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John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry

John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry

 

 John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry

 

 By John Pilger
/ johnpilger.com


Oct 13, 2014

In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive"
bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, "Anything that flies
on everything that moves".  As Barack Obama wages his seventh war
against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and
Francois Hollande promises a "merciless" attack on the rubble of Syria,
the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for
Kissinger's murderous honesty.



As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery - including
the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields - I
am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A
telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who
had much in common with today's Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They,
too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.



According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of "fewer than 5,000
poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics,
loyalty and leaders". Once Nixon's and Kissinger's B-52 bombers had gone
to work as part of "Operation Menu", the west's ultimate demon could
not believe his luck. The Americans dropped the equivalent of five
Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They leveled village after
village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left
giant necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was
unimaginable. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors
"froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days.
Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they
were told... That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win
the people over." A Finnish Government Commission of Inquiry estimated
that 600,000 Cambodians died in the ensuing civil war and described the
bombing as the "first stage in a decade of genocide". What Nixon and
Kissinger began, Pol Pot, their beneficiary, completed. Under their
bombs, the Khmer Rouge grew to a formidable army of 200,000.

 John Pilger on ISIS: Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry