[...] It may be tempting to have historical perspective dissolve in bustling Phnom Penh, among the young, educated and connected drinking mojitos in terrace bars facing the Tonle Sap River and the glitzy headquarters of pan-Asian trading companies.
But it's impossible not to connect the Khmer Rouge and the American Empire. It was Richard Nixon's illegal war in Cambodia - call it VietCam, a precursor to the current AfPak - plus support for yet another tin-pot dictator, Lon Nol, instead of King Sihanouk, that created the conditions for the emergence of the Khmer Rouge and its power grab in 1975, just as the last American helicopter was abandoning Saigon in disgrace.
Washington didn't care much about the Asian genocide and even grumbled when Vietnam toppled the Khmer Rouge.
And that takes us to the circular ways of Empire; Khmers would portrait it as a naga biting its own tail. Think of eternal Cold Warrior US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, recently arguing that failure in Afghanistan is "unacceptable", regardless of the costs of war (just as failure in Vietnam was unacceptable).
Think of Gates telling Newsweek, "I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position." Functionaries of Empire parroting His Master's Voice can't get clearer than this. There's more; "Frankly, I can't imagine being part of a nation, part of a government ... that's being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world."
"Engagement" meant extending a war, illegally, from Vietnam to Cambodia, and creating the conditions for an Asian holocaust. "Engagement" means extending a war, illegally, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and sowing extra chaos in South Asia. "Engaging" means extending an illegal war over Libya - sowing extra chaos in Northern Africa. "Engaging" means letting the House of Saud bribe everyone in sight in its reactionary, counter-revolutionary drive all across MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa). [...]