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