: I think what Pol Pot meant was that he wanted no part of the Indochinese Communist Party, which was a front for the Vietnamese government. Pol Pot was also bitterly opposed to the more "liberal", Soviet-sonsored system that was in place in Vietnam. I think it's fairly clear that he saw himself as a leftist, however. Witness hiw he named his country "Democratic" Kampuchea, implying that he was defndinbg the interests of "the people". Also his criticism of "bourgeois" and "western" elements. Which is why the US supported him; they were after revenge on Vietnam, so they supported the countries waging war on Vietnam; namely Cambodia (and China). They didn't care about Pol Pot or his internal activities; they merely wanted to make life unpleasant for Vietnam. That's why they supported his activities; he was *not* a Communist in the Vietnamese mould.
: Also, if the US was such a good friend of Pol Pot, 1) why did we strike Cambodia during the Mayaguez incident, 2) shouldn't even more blame reside with China, who was an even better friend?
You're missing the point. I'm not saying that the US is secretly a Communist state, or trying to blame the US for Pol Pot's actions.
What I am saying is that the US sponsored the genocide in Cambodia; that you and/or your parents paid taxes that aided the Khmer Rouge to commit atrocities. To the tune of many millions of dollars.
As such, the original poster's emphasis on the Nazis is misplaced; or at the very least unbalanced.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that supporting genocide somewhere appears to be everyday business for a Western capitalist state. I'm not saying that China is any better; I cited China as genocidal too.
As for the Mayaguez incident, that military cockup was a simple miscalculation by the Yanks; they thought they were dealing with a couple of platoons of Cambodians at most.
(The Cambodian seizure of the ship is easily understandable; the U.S. backed Lon Nol for five years during the civil war that raged from 1970 to 1975 and resulted in the death of 1/7th of the population. The U.S. carpet bombed Cambodia on a regular basis during that time. You can't really blame the Cambodians for treating a lone US possible warship with suspicion.)
Gideon.
None.
