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Thread: Treacherous Trump backs military take-over in Libya.

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    Quote Originally Posted by moon View Post
    The current ' government ' of Libya is the one in Tripoli that is recognized as the legitimate government. Anybody supporting its armed overthrow is a criminal under international law . Trump was aptly described in the OP.
    So then Obama too is a criminal for launching an illegal war without Congress there in the first place. And so is any president who ever supports any kind of regime change anywhere. Starting to comprehend how absurd your extremist lunacy makes you look yet?


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    Quote Originally Posted by Micawber View Post
    Arminius is going to support anything good=trump, anything bad =Obama. It has no other ox to gore in this.
    Or, liberals are going to support anything bad=trump. Yawn.


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    Quote Originally Posted by bodhisattva View Post
    Hillary/Obama are meaningless in Libya today. they did their damage and left the stage.
    Although Libya today is the legacy of the US/NATO assassination of Qadaffi
    Moonatic is very fond of quoting international law and supporting the UN. Maybe it's time to point out that the UN supported those criminal Kmer Rouge cunts in Cambodia. It was Vietnam that kicked the bastards out!! Carter and the UN was even giving support to the Kmer Rouge and recognising them as the legitimate government when the world had already learnt about the Killing Fields.



    04.27.2015


    WAR AND IMPERIALISM HISTORY
    The genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge began forty years ago this month. Their rise to power was inseparable from US intervention.

    The skulls of some of those who perished in the Cambodian Genocide.

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    On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge (KR) forces stormed Phnom Penh and reestablished Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea — a supposedly self-sufficient, entirely agrarian society. Resetting the clock to “Year Zero,” the KR forced urban dwellers to the countryside, and began to “purify” Cambodia through a genocidal purge of intellectuals and minority groups. By the time the slaughter came to an end in 1979 — after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the KR from power — some 1.7 million people (21 percent of the population) were dead.

    Pol Pot, the leader of the KR from 1963–1997 and prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea, fled to the jungle. He died in 1998 without ever having faced justice. In fact, since the removal of the KR, only three individuals have been convicted for their roles in the genocide (the first conviction was not handed down until 2010; the other two came last year).

    But Pol Pot’s rise to power, the Cambodian genocide, and the absence of justice for the KR’s victims are inseparable from broader US intervention policies in Indochina from 1945–1991 — in particular, the US’s vicious bombing campaign waged against Cambodia.

    Bombing and Destabilizing
    The US began bombing Cambodia in 1965. From that year until 1973, the US Air Force dropped bombs from more than 230,000 sorties on over 113,000 sites. The exact tonnage of bombs dropped is in dispute, but a conservative estimate of 500,000 tons (almost equal to what the United States dropped in the entire Pacific theater of World War II) is unquestionable.

    The ostensible targets of the bombings were North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”) troops stationed in Cambodia and, later, KR rebels. However, it is indisputable that there was also total disregard for civilian life. In 1970, President Richard Nixon issued orders to National Security Advisor (and later Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger:

    They have got to go in there and I mean really go in. I don’t want the gunships, I want the helicopter ships. I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?

    Kissinger relayed these orders to his military assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

    Just how many people the United States killed and injured will never be known. In his book Ending the Vietnam War, Kissinger himself cites an apparent memo from the Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense stating there were 50,000 Cambodian casualties. The leading Cambodian Genocide scholar, Ben Kiernan, estimates the likely number to be between 50,000 and 150,000.

    One Cambodian eyewitness to a bombing described the event as follows:

    Three F-111s bombed right center in my village, killing eleven of my family members. My father was wounded but survived. At that time there was not a single soldier in the village, or in the area around the village. 27 other villagers were also killed. They had run into a ditch to hide and then two bombs fell right into it.

    The US bombing campaign in Cambodia destabilized an already fragile government. When Cambodia won its independence from France in 1953, Prince Norodom Sihanouk became its effective ruler. A neutralist, Sihanouk’s primary objective was to maintain the integrity of Cambodia — a task that proved enormously difficult, as American, Chinese, and Vietnamese interests, as well as various left- and right-wing factions within Cambodia, were all pulling Sihanouk in different directions. Attempting a delicate balancing act, he played groups off one another, working with one group one day and opposing it the next.

    One group challenging Sihanouk was the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which would become widely known as the Khmer Rouge. The leadership of the party was roughly divided into two factions: one was pro-Vietnamese and advocated cooperation with Sihanouk, the other — led by Pol Pot — was anti-Vietnamese and opposed Sihanouk’s rule. By 1963, Pol Pot’s faction had mostly displaced the other, more experienced faction. The same year, he moved to rural Cambodia to formulate an insurgency campaign.

    Four years later, a peasant uprising known as the Samlaut Rebellion broke out in the countryside over a new policy that forced peasants to sell their rice to the government at below-black-market rates. To ensure compliance, the military was stationed in the local communities to purchase (or simply take) the rice from the farmers.

    With their livelihoods suffering, peasants launched an uprising, killing two soldiers. As the rebellion quickly spread to other areas of Cambodia, Pol Pot and the KR capitalized on the unrest, gaining peasant support for their fledgling insurgency. By 1968, KR leaders were directing ambushes and attacks on military outposts.

    Pol Pot’s insurgency was indigenous, but as Kiernan argues, his “revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia.” Previously apolitical peasants were motivated to join the revolution to avenge the deaths of their family members. As a 1973 Intelligence Information Cable from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations explained:

    Khmer insurgent (KI) [Khmer Rouge] cadre have begun an intensified proselyting campaign among ethnic Cambodian residents . . . in an effort to recruit young men and women for KI military organizations. They are using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda.

    In 1969, the US air war against Cambodia escalated drastically as part of Nixon’s Vietnamization policy. The goal was to wipe out Vietnamese communist forces located in Cambodia in order to protect the US-backed government of South Vietnam and US forces stationed there. At the beginning of the escalation, KR fighters numbered less than 10,000, but by 1973, the force had grown to over 200,000 troops and militia.

    The US-backed coup that removed Sihanouk from power in 1970 was another factor that dramatically strengthened the KR insurgency. (Direct US complicity in the coup remains unproven, but as William Blum amply documents in his book Killing Hope, there is enough evidence to warrant the possibility).

    Sihanouk’s overthrow and replacement by the right-wing Lon Nol sharpened the contrast between the opposing camps within Cambodia and fully embroiled the country in the Vietnam War.

    Up until this point, there had been limited contact between the communist forces of Vietnam and Cambodia, as the Vietnamese accepted Sihanouk as the rightful government of Cambodia. But after the coup, Sihanouk allied himself with Pol Pot and the KR against those who had overthrown him, and Vietnamese communists offered their full support to the KR in their fight against the US-backed government.

    The KR were thus legitimated as an anti-imperialist movement.

    As the aforementioned CIA Intelligence Information Cable notes:

    The [Khmer Rouge] cadre tell the people the Government of Lon Nol has requested the airstrikes and is responsible for the damage and the “suffering of innocent villagers” in order to keep himself in power. The only way to stop “the massive destruction of the country” is to remove Lon Nol and return Prince Sihanouk to power. The proselyting cadres tell the people that the quickest way to accomplish this is to strengthen KI forces so they will be able to defeat Lon Nol and stop the bombing.

    In January 1973, the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and South Vietnamese communist forces signed the Paris Peace Accords. US forces withdrew from Vietnam, and the bombings of Vietnam and Laos were discontinued.

    Yet the Nixon administration continued bombing Cambodia in order to defend Lon Nol’s government against KR forces. Facing intense domestic and congressional opposition, Nixon was forced to end the campaign in August 1973 after reaching a deal with Congress.

    For the next year and a half, civil war continued to rage between the government and the KR. The KR succeeded in capturing numerous provinces and large areas of the countryside, and they finally took control of Phnom Penh in April 1975.

    Supporting the Khmer Rouge
    The geopolitical map was in flux after the Vietnam War — North Vietnam installed a provisional government in South Vietnam until the country was reunified in 1976, and Washington was determined to isolate the communist government. At the same time, the United States sought closer relations with China as a way of redistributing global power away from the Soviet Union; it saw Cambodia as a potentially useful counterweight.

    In November 1975 — seven months after KR forces seized control of Phnom Penh — Henry Kissinger said to Thailand’s foreign minister that he “should tell [the KR] that we bear no hostility towards them. We would like them to be independent as a counterweight to North Vietnam.” Kissinger added that he “should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them.”

    A month later, in discussions between President Gerald Ford, Kissinger, and Suharto (the US-backed dictator of Indonesia), Ford noted: “We are willing to move slowly in our relations with Cambodia, hoping perhaps to slow down the North Vietnamese influence although we find the Cambodian government very difficult.” Kissinger echoed these sentiments, saying “we don’t like Cambodia, for the government in many ways is worse than Vietnam, but we would like it to be independent. We don’t discourage Thailand or China from drawing closer to Cambodia.”

    But the KR would largely chart an isolationist course, concentrating instead on its project of building a self-sufficient, agrarian society that ended in mass murder.

    At the end of 1978, in an escalation of border disputes between the countries, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled the KR government in early 1979. KR forces fled to western Cambodia on the Thai border to begin a guerrilla campaign against the new, Vietnamese-installed Cambodian government. The genocide the KR had orchestrated was over, but now self-serving foreign parties, including the United States and China, chose to support the KR guerrillas in their campaign against the Vietnamese occupation, as part of an overall policy of isolating Vietnam.

    A key method to achieving this end was US support for overt Chinese aid to the KR guerillas. As the New York Times reported, “the Carter administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid” to the KR guerillas. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, explained that he “encourage[d] the Chinese to support Pol Pot.” According to a report from the Associated Press, US intelligence agencies estimated that China supplied KR guerrillas with about $100 million of military aid per year throughout the 1980s.

    In recognizing them as the legitimate government of Cambodia and seating them at the United Nations, the United States, China, and several other European and Asian countries also gave diplomatic support to the KR. The United States even refused to call what the KR had done from 1975–1979 genocide until 1989, so as not to hinder efforts to back the guerrilla movement.

    Support came in other ways. According to Kiernan, the United States spent tens of millions of dollars funding guerrillas allied with KR forces throughout the 1980s and pressured UN relief agencies to supply additional “humanitarian” aid to feed and clothe the KR hiding out near the Thai border, thus enabling the KR to wage their campaign against the Vietnamese.
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/k...united-states/

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    Quote Originally Posted by Arminius View Post
    So then Obama too is a criminal for launching an illegal war without Congress there in the first place. And so is any president who ever supports any kind of regime change anywhere. Starting to comprehend how absurd your extremist lunacy makes you look yet?

    Your point is foolish- and you are voicing support for criminality.
    Attempting to force regime change upon another state is ILLEGAL under international law and contrary to the pledges made by participating in the UN Charter.

    You can disagree if you like, of course- but I'll be talking to a propagandist for crime.

    Also, Obama has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump's current treachery. Wakey, wakey.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arminius View Post
    So then Obama too is a criminal for launching an illegal war without Congress there in the first place. And so is any president who ever supports any kind of regime change anywhere. Starting to comprehend how absurd your extremist lunacy makes you look yet?

    not to mention we called Qadaffi a "military target"and launched a Predator at him that caused him to flee and be viciously torn apart and murdered.
    Where's the rule of law in that?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    Moonatic is very fond of quoting international law and supporting the UN. Maybe it's time to point out that the UN supported those criminal Kmer Rouge cunts in Cambodia. It was Vietnam that kicked the bastards out!! Carter and the UN was even giving support to the Kmer Rouge and recognising them as the legitimate government when the world had already learnt about the Killing Fields.

    Your pathetic attempts at diversion are well known, maggot- and serve only to further your reputation as the forum maggot.
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    Quote Originally Posted by moon View Post
    Your point is foolish- and you are voicing support for criminality.
    Attempting to force regime change upon another state is ILLEGAL under international law and contrary to the pledges made by participating in the UN Charter.

    You can disagree if you like, of course- but I'll be talking to a propagandist for crime.

    Also, Obama has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump's current treachery. Wakey, wakey.
    SO WHAT THE FUCK DID WE DO IN LIBYA to begin with but regime change?

    Obama has everything to do with events on the ground in Libya today\ proximate cause.

    Simply because a bunch of UN bureaucrats tried to form a government in Tripoli gives it no particular legitimization if the people of Libya don't accept is as such

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    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    Moonatic is very fond of quoting international law and supporting the UN. Maybe it's time to point out that the UN supported those criminal Kmer Rouge cunts in Cambodia. It was Vietnam that kicked the bastards out!! Carter and the UN was even giving support to the Kmer Rouge and recognising them as the legitimate government when the world had already learnt about the Killing Fields.

    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/k...united-states/
    How can a genocidal government ever be called legit?

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    Quote Originally Posted by moon View Post
    Your point is foolish- and you are voicing support for criminality.
    Attempting to force regime change upon another state is ILLEGAL under international law and contrary to the pledges made by participating in the UN Charter.
    You literally just argued that the U.S. stopping Hitler was a crime. Speaking of foolish points.

    Quote Originally Posted by moon View Post
    Also, Obama has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump's current treachery. Wakey, wakey.
    But your total reversal on whether or not it's a crime has everything to do with your point being total bullshit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bodhisattva View Post
    not to mention we called Qadaffi a "military target"and launched a Predator at him that caused him to flee and be viciously torn apart and murdered.
    Where's the rule of law in that?
    That doesn't count because liberal feelings don't want it to count. It doesn't have to make sense. Just give the snowflake their safe space and stop being a (insert fifty irrational insults here) by challenging obviously flawed hypocrisy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bodhisattva View Post
    How can a genocidal government ever be called legit?
    They were though, it was US and UN policy to recognise the Kk R as the legitimate government, so that tells you all you need to know about governments. Carter wanted to stop Vietnam and appease China, as did the UN.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Arminius View Post
    You literally just argued that the U.S. stopping Hitler was a crime. Speaking of foolish points.



    But your total reversal on whether or not it's a crime has everything to do with your point being total bullshit.
    You have to understand that Moonatic is all for international law insofar as it chimes with his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. He wouldn't give a shit otherwise

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    Quote Originally Posted by Havana Moon View Post
    They were though, it was US and UN policy to recognise the Kk R as the legitimate government, so that tells you all you need to know about governments. Carter wanted to stop Vietnam and appease China, as did the UN.
    everyone wanted to appease China -even put them in the WTO, and China has been rogue

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    Quote Originally Posted by bodhisattva View Post
    SO WHAT THE FUCK DID WE DO IN LIBYA to begin with but regime change?

    Obama has everything to do with events on the ground in Libya today\ proximate cause.

    Simply because a bunch of UN bureaucrats tried to form a government in Tripoli gives it no particular legitimization if the people of Libya don't accept is as such
    Sure- the old ' the people are with the rebels ' canard. The people want peace and stability- not Trump-induced paranoia in the minds of yet more ' Libyan ' warlords.

    America will get by just fine without the armament industry growth that Agent Orange strives for.
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    Quote Originally Posted by bodhisattva View Post
    How can a genocidal government ever be called legit?
    Ask anybody that's only half-way up Izrael's ass.
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