Freedom – yes –Theocracy NO!

Monks are tapeworms gnawing out the bowels of society- Angkar

លោកសង្ឃជាព្រូនសដ្ដម - អដ្ដកា

the Mayagüez

Our first year was going well, The first big snag came when an American ship called the Mayagüez came through our waters. We boarded it and searched as did all other ships. If nothing unusual is on them we let them go. I no sooner gave the order to release the ship when The US President Gerald Ford, decided to make an issue of this thing and send in his marines. They crashed one of their own aircraft and killed around 25 of their own men. They killed several of our soldiers and sunk one of our navy ships. We never had a big navy to begin with. This was all done so Fork could look like a macho cowboy to his own people. The 100 or so deaths were completely unnecessary.
Still we where worried about further attacks and had to move our entire headquarters to a Silver Pagoda, on the edge of town. The Pagoda was alright but although it was large enough for us, there were fewer rooms. Once again some of us lost our privacy and our own offices. This building just didn’t have enough rooms.

Article from Time May 26, 1875,

"Have been fired on and boarded by Cambodian armed forces. Vessel being escorted to unknown Cambodian port."
When that last distress call crackled over the air from the beleaguered U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez in the Gulf of Siam last week, it set in motion a dramatic, controversial train of events that significantly changed the image of U.S. power in the world—and the stature of President Gerald Ford. By calling up U.S. military might and successfully forcing the Cambodians to surrender the ship and free the 39-man crew, Ford acted more firmly and decisively than at any other time in his presidency. By drawing the line against aggression in the Mayaguez incident, he put potential adversaries on notice that despite recent setbacks in Indochina and the Middle East, the U.S. would not allow itself to be intimidated. That action reassured some discouraged and mistrustful allies that the U.S. intends to defend vigorously its overseas interests. But the events of the week also raised a series of questions that are bound to be debated in the U.S. and in foreign capitals for months to come.
Ford showed that in a confrontation he was not only willing to risk using military force but also that, once committed, he would use plenty of it. Thus, to free one freighter and not quite twoscore crewmen, the President called out the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy. He ordered assault troops—supported by warships, fighter-bombers and helicopters—to invade a tiny island of disputed nationality where the crewmen were thought (erroneously) to be held. To prevent a Cambodian counterstrike, he ordered two much disputed bombing raids of the Cambodian mainland. At home and abroad, some political experts thought that the show of force, which had many of the gung-ho elements of a John Wayne movie, was excessive. The Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun asked, "Why did [the U.S.] have to use a cannon to shoot a chicken?"
Hard Kick. The cannon was effective, of course, showing the world that the U.S. will not accept humiliating provocations. But the U.S. success owed almost as much to luck as to skill in combat. If the Communist Cambodians had dug in and refused to release the Mayaguez crew, the military mission might well have aborted. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Joseph J. Kane, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger admitted: "The outcome was fortunate."
It was fortunate also because President Ford had been hoping for weeks to find a dramatic way to demonstrate to the world that the Communist victories in Indochina had not turned the U.S. into a paper tiger. He had been searching for a means to show that the U.S. is now conducting what Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently called an "abrasive" foreign policy. Even before the Cambodians seized the Mayaguez, one U.S. Government policy planner had told TIME, "There's quite a bit of agreement around here that it wouldn't be a bad thing if the other side goes a step or two too far in trying to kick us while we're down. It would give us a chance to kick them back—hard."
The Khmer Rouge, intoxicated by their recent takeover of Cambodia, provided that chance because the whole world could see that their seizure of the ship was an outrageous hijacking on the high seas.

តហេសតិនកិនងដិចកសូកេរ

It seems that Pol Pot still has supporters in Cambodia

It seems Pol Pot is not universally hated even in Kampuchea. He has many supporters who lived near him who see him as a larger than life personality who has almost saint-like qualities. Here is an example of this from the New York Times - សតិវេណុ ទតុ


New York Times September 26, 2007:
Anlong Veng Journal; Praying to Pol Pot, Seeking Health and Good Luck


By SETH MYDANS
Published: June 23, 2001
Only the buzz of cicadas and the croaking of frogs break the silence here in the remote Dangrek Mountains. The damp monsoon air is filled with black butterflies.
Grinning and chattering about his war wounds like a man who has seen too much death, a villager named Som Neum, wearing only a dirty sarong around his waist, pushed aside reeds and brambles as he led a visitor up a rocky path to a small clearing.
Here, under a makeshift tin roof, lies the grave of one of the 20th century's worst mass killers, Pol Pot, who died three years ago leaving behind him a country stunned and ruined, where every person is a shattered survivor or the child of one.
From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot ruled Cambodia, heading the Khmer Rouge government, which was responsible for more than a million deaths. The country has never recovered.
At the grave, Mr. Son Neum, 40, bent and with careful fingertips brushed away a scattering of twigs and leaves. Pol Pot was a good man, he said, so he has taken it on himself to tend this all but abandoned plot.
This is the place where Pol Pot, rejected at the end even by his Khmer Rouge followers, was cremated in disgrace on top of a stack of old tires and debris, the acrid black smoke curling up above the jungle trees.
There is still a rubble of black cinders among the sand and pebbles under the little roof, and strips of tire treads that survived the flames, as well as a tangle of thin radial wire salvaged from the burned tires.
Nearby is a wood marker reading, ''Pol Pot's cremation site.'' Nailed beneath the roof is a sign that says, ''Please help maintain this.''
What is most unsettling to an outsider is not that the grave has been forgotten, but that it has been remembered; people have come here to pay their respects.
At the head of the grave is a small cluster of their offerings: an empty Angkor beer can, a plastic water bottle, an unopened chocolate wafer bar, five cigarette butts on little skewers, a tin of joss sticks, a spray of wilted flowers.
Who has prayed here?
''They come for lottery numbers,'' said Mr. Som Neum, spitting out seeds from a handful of small blue berries. ''They pray to him. They ask his soul to tell them the winning numbers and the numbers come to them in dreams.''
And these are not necessarily hard-core Khmer Rouge. Like Mr. Som Neum, they include the villagers and soldiers who call these mountains home.
There are those in the mountain villages nearby who say they have won with the lottery numbers Pol Pot has given them. Others say they pray to him for health and good luck. Some say his spirit can cure disease.
In death, it seems, Pol Pot has become something of a patron saint of the Dangrek Mountains. Here along the northern border with Thailand, in one of the last strongholds of his Khmer Rouge movement, he is remembered by many with respect and by some with reverence.