emerged from the long shadow cast by that bitter and ruinous conflict. Walking through the Killing Fields amidst mass graves and piles of bones, and hearing the first hand accounts of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge leave you overwhelmed with grief and outrage of the capacity of human beings to have a willful disregard for the worth and value of human life. The recent history of Cambodia offers up a vivid portrait of how imperialism, violence, and dogma destroyed a country and its people. For anyone foolish enough to believe in the myth of a benign superpower, or the concept of a “just war”, they need to read the history of this proud and broken land. I am speaking, of course, of the United States, my own country, and the people who claim it is infallible.

I have recently been called anti-American. It’s a ridiculous accusation that’s come up repeatedly in my adult life, as I’ve spent much of the last decade publicly criticizing the foreign policy of my country, which I’ve believed to be wrongheaded, wasteful, and fundamentally detrimental to the wider health of the global community of nations. That does not make me anti-American. It makes me a student of history, and an American who is concerned, well-informed, and who believes that outspoken and critical dissent is the mark of good citizenship. Such a distinction is usually lost on self-professed patriots who feel that I badmouth the honor of their country, which is beyond reproach. But sadly, no one is above reproach, least of all governments, who are responsible for some of the most heinous crimes imaginable.

The US Government is criminally complicit in the destruction of Cambodia over the last four decades. It started when President Nixon approved the widespread carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1969, resulting in the death of 250,000 Cambodian citizens. This bombing was initially kept secret from the American public, and was not approved by Congress, who ultimately stopped this practice in 1973 when the extent of it was revealed to them. However, in the four years in which it happened, more American bombs had been dropped on the population of Cambodia than all the bombs that had been dropped by all sides during World War II. The reasons for this incessant bombing campaign against a country our government never bothered declaring war against were tied up in the US rationale for the Vietnam War. Apparently it all made good sense to somebody.

In the 1970’s the US supported a coup in Cambodia that triggered a brutal civil war, that lasted for over two decades. The actions of the players in that war cannot be laid at my country’s doorstep, but my government played all sides, armed and equipped multiple factions, and ultimately gave diplomatic recognition to a Khmer Rouge government that was guilty of crimes against humanity. The US embargo on the country triggered a deep famine that claimed the lives of countless Cambodians. Again, all of this is tied up in my government’s questionable rationale behind their choice to wage the Vietnam War.

The list of outrageous US actions in Cambodia is too long to list and document in a single blog spot. It is a chronicle of horrifying depth and stupidity, and the fact that it remains relatively unknown to most Americans is a testament to the obscurity of this country. The Cambodian people are among the poorest on the planet. They did not declare war against the USA, but had the unfortunate distinction of being next door to a country that the US decided to wage war against. Believing that a largely rural, agrarian society of poor farmers is a threat to the national security of the United States is willful paranoia, and is completely unrealistic. It is not un-American to point this out. It is human. When you walk through these killing fields, stare at these mass graves, stare at the children who’ve had their limbs blown off by landmines, and think about the causes of all this, a lot of it has to do with an inability of powerful nations to leave other nations alone. Pol Pot was not created in a vacuum, and he only came to power because of a series of actions that my country helped initiate. I hope and pray we’ve learned the lessons of Vietnam.

I leave you with these thoughts from Mark Twain, who expressed similar sentiments about America's involvement in foreign countries multiple times over the course of his life, throughout which which he was staunchly anti-imperialist. A vocal critic of the US government, this iconic American writer spent much of his life dodging claims that he was 'anti-American.' To which he responded:

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."

And again:

"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death."