Cambodia genocide

The Cambodian Memory Hole

by Paul David Collins ©, April 27th, 2007

Cambodia has a serious problem. Many of the nation's young people are having a hard time
wrapping their heads around the fact that the Khmer Rouge conducted a campaign of genocide
in their country. Some even deny that the genocide ever happened. This fact is revealed in a
recent movie entitled Wanting To See The Truth, which "shows footage of young Cambodians
who do not believe stories of the atrocities of the late 1970s" ("Khmer Rouge film reveals
horror," no pagination). Evidently, this epidemic of historical denial is promulgated on an
institutional level because the "period is not taught in schools" (no pagination).

The danger of national amnesia that Cambodia is now facing is a result of the globalization of
the postmodern paradigm. We all want to instantly grasp the "Big Picture" without taking the
necessary trip down Memory Lane. A thorough study of history is the only way one can gain a
firm understanding of modern realities. However, like children, we resist this fact with all our
strength so that we might be able to live in a perpetual "now." Even I find myself having to fight
the urge and temptation to approach the topics I study as if they are videotapes that I can fast
forward directly to the end.

The power elite have helped promote this sorry state of affairs. It helps conceal their
involvement in history's crimes and atrocities. The Cambodian "killing fields" are certainly no
exception. The postmodern mind has difficulty seeing the bloody fingerprints of the power elite
upon Cambodia during the period of 1975 to 1979. Nonetheless, those who bother to revisit the
crime scene can discover these fingerprints.

NSSM 200: The Politics of Genocide

The motivation for the Cambodian genocide can be found in a document entitled National
Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200. The National Security Council (NSC) under Henry
Kissinger's guidance put this document together in 1974. The thesis was quite simple:
population growth in lesser-developed countries constitutes a threat to national security. NSSM
200 named target countries:

In order to assist the development of major countries and to maximize progress toward
population stability, primary emphasis would be placed on the largest and fastest growing
developing countries where the imbalance between growing numbers and development
potential most seriously risks instability, unrest, and international tensions. These countries are:
India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, The Philippines, Thailand, Egypt,
Turkey, Ethiopia, and Colombia. Out of a total 73.3 million worldwide average increase in
population from 1970-75 these countries contributed 34.3 million or 47%. (No pagination)

NSSM 200 captured the power elite's preoccupation with carrying capacity and population
control. These concepts originated with the ideas of Thomas Malthus, an Anglican clergyman
who had received the blessings of French deist Jean-Jacques Rousseau and radical empiricist
David Hume (Keynes 99). Malthus authored Essay on the Principle of Population, a treatise
premised upon the thesis: "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetic ratio" (qutd. in Taylor 61). Malthus' thesis was
vintage scientism. Malthus' demographic theory attempted to reduce the labyrinthine and
complex machinations comprising the natural order to overly simplistic mathematic equations.
Moreover, Malthus' Essay overlooked the role of human innovation in the enhancement of
subsistence production methods. Nonetheless, Malthus concluded that society should adopt
certain social policies to prevent the human population from growing disproportionately larger
than the food supply. Of course, these social policies were anything but humane. They
stipulated the stultification of industrial and technological development in poor communities.
With the inevitable depreciation of vital infrastructure, society's "dysgenics" would eventually be
purged by the elements. According to Malthus, such sacrifice guaranteed a healthy society.

Historically, Malthus' demographic theory has continually proved advantageous to oligarchs

and elitists. Given his role as a retainer for the British East India Company, it is quite possible
that Malthus formulated his postulates to serve oligarchical interests. The British Opium Wars
against China stands as one case in point. NSSM 200 provides another. However, what
distinguished NSSM 200 from previous oligarchical campaigns premised upon Malthusianism
is the document's governmental ramifications. NSSM 200 represented an attempt to enshrine
demographic warfare under the rubric of national security. Suddenly, the fallacious contentions
of a long refuted demographic theory were given currency within the halls of officialdom.
William Engdahl eloquently reiterates: "The document [NSSM 200] made Malthusianism, for the
first time in American history, an explicit item of security policy of the government of the United
States" (148).

NSSM 200 was reaffirmed as the cornerstone of the United States' population policy on
November 26, 1975 when Brent Scowcroft signed National Security Decision Memorandum 314
(NSDM 314) (Jones 527). This document endorsed the policy recommendations presented in
NSSM 200 (527). NSSM 200's reaffirmation was clearly at odds with world opinion. Just a year
later, opposition towards population proposals like NSSM 200 arose at a United Nations-
sponsored population conference in Bucharest. According to author E. Michael Jones:

There the Holy See along with Communist and Third World countries, led by Algeria, denounced
the United States for practicing what they called "contraceptive imperialism." (526)

While most of the world opposed the "contraceptive imperialism" recommended by NSSM 200,
many Western elites felt that it should be official policy for the United States. Even more
sinister, it was a policy they felt had to be put into practice.

From Theory to Practice: The Pol Pot Demonstration Model

According to Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, the Pol Pot Regime was "a demonstration
model of the NSSM 200 policy" (276). The Khmer Rouge could not have made the gains it did in
Cambodia without the aid of Kissinger and Nixon. It was the Nixon Administration's bombing of
Cambodia that aided the Khmer Rouge in their takeover of Cambodia. Tarpley and Chaitkin
elaborate:

The most important single ingredient in the rise of the Khmer Rouge was provided by Kissinger
and Nixon, through their systematic campaign of terror-bombing against Cambodian territory
during 1973. This was called Arclight, and began shortly after the January 1973 Paris Accords
on Vietnam. With the pretext of halting a Khmer Rouge attack on Phnom Penh, U.S. forces
carried out 79,959 officially confirmed sorties with B-52 and F-111 bombers against targets
inside Cambodia, dropping 539,129 tons of explosives. Many of these bombs fell upon the
most densely populated sections of Cambodia, including the countryside around Phnom Penh.
The number of deaths caused by this genocidal campaign has been estimated at between
30,000 and 500,000. Accounts of the devastating impact of this mass terror-bombing leave no
doubt that it shattered most of what remained of Cambodian society and provided ideal
preconditions for the further expansion of the Khmer Rouge insurgency, in much the same way
that the catastrophe of World War I weakened European society so as to open the door for the
mass irrationalist movements of fascism and Bolshevism. (279)

The ruin visited upon Cambodia by the Nixon Administration paved the way for Pol Pot and his
murderous insurgents. The Khmer Rouge forced the Cambodian people out of the cities and
into brutal agrarian slave labor. The end result was the death of some two million Cambodians.

The Case of Anthony Lake

The power elite also hope that amnesia concerning the Cambodian "killing fields" also extends
to the American. This contention is reinforced by attempts within the Establishment to help
Anthony Lake climb the political ladder. In 1997, Clinton attempted to place Lake in the position
of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) (Heilbrunn, no pagination). Lake was a stalwart
supporter of the Khmer Rouge, and made this position known in a Washington Post op-ed
piece. Jacob Heilbrunn elaborates:

He [Lake] provided a revealing glimpse of his views in a lengthy March 19, 1975, Washington
Post op-ed titled "AT STAKE IN CAMBODIA: EXTENDING AID WILL ONLY PROLONG THE
KILLING." The article, which was entered several times into the Congressional Record, was
directed at Lake's old boss, Kissinger. It began by reciting the standard liberal line that Vietnam
was not a war of aggression by the North against the South. It was, Lake wrote, a civil war. The
distinction was fundamental. Since Vietnam was a civil war, and both sides were nationalists,
the U.S. should view the struggle with equanimity. The North might even be morally superior to
the South.

Developing the idea, Lake applied this logic to Cambodia. "Cambodia," he explained, "must be
recognized as a civil war, not an international war, as Vietnam should have been so long ago."
Lake went on to hail the Khmer Rouge, despite the common knowledge that they were
slaughtering innocents: "A further measure of damage-limitation would involve adopting a
diplomatic and rhetorical position which eschewed bitter attacks on Lon Nol's enemies. They
are indeed supported by Hanoi, Peking, and Moscow. But, to the extent we know much about
them, they include many Khmer nationalists, Communist and non-Communist. Once they gain
power, we must hope for as much nationalism on their part as possible." Indeed, Lake called for
"an immediate, peaceful turning over of power" to the Khmer Rouge. "This," he concluded,
"would stop the final, useless killing." (No pagination)

The elite-controlled Clintonista regime would have not felt comfortable with such an
appointment if they did not believe that the people of the United States had forgotten the
genocide in Cambodia. However, more than just political appointments are at stake for the elite
if public awareness over the Cambodian genocide is ever heightened. An awareness campaign
might cause many to dig deeper into the topic. That digging would reveal the fact that the
Khmer Rouge had accomplices: the power elite.

Sources Cited
Engdahl, F. William. A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.
London: Pluto Press, 2004.
Heilbrunn, Jacob. "The Great Equivocator." The New Republic 24 March 1997
Jones, E. Michael. Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control. South Bend,
Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2000.
Keynes, John Maynard. Essays in Biography. Toronto, Canada: Macmillan, 1933.
"Khmer Rouge film reveals horrors." BBC 16 December 2006
National Security Study Memorandum 200. April 1974.
Tarpley, Webster Griffin and Anton Chaitkin. George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography.
Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, 1992.
Taylor, Ian T. In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order. Toronto: TFE Publishing,
1999.
About the author
Paul D. Collins has studied suppressed history and the shadowy undercurrents of world
political dynamics for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he earned his Associate of Arts and
Science degree. In 2006, he completed his bachelor's degree with a major in liberal studies and
a minor political science. Paul has authored another book entitled The Hidden Face of
Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11. Published in
November 2002, the book is available online from www.1stbooks.com, barnesandnoble.com,
and also amazon.com. It can be purchased as an e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback
format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X). Paul also co-authored The Ascendancy of the Scientific
Dictatorship (ISBN 1-4196-3932-3).

The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship is available here. Read a comprehensive

collection of Collins essays here.