ali baba wrote:Drifter, this thread is about Im Chim. If you want to discuss Nixon or Kissinger I suggest you start a new thread rather than complain that others aren't being led off topic easily enough.

actually nixon and kissinger are totally in topic, if they agree the KR elite must be jailed for life the same treatment should be expected for nixon and kissinger and the US military elite that backed Lon Nol.

since these trials are historically a farse there's no point to go further and rewrite history once again.

the KR are going to be punished only because they because the lost the US backing, just as it happened for Saddam Hussein and in many other cases.

they were just players in a much bigger game between the US, Russia, and China.

so what are we supposed to do ? let her free or throw her in a rotting cambodian jail ?
this is a moral judgement, and it all depends if you belong to the "hang em high" brigade.

as far as i'm concerned all this mess happened because of the stubborness of Sihanouk, anything else is just the logical consequence and domino effect.

matter of fact, this country and the whole indochina would be much better off if they kept the french in place but of course it can't be said openly.

Pizzalover wrote:Sadly, your point of view just coincides with that of people you surely do not want to be associated with. Maybe you will take another look at the whole matter and rethink. Your sentiment is well-understood and shared. Nobody should be able to kill people, that is also potentially us, and get away with it.

the root of the problem is the foreign invasions during colonial times, and as always they're followed by bloody civil wars.

but, asia as a whole has always been in war, it's unrealistic to expect the Thai or the Viet would not have picked up fights among themselves, and so the burmese, the malay, the indonesians, the chinese ...

the idea that we could ever "judge" and find a single head responsible for this or that sin is laughable.
i point my finger at Sihanouk, but being a king he had all the good reasons to act the way he did ... who am i to judge, especially as a foreigner and as a guest ?

the US victors are happily living their last days in their villas while the KR elite has been decimated and the leftover are in court, it's ridicolous but i understand the survivors are seeking revenge and the public expect that "someone has to pay", whoever he is.

it's human nature, but don't call it justice.

So if 6 people rob a bank and the police capture 4 of them whilst the other 2 escape to a non extradition country the police should allow the 4 criminals they caught to go free?

Would that be 'fair'?

ali baba wrote:So if 6 people rob a bank and the police capture 4 of them whilst the other 2 escape to a non extradition country the police should allow the 4 criminals they caught to go free?

Would that be 'fair'?

this kind of questions is legitimate and each society provided a set of laws to deal with it, usually grounded on religious, ethical, and moral values shared by most of their citizens.

these set of laws range from "an eye for an eye" to the "turn the other cheek".

but here we're dealing with a so called complicity in premeditated genocide and ethnic cleansing, which is unanimously considered one of the worst crimes possible.

therefore, of course the khmer lady in question should be sentenced to death or at the very least to life in a maximum security prison, but it still doesn't bring any justice for the innocents involved, it's a pirrous victory.

and it's also the typical way the US give "justice" all over the world, as usual not a single american will be asked to make self criticism, nor will criticism be allowed too much in the press and the medias with the excuse of being anti patriotic or communist, it's always always always the same "format" we've seen over and over during the last decades, it's obvious and predictable.

moral of the story, the few living KR left are now being thrown in jail and the medias ad the public are happy as "justice is done".
good, but we all know this is just another case of "american justice".

Drifter is a glass half empty and probably contaminated with piss from America type of poster.

ali baba wrote:Drifter is a glass half empty and probably contaminated with piss from America type of poster.

fact is, the more you study these subjects and the more it get complex, intricated, and we'll just never know the full truth anyway since most of the leaders are dead.

besides, ask youself if the truth would ever be accepted by the mainstream media and the casual reader ?
i say NO, and it's obvious why.

going back to my original question, when we will ever see the american leaders throw in a court to face accusation of genocide, carpet bombing, of using agent orange on civilians, etc etc ?

i say never, unless Russia wins WW3 and starts his own show trials on anything american and NATO .. which will be equally pointless and ridicolous.

When Drifter says ......

we'll just never know the full truth

he brings up the real mistake of the trials. The trials should never
have been. They were forced by the Evil Empire and the Coalition of
the Willing.

There was "another way". Africa has had terrible wars, which I won't
trouble you with now. So it might make sense that they came up
with a way to end wars. It is called something in africa that is said
to loosely translate as TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION.

The horror of the american approach is that it creates a never ending
court case that will never lead to the truth, and will never bring reconciliation. It denies Cambodia the chance to clear the air and move on.

It freezes the pain of the war in the here and now, forever. It is the american
curse.

Dara wrote:The horror of the american approach is that it creates a never ending
court case that will never lead to the truth, and will never bring reconciliation. It denies Cambodia the chance to clear the air and move on.

It freezes the pain of the war in the here and now, forever. It is the american
curse.

yes and yes.

and they do it exactly to force the american "truth" down the throat of the mainstream medias and the history books, basically rewriting history as they please and once their history is written down and the court announces the case is closed this history will be the only history accepted all around the western schools and in academia and in the medias, which is the same sh-it we've witnessed regarding the trials in Den Haag against Milosevic and other former yugoslavian leaders, and if gheddafi was still alive he wouldn't escape the same fate but i'm sure they will try to jail their son or what's left of his family.

of course nothing is being done for reconciliation, as the US/NATO mission is to keep the whole world at war especially in the last 2 yrs we've seen so many wars and civil wars and uprising, all ignited by US/NATO and also their new Arabian and Gulf dogs.

as for Cambodia i've never felt the local khmer give a sh-it about their past, some do but it feels like events of the past centuries, something so remote it's not worth it to discuss nowadays in 2014, the young people in particular is totally ignorant on this matter and on top of this have zero curiosity, they're all more than happy watching the shit they've been told on TV.

i mean the average khmer is very practical, all they talk is about their next lunch, if you really push them a bit they will admit they hate the Yuon, no matter if the chinese own the economy and are the ones responsible for their shit salaries and shit jobs.

the problem with the Youns is they're too honest, they don't hide like the chinese, they don't try to be friendly, they genuinely see the khmers are inferior and never made any mistery about their feelings, of course there's mutual distrust, but nothing will ever change in Cambo as long as the whole place is kept by the balls by the chinese merchants and their chinese mafia just as they do in thailand and malaysia and singapore and in parts of indonesia.

i don't see the minimum requirement for any reconciliation in cambodia, the monarchy and the monks are pretty much the only thing keeping it glued together, once these two factors lose power there will a new bloody civil war and new ethnical cleansing, i mean they can't wait for another ethnic cleansing especially towards the Yuon, and we barangs are just tolerated, but never fully accepted.

Dara wrote:When Drifter says ......

we'll just never know the full truth

he brings up the real mistake of the trials. The trials should never
have been. They were forced by the Evil Empire and the Coalition of
the Willing.

There was "another way". Africa has had terrible wars, which I won't
trouble you with now. So it might make sense that they came up
with a way to end wars. It is called something in africa that is said
to loosely translate as TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION.

The horror of the american approach is that it creates a never ending
court case that will never lead to the truth, and will never bring reconciliation. It denies Cambodia the chance to clear the air and move on.

It freezes the pain of the war in the here and now, forever. It is the american
curse.

I also think that the judicial trial of the KR leaders is/was a waste of time, money, energy, and emotions and that though it will allow for compensation, the TRUTH that Cambodians want will never be fully written down and acknowledged.
I remember a survey conducted before the ECCC were established and one thing that people expected from the trials was for the truth of the KR atrocities to be known and responsibilities acknowledged.
At the time, there was the suggestion to establish a truth and reconciliation commission instead of a judicial trial. But the idea was shot down because it would open a can of worms and implicate not only the KR ideologists but also current political and government leaders and foreign governments, including the US and China.
Facts about the KR regime's crimes and atrocities are irrefutable and established. But the chain of events, causes and factors that enabled the KR to even exist in the first place is more elusive to establish.

Trivial side note: Dara, what's with the weird line breaks in all of your posts?

Joon wrote:But the idea was shot down because it would open a can of worms and implicate not only the KR ideologists but also current political and government leaders and foreign governments, including the US and China.

exactly, and this is the norm in every civil war.

ALL the parties involved in cambodia committed crimes, but as usual the idea is to point the finger at one single group forgiving anyone else.

and this is total injustice, what about the US bombing half of Phnom Penh and the whole eastern cambodia with B52s ? what about the king doing his best to stir up a civil war once he lost his seat ? what about the vietnamese who were more than happy to "clean up" south west cambodia ? what about the chinese fully backing the KR for years, and then the US switching sides and giving money and arms to the KR once the were reduced to a guerrilla force in 1979 ?

this shit has been seen endless times, and there's never ever justice in any way.
it's laughable that there are so many expectations from these trials, they all know from the start it's going to be just an occasion to enrich the lawyers and to toss a bone to the medias.

seriously, considering all the shit cambodia had to witness after 1979 who can blame some khmers for still supporting the KR idea of wiping off their middle class and the rich aristocracy ? this country is a mess and it's hopeless, there's no fucking way we will ever witness any kind of reconciliation especially considering how hot blooded the khmers tend to be.