President Richard Nixon: Pol Pot couldn’t have done it without him

President Richard Nixon’s meddling in Cambodia contributed to a bloody civil war. Nixon secretly sent to Cambodia 30,000 US troops, and US planes dropped a quarter-of-a-million tons of bombs in the eastern part of the country in 140 days. That not only killed a lot of people, but left much of the farmland useless. The CIA, under Nixon, overthrew the nationalistic Norodom Sihanouk regime and replaced it with the corrupt and incompetent right-wing-military leader Lon Nol. By 1974 most of Cambodia’s countryside was under the control of the National United Front of Kampuchea, a coalition that was mostly Norodom Sihanouk, a few of his supporters, and Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea. The CPK (called the Khmer Rouge in the press) made up 90 percent of the NUFK, while Sihanouk served as a figure head, for recruitment purposes. Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic government, was so corrupt that his generals fought with “ghost troops” (names on paper so military officers could collect and pocket their pay). Lon Nol’s army quickly lost control of the country and controlled little more than the capitol, Phnom Penh.

Nixon may well have presided over more death and destruction than any other president since World War II.