Slothrop said:
The article that sparked things off is here:
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chombookrev.htm
although I believe there were various subsequent writings of a similar tone. He makes a point of not judging the Khmer Rouge directly and stresses that he's making a point about the american media's reception of these reports rather than about the actual situation in campbodia. On the other hand, in doing so, he generally heaps scorn on accounts that are critical of the Khmer Rouge and praises those that are uncritical of the Khmer Rouge and emphasize the atrocities of the american invasion. ...
A careful reading of the linked article (
Distortions at Fourth Hand, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, published in
The Nation, June 25, 1977) completely contradicts the sentiments expressed above. Nowhere in the article do Chomsky and Herman "make a point of not judging the Khmer Rouge directly", and nowhere in the article do they "heap scorn on accounts that are critical of the Khmer Rouge and praise those that are uncritical of the Khmer Rouge and emphasize the atrocities of the american invasion." Their interest is objective research and analysis, not emotive raving or personalised abuse. The article, an analysis of three books about Cambodia from three decades ago, highlights the gross distortions and selectivity of the mainstream media as a result of ideological propaganda and inherited prejudices, all at the expense of rigorous, substantive journalism when the latter reports unpalatable truths (eg Western atrocities that are much more severe than that of the supposed Evil Other). The mainstream accounts (popularised by such sentimentalised and false Hollywood film accounts as Roland Joffe's horrendously decontextualised
The Killing Fields, irresponsible fiction uncritically accepted as "the truth" by audiences, still continuing) completely ignore the historical context, the US genocide in both Vietnam and Cambodia, the B-52 carpet-bombing that not only slaughtered millions, but also their "scorched earth" practices that rendered the rural - and much of the urban - landscape devastated and uninhabitable, leading to further starvation and famine. Some relevant quotes:
We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.
It is a fair generalization that the larger the number of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge, and the more the U.S. role is set aside, the larger the audience that will be reached. The Barron-Paul volume is a third-rate propaganda tract, but its exclusive focus on Communist terror assures it a huge audience. Ponchaud's far more substantial work has an anti-Communist bias and message, but it has attained stardom only via the extreme anti-Khmer Rouge distortions added to it in the article in the New York Review of Books. The last added the adequately large numbers executed and gave a "Left" authentication of Communist evil that assured a quantum leap to the mass audience unavailable to Hildebrand and Porter or to Carol Bragg. Contrary facts and even authors' corrections of misstatements are generally ignored or inadequately reported in favor of a useful lesson (we note one exception: an honest retraction of an editorial based on Lacouture in the Boston Globe. We noted earlier that the Monitor editorial and other press comments built on the Lacouture review offer at best a fourth-hand account. The chain of transmission runs from refugees (or Thai or U.S. officials), to Ponchaud, to the New York Review, to the press, where a mass audience is reached and "facts" are established that enter the approved version of history.
In this light, some of the responses in this thread are interesting, to say the least, with one poster so twisting the record in order to construct fantasy strawmen (of Chomsky and of the entire Left) guilty of being apologists for genocide, all with the aim of covering up the true historical tragedy, since then being repeated elsewhere.
Perhaps another quote is in order:
Ponchaud's book is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited. He gives a grisly account of of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. He also reminds us of some relevant history. For example, in this "peaceful land," peasants were massacred, their lands stolen and villages destroyed, by police and army in 1966, many then joining the maquis out of "their hatred for a government exercising such injustices and sowing death." He reports the enormous destruction and murder resulting directly from the American attack on Cambodia, the starvation and epidemics as the population was driven from their countryside by American military terror and the U.S.-incited civil war, leaving Cambodia with "an economy completely devastated by the war." He points out that "from the time of Sihanouk, then Lon Nol, the soldiers of the government army had already employed, with regard to their Khmer Rouge 'enemies,' bloodthirsty methods in no way different from those of Democratic Cambodia" (the Khmer Rouge). He also gives a rather positive account of Khmer Rouge programs of social and economic development, while deploring much brutal practice in working for egalitarian goals and national independence.
Ponchaud's book lacks the documentation provided in Hildebrand and Porter and its veracity is therefore difficult to assess. But the serious reader will find much to make him somewhat wary. For one thing, Ponchaud plays fast and loose with quotes and with numbers. He quotes an unattributed Khmer Rouge slogan, "One or two million young people will be enough to build the new Cambodia." In an article in Le Monde (February 18, 1976) he gives what appears to be the same quote, this time as follows: "To rebuild the new Cambodia, a million people are enough." Here the quote is attributed to a Khmer Rouge military commander, along with the statement misrepresented by Barron and Paul, noted above (Lacouture changes the numbers to 1.5 million to 2 million, attributes the quote to an unnamed Marxist, and concludes that it goes beyond barbarism). This is one of the rare examples of a quote that can be checked. The results are not impressive.
Ponchaud cites a Cambodian report that 200,000 people were killed in American bombings from March 7 to August 15, 1973. No source is offered, but suspicions are aroused by the fact that Phnom Penh radio announced on May 9, 1975 that there were 200,000 casualties of the American bombing in 1973, including "killed, wounded, and crippled for life" (Hildebrand and Porter). Ponchaud cites "Cambodian authorities" who give the figures 800,000 killed and 240,000 wounded before liberation. The figures are implausible. By the usual rule of thumb, wounded amount to about three times killed; quite possibly he has the figures reversed.
More significant is Ponchaud's account of the evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975. He reports the explanation given by the revolutionary government: that the evacuation was motivated by impending famine. But this he rejects, on the ground that rice stocks in Phnom Penh would have sufficed for two months, with rationing (what he thinks would have happened after two months, with no new harvest, he does not say). He gives no source for this estimate, and fails to observe that "According to Long Boret, the old Government's last Premier, Phnom Penh had only eight days worth of rice on hand on the eve of the surrender" (Agence France-Presse, Bangkok; New York Times, May 9, 1975). Nor does he cite the testimony of U.S. AID officials that Phnom Penh had only a six-day supply of rice (William Goodfellow, New York Times, July 14, 1975).
In fact, where an independent check is possible, Ponchaud's account seems at best careless, sometimes in rather significant ways. Nevertheless, the book is a serious work, however much the press has distorted it.
As noted, Ponchaud relies overwhelmingly on refugee reports. Thus his account is at best second-hand with many of the refugees reporting what they claim to have heard from others. Lacouture's review gives at best a third-hand account. Commentary on Lacouture's review in the press, which has been extensive, gives a fourth-hand account. That is what is available to readers of the American press.
As an instance, consider the Christian Science Monitor editorial already cited, which gives a fair sample of what is available to the American public. This editorial, based on Lacouture's review, speaks of the "reign of terror against the population" instituted by the Khmer Rouge. Lacouture, like Ponchaud, emphasizes the brutality of the American war, which laid the basis for all that followed. These references disappear from the Monitor editorial, which pretends that the current suffering in Cambodia takes place in an historical vacuum, as a mere result of Communist savagery. Similarly, an earlier editorial (January 26, 1977), based on Barron and Paul, also avoids any reference to American responsibility, though there is much moralizing about those who are indifferent to "one of the most brutal and concentrated onslaughts in history" in this "lovely land" of "engaging people."