William Shawcross vs. Peter Rodman: Shawcross Swipes Again
Shawcross, William
William Shawcross SHAWCROSS SWIPES AGAIN In hot pursuit of Peter Rodman. Ladies and Gentlemen, send the young folk to their bed chambers. Keep the fainthearted from your reading chair. You have...
...It was clear to me, when I first read the memo, that the feebleness of its criticisms, and its low intellectual quality, far from devaluing Sideshow, vindicated it...
...Ever since William Shawcross's Sideshow began thrilling salon revolutionaries with its thesis that the United States was responsible for the slaughter in Cambodia, I was suspicious of it...
...I included a paraphrase of this exchange in Sideshow, in a section which Rodman quotes selectively: To escape the bombardment, the Vietnamese communists had begun to move deeper into Cambodia-"thus"-as Abrams later acknowledged to the Senate, "bringing them into increasing conflict with the Cambodian authorities...
...Well, there is no arguing with the conspir acy theorist...
...But by enemies I meant not just the United States and Lon Nol, but also North Vietnam...
...I wonder what Rodman actually believes...
...Their stories were being dismissed by some people, as Rodman says, as "imperialist propaganda" or CIA fabrications...
...Embassy in Saigon in January 1971, as part of a regularly published research series...
...Congressional restrictions on advice meant that the Khmers were denied the overall training, management skills and technical know-how essential to the sort of army that Cleland was creating...
...In fall 1970 the White House overrode the rather moderate, sensible proposals put forward by its first military emissary to Cambodia, Colonel Fred Ladd, that small guerilla units be built up, in favor of creating at once a huge main force army...
...Rodman and Kissinger have always concealed this press conference from their readers...
...The implication was that I had concealed it...
...Embassy, Phnom Penh, other declassified documents, interviews with American and Cambodian officials and soldiers, and contemporary press reports...
...Yet Rodman also describes the Khmer Rouge as "political fanatics" and "totalitarian thugs...
...And I began to research into who the Khmer Rouge were and why they behaved in this appalling way...
...it is utterly disgraceful...
...When Mr...
...The second, called, "Documents of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Aggression against Cambodia" was published by Lon Nol's Ministry of Information in 1971...
...After quoting a passage in which I criticize the way in which Cleland encouraged the Cambodian army's dependence on firepower (p...
...In the notes to Chapter 23 I say that my account of the final battle of Phnom Penh "is derived principally from General Palmer's end of tour report, reports of the military attache's office in the U.S...
...Kissinger...
...This stated clearly that area 704 was SUPPER, when in fact SUPPER was area 740...
...The effect was inevitable (especially when it coincided with a deepening economic crisis...
...But how important was the mistake, in fact...
...I simply show from contemporary U.S...
...One of our interests here at The American Spectator is keeping the historical record accurate...
...I did not...
...Since then, I have indeed said that many of the North Vietnamese attacks mentioned by Kissinger in his memoirs had never been thought important enough to be mentioned before...
...when we learned of it there was no question but that the Frost-Kissinger exchange in which it was involved be deleted from the interview or that the three sentences in my book which referred to it be deleted also...
...The error was first made not by me but in the Defense Department White Paper that Rodman mentions...
...and, as so often, it was quite counterproductive...
...He does not dare address it...
...In the following response, Shawcross seems to be retreating from some of his earlier accusations...
...Rodman does not mention that...
...The title of the chapter and of the magazine piece is "Henry Kissinger: Metternich Flummoxed...
...Not true...
...RET William Shawcross, London, England April 27, 1981 The Editor The American Spectator P.O...
...Shawcross asked me for examples of his bogus scholarship, I contacted Peter Rodman, a former member of the National Security Council fresh from working with Henry Kissinger on his memoirs...
...313), Rodman claims that I am "utterly disingenuous . . . Congressional restrictions made any other strategy impossible...
...This movement increased right-wing and military dissatisfaction at home with Sihanouk...
...Not a single mention is made in Kissinger's memoirs (nor, of course, in Rodman's efforts) of NSDM 89"Feeling Sorry for the Khmer Rouge" Given what has happened in Cambodia in recent years this is the most important section in Rodman's concoction...
...I tried to relate that general observation to the specific circumstances of the Khmer Rouge-in particular their small numbers, the isolation of their leaders in the jungle for up to thirteen years, their ideological commitments, the surprisingly sudden nature of their victory, and the punishment they had endured at the hands of their enemies...
...The book will be out (Touchstone) in a few weeks time...
...Rodman gives the impression that the General was a complete patsy to "a powerful senator...
...But his new attack is just as fraudulent...
...In fact, I accorded it our "Worst Book of the Year" award for 1979, noting the absurdity of its thesis and apparent dissimulations in its scholarship...
...Kissinger in Public Nuisances or with a piece I did on him in the October 1978 issue of this magazine will realize that it is unlikely that Henry Kissinger drafted me into his conspiracy...
...Only by ignoring "moral logic" can Rodman, like Kissinger, invent such a formulation...
...To "acknowledge" means "to admit to be true...
...Read both and judge for yourself if Shawcross is correct when he says that 1) American bombing of North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia was responsible for the destabilization and downfall of Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk, 2) subsequent American "aggression '' was responsible for the North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and 3) the very presence of America in Southeast Asia and Cambodia in particular transformed the Khmer Rouge into genocidal fanatics...
...Distracted by the necessity to battle the Penh government's forces, this revolutionary program was, of necessity, limited...
...Rodman was hardly straightforward with you...
...The first was published by the U.S...
...He suggests that I pay scant and inadequate attention to those restrictions...
...it created them and created the opportunity for them to come to power...
...Derek Davies of the Far Eastern Economic Review, an admirer of Shawcross, wrote Rodman that he had seen Shawcross's reply to Rodman 's American Spectator piece and was glad he had not reprinted the latter: ". . . I have seen the detailed refutations of your apologia for Dr...
...Rodman attempts to show that I deny it...
...But what I have done is to try and find explanations for their conduct...
...Has he forgotten that it was the North Vietnamese America was fighting in 1970...
...1980) that in the alterations he made to the Cambodia section of his memoirs after Sideshow was published, Kissinger tried to exaggerate and magnify these incidents...
...The Pentagon had been pressing for the right of 'hot pursuit' across the Cambodian border, and my visit was obviously part of an effort to relieve this pressure.'' At the end of the trip, Bowles writes: There seemed little doubt that on the Cambodian side fears of "hot pursuit" by U.S...
...Perhaps it was because I had already given his covert attack such publicity that Kissinger decided to have Rodman go public himself-almost two years after Sideshow was first published...
...Kissinger and other Nixon administration officials subsequently claimed that Sihanouk, in effect, then gave the green light for the secret U.S...
...Rodman goes on to claim that I "excuse the atrocities [of the Khmer Rouge] by another line of argument: that they were all America's fault...
...The suggestion is that I ignored it...
...to illuminate the Shawcross method of cooking up history," or you did not, in which case Mr...
...The Strangulation of the Cambodian Army" Rodman complains about my use, or lack of use, of the end-of-tour reports of Generals Cleland and Palmer, the heads of the Military Equipment Delivery Team in Cambodia...
...Indeed, if anything, the original exchange makes the case more strongly than I made it in Sideshow...
...312...
...I did not...
...But I also raise the question of how far they were pushed-by South Vietnamese and American attacks into the sanctuaries which had begun even before Sihanouk's overthrow and increased after it...
...I went to talk to Cambodian refugees in Thailand in 1975, a few months after the Khmer Rouge victory...
...Here, as elsewhere in his article, Rodman quotes Khmer Rouge assertions as evidence in his case against the North Vietnamese...
...They were: Area 609, LUNCH, 198 Area 351, SNACK, 383 Area 352, DINNER, 770 Area 350, DESSERT, 120 Area 740, SUPPER, 1,136 To Cambodians (as perhaps to many other people) these are communities, some of them sizeable...
...Rodman conceals this from his readers...
...Kissinger for his information...
...He also fails, like Kissinger himself, to address the real issues raised by the history of Cambodia...
...The 1970-75 war did not prevent the Khmer Rouge coming to power...
...Kissinger does not source it in his memoirs...
...As an experienced military man, would you not think this pressure made it almost inevitable that they would have to expand their area of control or operations, thus bringing them into increasing conflict with the Cambodian authorities...
...Abrams: Yes, I think that is a fair statement...
...That the North Vietnamese spread further into Cambodia in April 1970 is evident...
...It was at Kissinger's insistence that the Cambodian army was expanded from about 37,000 to over 200,000 (at least on paper...
...The point I made repeatedly through the second half of the book is that over and over again Kissinger disregarded advice from the ground and imposed upon Cambodia strategies that were so hopelessly ambitious, in military terms, as to be counterproductive...
...One result was not, as Rodman airily claims, "petty corruption" but mammoth corruption which was seriously perhaps fatally, debilitating to the Cambodian army...
...To make clear all the ambiguities and uncertainties, I actually agree (p...
...And in one press conference, which Rodman cites, he did indeed say that he would not object to the U.S...
...The North Vietnamese Assault on Cambodia: The Missing Month of April" Rodman claims that at this time, just after Sihanouk's overthrow, the North Vietnamese advance into Cambodia was made "with the evident intention of intimidating the new government into passivity, surrender, or collapse...
...Bowles talked with Sihanouk and his officials about "hot pursuit," not about B-52 bombing at all...
...Moreover, despite Rodman, Abrams could perfectly well have said to Symington, "No, Senator, our intelligence showed that the bombing moved them back into South Vietnam" (as Kissinger claimed in his memoirs), or, "Well, Senator, I am afraid there's simply no evidence either way...
...That paragraph continues by saying, "Nonetheless, the reports do provide an extraordinary picture of the problems of the Cambodian army at this stage of the war (1973 onwards) - and of the difficulties inherent in the Pentagon's attempt to impose its models upon the country...
...Quite a lot, all of which Rodman "conceals from his readers...
...It was called, "The Viet Cong's March-April 1970 plans for expanding control in Cambodia...
...He asked Abrams how best the United States could involve itself more deeply in South Vietnamese attacks across the border...
...Kissinger-to journalists and others-with the strict instruction that I was not to be allowed to see it...
...Rodman begins "Shawcross at least acknowledges the genocidal brutality of the Khmer Rouge after they took power, in contrast to other prophets of the Left...
...But, even with my help, Rod) man's work is unimpressive-long on abuse, short on honest argument...
...It is quite illegitimate to quote them as giving irrefutable evidence...
...Even as a hatchet job it seems to me to fail completely...
...Rodman's case rests on the simple assumption that American resistance to totalitarianism in Indochina had a moral basis...
...It was quite clear to me, however, that they were telling the truth...
...I don't know of any specific assurances he was given, but the obvious conclusion for him, given the political situation in South Vietnam and Laos, was that he would be given United States support" if he overthrew Sihanouk...
...Indeed, we have long collaborated and we each believe that the other's work complements his own...
...This is a most childish smear...
...I immediately wrote a detailed response to it...
...In late April the silence was broken by hisses...
...Kissinger's last book did not get a very genial appraisal in our review section last month and any one familiar with my chapter on Dr...
...If this happens we should be prepared to take advantage of the opportunity...
...As Rodman must know perfectly well, it was not in the report as I received it...
...Neither document claimed that in April 1970 Hanoi had been bent on the conquest of Cambodia, as Kissinger claimed in his memoirs...
...In his original memo Rodman claimed that I cited Ponchaud only "occasionally...
...That research was embodied in numerous articles, in Sideshow, and will be part of the next book I am writing...
...Reflecting this, I wrote at the end of Sideshow (p...
...And I have shown (Harper's Nov...
...But that does not make them excuses...
...Had any such evidence existed it is certain it would have been included...
...I quote William Colby, among others, on this...
...They blamed him for carelessness and callousness in his policies towards Cambodia and for sacrificing the country to a strategic design which was itself necessarily flawed...
...I also used masses of material already on the public record and I was given a great deal of information by many of the people I interviewed-over 300 in all...
...Rodman has shifted from the position he took in the memorandum...
...I was pleased to be able to distribute the memo widely and to publish it in the next edition of my book...
...He was sent there by Lyndon Johnson to discuss the Communists in the border areas...
...I do nothing of the sort, as any reasonable reader of Chapter 9 of Sideshow can see...
...As Rodman says, I write that I found "no direct link" between the U.S...
...It seems to me that it is legitimate to quote Khmer Rouge statements by way of illustrating their positions, their beliefs, their paranoias, as I do in Sideshow...
...In early May Mr...
...By saying that Symington had made a "fair statement," Abrams, as I wrote, "acknowledged" its validity...
...Westmoreland] saw it as a mood to be exploited...
...Apparently not, because Rodman also says that the Khmer Rouge murdered three million Cambodians...
...Rodman claims that Area 740, the real SUPPER was "minimally populated by civilians...
...What is "obscene," to use Mr...
...Kissinger to accept any responsibility for the results of a policy which Nixon himself called "the Nixon Doctrine in its purest form...
...In early May, Mr...
...What was significant was the consistency of all the sources I used, the way in which together they made a forceful history, the integrity of which no one, least of all Rodman, has been able to undermine...
...Shawcross's reply to Rodman (despite its length) and a rebuttal from Rodman...
...It is nonsense for Kissinger and Rodman to attempt to deny it...
...I did not notice the discrepancy...
...He claims that the State Department's report, which I received in a sanitized form and which I quoted, "contained evidence that could not be more conclusive, which Shawcross chose to conceal from his readers...
...Shaken by Rodman's complaint over his refusal to reprint Rodman 's critique of Shawcross, he repined: ' 'How quickly a reputation for fairness earned over many years can be forfeited in the minds of bigots and professional polemicists...
...It was distributed quite widely by Mr...
...I also sent a copy of my response to Dr...
...He seems to fall back on the charge that Nixon and Kissinger dissembled to the Congress and acted unconstitutionally...
...It was my view, expressed in Sideshow, that Sihanouk was a cunning fellow, whose statements did not always fully reflect his real views...
...Moreover, by dragging in his apothegm that statesmen must be judged on the consequences of their actions, he is emasculating the moral basis of resistance to totalitarianism...
...Destabilizing' Sihanouk: The Elusive Evidence'' Kissinger and Rodman are in the unhappy position of asserting (1) that the MENU bombing campaign successfully dispersed the Vietnamese Communists from their Cambodian sanctuaries, (2) that a principal reason for the overthrow of Sihanouk was that these same Vietnamese moved further into Cambodia in 1969-70, and (3) that there is no direct relation between (1) and (2...
...Here, as so often elsewhere, Kissinger indulged in overkill...
...Included in this effort were mass relocations of the population, purges of lenient cadres, the use of terror and extensive remodelling of the economic system...
...As for you, Sir, either you knew the tale of the two memos, in which case you were hardly straightforward in telling your readers, "Now I have asked Peter Rodman...
...His use of the Khmer Rouge statements is not scholarly...
...This is a retreat-a welcome one-from Kissinger's own line, repeated ad nauseam in his memoirs, that the North Vietnamese were intent on capturing all Cambodia in April 1970...
...Rodman criticizes the reservation I express about the reports (p...
...113) It is clear that I "invented" nothing...
...Kissinger's aide, Peter Rodman, in your March 1981 issue ("Sideswipe: Kissinger, Shawcross and the Responsibility for Cambodia"), attacking my book, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (Simon and Schuster, 1979...
...hot pursuit" of Vietnamese Communists into Cambodia this could in no way be taken as authorizing a massive B-52 campaign against the sanctuaries...
...Kissinger by Mr...
...Throughout the period there were constant pleas for restraint from State, CIA (which reported the war particularly well from the Phnom Penh station), from the military attache's office, and from Melvin Laird himself...
...Sihanouk's policies, though often irritating to the United States, were an effective means of guarding the neutrality of Cambodia, (pp...
...Most of those I interviewed were American officials-from Cabinet ministers, ambassadors, on down to low level soldiers, diplomats, and secretaries who had had to do with Cambodia...
...Later last year, my publishers decided to bring out a new edition of Sideshow...
...More and more reports of serious clashes between the communists and Cambodian villagers and troops reached Phnom Penh...
...During this final period [it is final only because Quinn ended his work then] the Khmer communists drastically accelerated and intensified their program to radically alter society...
...they took the first steps to change radically the nature of Khmer society...
...I have never considered myself a "prophet" of the Left or any other cause, and as for "acknowledging" Khmer Rouge brutality, that was one of the principal reasons I embarked on my research in the first place...
...He might also let them read the response to it at the conclusion of Rodman 's rebuttal...
...He also expressed doubt that I would publish Shawcross's reply and rather weirdly suggested that I was less than forthright for asking Rodman to collect his researches, some of which had appeared in a Rodman memo, for an American Spectator essay...
...commanders as serious military threats...
...I did not...
...Shawcross and Rodman is the intellectual equivalent of a particularly bloody bull fight...
...To sum up: Rodman's article, like his memorandum, like Kissinger's memoirs, does not even dent the argument of my book...
...Early 1973 to February 1974...
...Rodman labors to show the same thing and that I concealed it...
...A short article about the two memos appeared in New York magazine...
...Certainly I also maintain that Nixon was in a highly emotional state at the time of the invasion and looking for an opportunity to demonstrate "toughness...
...Box 1969 Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A...
...Rodman on Dr...
...Its inaccuracies, distortions, and omissions were deliberately misleading...
...Kissinger does the same in his memoirs...
...I quoted the first sentence Rodman quotes and then another section: "As you are certainly aware, there is highest level concern here with respect to the situation in Cambodia...
...Rodman and Kissinger have never admitted to the existence of two rather important documents about that period...
...By informing only a few sympathetic legislators in a general way of the bombing, the White House was deliberately usurping the Congress' constitutional rights and responsibilities...
...He is merely the sorcerer's apprentice...
...This was the second largest concentration of civilians in the sanctuaries bombed, after BREAKFAST which was said to have 1,640...
...It is clear from Palmer's report that he disagreed with many of Cleland's actions...
...Whatever Kissinger and Nixon intended for Cambodia, their efforts created catastrophe...
...they may even have misled you in the article which you published about my book at the end of 1979 in which you said that "rumors now circulate" that I had misused the documents...
...On p. 122 I write, "this account of the coup is neither complete nor conclusive...
...Apologetics nonetheless...
...Colby said of the coup's leader, Lon Nol, at this time, "Lon Nol may well have been encouraged by the fact that the U.S...
...Rodman ignores these complicating subtleties...
...The point is that it is untrue for Rodman to claim that' 'Sihanouk's position never deviated...
...I apologize to your readers for the fact that this can be shown only at considerable length...
...In 1965, I had told Chester Bowles, en passant, that the United States could bomb Vietnamese sanctuaries, but the question of a big B-52 campaign was never raised...
...there was no "sleight of hand" as Rodman claims...
...Here is how: This article is a rehash of a long memorandum prepared by Mr...
...That is an assertion for which not a shred of evidence has been produced...
...I immediately began to write about the horrors of which they spoke...
...Shawcross finally sent us his reply, reiterating the charges that 1) I am a low fellow for asking Rodman to elaborate on his earlier memo and 2) I am under the dark spell of "Dr...
...138) My account of April 1970 makes it abundantly clear that the North Vietnamese moved westwards...
...If communities of 1,640 and 1,136 are "minimal" to Rodman, I rest my case...
...judge the victor and the vanquished...
...Government and the coup plotters (p...
...Even if I had received it, I would not have found it conclusive of anything...
...A walk across any battlefield shortly after the guns have fallen silent is convincing enough...
...Rodman and Dr...
...judge for yourselves which of the combatants is the matador and which the bull...
...He then quotes the report as saying that "in one of his amazing reversals Sihanouk said he would not object to 'hot pursuit' . . ."I did not conceal this passage...
...B-52 campaign which began in March 1969 against Vietnamese Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia...
...Bowles, says Rodman, "was skeptical.'' Indeed he was...
...hot pursuit" into unpopulated areas of Cambodia...
...And I suppose it is flattering that almost two years after the publication of my book, Kissinger should instruct his aide to attack it...
...I decided that Rodman's memorandum and my repudiation of it should both be published in this new edition...
...The best one can say is that in the light of my own repudiation, some of the most ludicrous charges fiave been removed, others tempered...
...When are such people to be believed...
...47402 Sir, I have been away for some time in Southeast Asia and I have only just seen the article by Dr...
...The passage (as Rodman knows from my response to his memo) was in part inspired by some of the observations made by J. Glenn Gray, the American soldier and writer, in his classic study, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle...
...Phnom Penh was captured . . . the Khmer Rouge leaders fled to the jungles whence they had emerged less than four years before, vowing that they would mount a new guerilla war against the enemy in Phnom Penh . . . Rodman concludes by declaring: "By no stretch of moral logic can the crimes of mass murderers be ascribed to those who struggled to prevent their coming to power...
...Government documents, of which this memo was only one, that it was a lie for Kissinger and other officials to claim later (and as Kissinger continued to claim in his memoirs) that the sanctuaries were "all unpopulated" by Cambodians...
...Chester Bowles: The Missing Quotation" Chester Bowles visited Sihanouk in 1968...
...Constitution...
...I never deny, despite Rodman's claims in various parts of his article, that those sanctuaries were large and were seen by the U.S...
...In that press conference, March 28, 1969, Sihanouk said, "Nobody, no chief of state in the world placed in the same situation as I am, would agree to let foreign aircraft bomb his own country...
...it never occurred to any of us that less than two years later we would actually invade Cambodia...
...But how could he be...
...the extent of American complicity (if any) could probably only be uncovered by Congressional investigation.'' What I do is produce a good deal of evidence that at the very least American officials in Vietnam had prior knowledge of the plot, through their contacts with anti-Sihanouk exiles led by Son Ngoc Thanh...
...Rodman quotes Chester Bowles' autobiography, in which Bowles says Sihanouk took him aside and said he would not object to U.S...
...By 1975 they were about 75,000 and Cambodian society had been overturned...
...apart from anything else, I recommend his book Year Zero as the best account of Khmer Rouge rule...
...This paragraph appears to be at the center of his assertion that I am an apologist for the Khmer Rouge...
...Yet it received scant notice from the journalists and scholars who had earlier trumpeted Shawcross...
...It also shed light on "the Shawcross method of cooking up history...
...Nixon's mood was confirmed in Kissinger's own account, with its sly innuendoes that Nixon was so drunk on the Sequoia a few nights before the invasion that he could hardly stand...
...was working with Son Ngoc Thanh...
...The record of what happened in the conversation is anyway ambiguous and I am scrupulous at showing this...
...Davies also called Mr...
...Rodman has now dropped that attack...
...Cultural and social structures remained essentially intact but came under stiff attack through attempts to modify them...
...Nor do I ignore Ponchaud...
...Even if Sihanouk had authorized U.S...
...In this book, which Hannah Arendt describes in her introduction as "this singularly earnest and beautiful book,'' Gray tries to come to terms with the nature of evil in warfare: Anyone who has watched men on the battlefield at work with artillery or looked into the eyes of veteran killers fresh from the slaughter, or studied the description of bombardiers' feelings while smashing their targets, finds it hard to escape the conclusion that there is a delight in destruction...
...I have found that on most matters Nixon's book is a more reliable account than Kissinger's...
...I should have...
...I do not want to run the risk, because of their bombing of the communists, of seeing an escalation of the war extend to Cambodia-that is, I will in all cases oppose all bombing on Cambodian territory under whatever pretext...
...Almost irrelevant...
...First, because he dissembles and second, because he ignores the vital point, which I stressed, that whatever Sihanouk told Bowles was quite irrelevant in terms of the U.S...
...He knows this is not so...
...The graceful Mr...
...28) of the Chiefs' assertion that there were Cambodian "towns" in the sanctuary areas that "villages would be a more accurate description...
...It is also the most shocking...
...But at least Rodman has retreated from Kissinger's claim-scotched by David Frost-that the bombing actually encouraged the Vietnamese to move into South Vietnam rather than deeper into Cambodia...
...Moreover, Bowles' own talking paper stated, "we do not regard so-called hot pursuit as a desirable remedy,'' and the State Department report concludes at the end of the mission that the Bowles party believed that "there seemed little doubt that on the Cambodian side fears of hot pursuit had been allayed...
...in the notes to Chapter 21 I acknowledge "the military information and descriptions in the following pages are from these reports unless otherwise noted...
...Rodman takes offense at a passage in my book, which he quotes: "All wars are designed to arouse anger...
...Does Rodman believe, for example, the Khmer Rouge assertion that it was the Vietnamese who murdered all those found in mass graves throughout the country...
...In fact, as I pointed out in my reply, that statement had not before been published and was not in the documents released to me...
...He wrote, "I doubted that he meant it...
...The principal motive was a desire, by one means or another, to clean out the sanctuaries...
...ground probes, B-52 strikes and ARVN cross border operations...
...Nothing I have ever written has sought to "excuse" or "apologize" for the Khmer Rouge...
...Succinctly put, Shawcross is saying, America 'spolicy in Southeast Asia was responsible for the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese genocide of the late 1970s...
...Rodman is no more successful...
...Despite Rodman's efforts there is nothing in Ponchaud's book which contradicts my work...
...One of the most striking things about those who knew the country well was their almost unanimous contempt for Henry Kissinger...
...But another was called specifically to deny a UPI report from Saigon that he would tolerate B-52 bombing...
...That memorandum, entitled "Shawcross's Documents," was anonymous and its authors saw fit to claim (anonymously) in its introduction that it was "an independent examination" of documents I had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act...
...That was the principal argument I was making, as Rodman knows...
...A sensitive person is sure to be oppressed by a spirit of evil there, a radical evil which suddenly makes the medieval images of hell and the thousand devils of the imagination believable...
...In the summer of 1980,1 obtained a copy of the Rodman-Kissinger anonymous memorandum...
...As I say, these scholars are violent types...
...Perhaps I am another agent of the Kissinger network and perhaps not, but it might be noted that Dr...
...And what else did Bowles say of that visit...
...I do indeed believe that the massive U.S...
...Rodman does not share with your readers the Chiefs' actual estimates of the numbers of Cambodians living in the areas which became MENU sites...
...From the Homeric account of the sacking of Troy to the conquest of Dienbienphu, Western literature is filled with descriptions of soldiers as berserkers and mad destroyers...
...and South Vietnamese troops, which had been strongly rumored in the American press had now been allayed...
...All I can say is that I am used to White Papers being accurate...
...in fact the hearing shows he often disagreed with the questions or suppositions put to him...
...And in an interview with Sihanouk after the rest of the book went to press, I quote him (p...
...The whims of and the constraints upon a foreign prince . . . are not grounds for the President to wage war...
...Rodman has misled your readers...
...Shawcross, who, pre sumably will still hold to the view that it was the actions of Kissinger and Nixon, rather than North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge, whose consequences were the post-bellum genocide, must, to make his case, also be prepared to argue the more universal point that statesmen whose intentions are to oppose totalitarianism and who, after identifying it in the world proceed to combat it, nevertheless act recklessly...
...Nothing that Kissinger has produced since the publication of Sideshow has shown that the grave charges I made against him were ill-founded...
...It appeared in our March 1981 issue and in my mind admirably set the record straight on America's alleged culpability for the Cambodian holocaust...
...It is good that Cambodia should be the subject of interest and debate...
...Rodman's word, is not the attempt of a writer like myself to explore and explain what happened...
...Yet Kissinger constantly asserts in his memoirs that the North Vietnamese were about to establish their hegemony over all Cambodia at that time and that only the U.S...
...And Richard Nixon himself did not seem to think it very important...
...Rightly, because they numbered only a few thousand then and had no hope of political power...
...officials in South Vietnam and Washington were well aware of this...
...In any case, I did not receive it...
...I sent copies of both memos to a number of journalists, editors, and academics interested in Cambodia...
...Sihanouk's balance of right against left became more precarious...
...Neither David Frost nor I was "embarrassed" by the error, as Rodman claims...
...So in The American Spectator Rodman says I quote him "extensively...
...Then there fell an eerie stillness...
...Rodman claims that I "blame Generals Cleland and Palmer for the disaster that befell" the Cambodian army...
...Rodman claims that I had no access to White House documents...
...Kissinger's instructions in the second half of 1979...
...Shawcross which convincingly casts doubt both on your arguments and on the integrity with which you have propounded them...
...in the very next paragraph I go on to argue that it was precisely those restrictions of which Cleland should have taken account...
...What the Chiefs' Memorandum Really Said" Rodman's complaint seems to be that I claim the United States "callously assumed the risk of massive harm to civilians" in the secret B-52 bombing of the sanctuaries 1969-70...
...That decision, made in fall 1970, was one of the single most disastrous of the war...
...Blinded by the rage to destroy and supremely careless of the consequences, they storm against the enemy until they are either victorious, dead or utterly exhausted...
...It is the refusal of Dr...
...He does not make his case...
...Sihanouk did not...
...Rodman's article is no more impressive, no more damaging...
...94) that "It is possible that Prince Sihanouk was indeed a party to the conspiracy"-that he would tolerate bombing so long as it was kept secret...
...Rodman is thoroughly dishonest when he says that my reference to their "Manichean fear" is to "American and Cambodian efforts to resist them.'' In fact the very next paragraph after the one he quotes relates to their "Manichean fear" of the Vietnamese: On Christmas Day 1978, their fears were realised...
...This was the full exchange between Senator Symington and General Abrams: Symington: During 1969 and early 1970 the North Vietnamese in Cambodia were under increasing pressure from U.S...
...I am critical of Cleland (much less of Palmer), but if I attach any blame it is to Henry Kissinger...
...Rodman quotes a cable from General Westmoreland to General Abrams of April 21, 1970...
...In fine, it was a useful addition to the historical debate over American involvement in Southeast Asia...
...The following exchange between Messrs...
...Thus Rodman shows that Kissinger and Nixon realized that the North Vietnamese wrecked the neutrality of Cambodia, that the Khmer Rouge were always totalitari-ans, that the proper course for America was to oppose them, and that the peoples of Indochina would have been better off had we succeeded...
...576-580) But Rodman then says, "Sihanouk's position never deviated from this"-i.e., his aside on "hot pursuit"-"After the B-52 bombing started in 1969 and was reported in the American press, Sihanouk responded in similar terms publicly...
...But Mr...
...The threat to Phnom Penh and the present concern of higher authority may be conducive to relaxation of some of the constraints under which we are operating...
...So much for the history of Rodman's concoction...
...Of the pundits, only George Will was moved to comment in public, despite our wide dissemination of Rodman 's piece...
...Even Rodman seems to understand that, though he does not acknowledge it: His section on April 1970 is all about the North Vietnamese-the Khmer Rouge are not mentioned...
...The administration had no right to conceal the bombing from Congress simply because that may have been convenient for Sihanouk...
...Rodman complains that I have not addressed "one of the most important revelations" in Kissinger's book-that on April 4, 1970 he proposed the neutralization of Cambodia to Le Due Tho...
...Rodman claims, falsely, that it is my thesis '' that it was American bombing that turned the Khmer Rouge into butchers" and that in pursuit of this notion I ignored important sources-Ponchaud and Quinn...
...I am simply not by nature violent enough for scholarly debates...
...This is untrue...
...Rodman's treatment of my account of the Bowles mission is a sham...
...bombing and military aid to the Cambodians...
...Rodman then claims that I " invent [ed] a phony quotation from General Abrams...
...Certainly I say that the bombing, together with other U.S...
...Just as the Bolsheviks could come to power in Russia only after the destruction of World War I, so the Khmer Rouge were enabled to control Cambodia only by the 1970-75 war...
...112...
...I was impressed by Rodman 's early dissections of Shawcross and asked him to do a piece illuminating ' 'the Shawcross method of cooking up history...
...I did not, as Rodman seeks to show, exaggerate the danger to these Cambodians, as expressed in the Chiefs' memo...
...Well here is progress, and I hope Shawcross will let all the professional anti-Americans know of his new position...
...But, according to the Chiefs' memo cited above, Area 740 contained 1,136 civilians...
...in my response I pointed out this was false...
...There he accused me of not quoting a direct state-ment from Sihanouk to Bowles which Kissinger quotes in his memoirs...
...he did not reply...
...I also record that although members of the NSC staff were specifically asked by Kissinger to prove, after the invasion and on the basis of captured documents and other evidence, that the North Vietnamese had been about to capture Phnom Penh in April 1970, they were able to do no such thing...
...What of its substance...
...FANK (the Cambodian army) was unable to absorb the sophisticated accoutrements of divisional reorganization he pressed upon it...
...The fundamental military problems of incompetence and corruption were, if anything, exacerbated by the actions Cleland took...
...It would have been honest for Rodman to have noted this...
...He should note especially Chapter 12 where I discuss at length National Security Study Memorandum 99 and National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 89...
...invasion stopped them...
...The bombing was destabilising him...
...Shawcross's case rests on his claim that "Statesmen have to be judged by the consequences of their actions...
...Government and other documents...
...From England, Shawcross's native land, the New Statesman mentioned that Shawcross was readying a reply to this example of "counter-revolutionary character assassination...
...What he should have acknowledged is that he had a great deal of help from me in preparing his article...
...Unlike so many of the publications that refused to publish Rodman 's responses to articles by Shawcross which had appeared in those journals (for instance, the London Sunday Times, Harper's, and the Far Eastern Economic Review), I gladly publish Mr...
...It is as if they are seized by a demon and are no longer in control of themselves...
...As an alternative to a foreign policy motivated by moral concerns(a preference that the consequences of our actions be good rather than evil), and illuminated by a lucid appreciation of reality (an understanding of how our actions will lead to the desired conse quences), Shawcross advances a foreign policy based solely on ' 'consequences, detached from any mooring to either morality or reality...
...troops there with the result of widening the scope of the war in Vietnam have served to emphasize for all to see what became evident to me during my visit...
...But certainly I think there was American motive for replacing Sihanouk and that I established this without, as Rodman claims, "thick insinuation...
...Rodman "the ventriloquists 's doll,'' a bigot, and a professional polemicist...
...I do nothing of the sort...
...In my opinion, Rodman unhorsed this charge in his March reply...
...You have in hand an American Spectator not meant for polite company...
...In any case, the article in The American Spectator is Rodman's memo rewritten with the help of my own memo...
...This is one of the main points I made, and which Rodman, like Kissinger, fails to address...
...He made no mention of it whatsoever in his account in his own memoirs of that meeting between Kissinger and Le Due Tho...
...390) as telling me, "I did not know about the B-52 bombing in 1969...
...Under the transparent banner of a new "Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation," the Vietnamese launched a dry season blitzkrieg toward Phnom Penh...
...Later events in Cambodia, the overthrow of Sihanouk and the subsequent introduction of U.S...
...In this as in many other matters, Sihanouk was a most accomplished deviator...
...Men who have lived in the zone of combat long enough to be veterans are sometimes possessed by a fury that makes them capable of anything...
...bombing the Vietnamese...
...Rodman and Dr...
...the country's command structure could not possibly absorb such an increase...
...Since consequences can be known only after the fact, and, as Shawcross ably demonstrates, even then they are often attributed to the wrong actions, his dictum is a recipe for capitulation...
...Quinn writes in the summary of his study (Naval War College Review, Spring 1976, p.6) of changes in Khmer Rouge conduct: Mid 1971 to early 1973...
...Some of those explanations are, of course, deeply uncomfortable to Mr...
...and South Vietnamese operations, pushed the North Vietnamese further into Cambodia...
...Base Area 704: The Wrong Box" I repeated a mistake made by the Pentagon and as soon as it was discovered at the Pentagon-from enquiries made simultaneously by me and by Kissinger-I acknowledged it...
...In NSDM 89 Kissinger dismissed all caution and authorized the most ambitious and most impractical of all the military options which had been discussed for Cambodia...
...If this is indeed a startling revelation then that fact has escaped almost every other critic also...
...Yours, William Shawcross...
...Almost all such appeals were overridden in favor of maximum militarization-by Kissinger...
...bombing, particularly in 1973, must have affected their conduct...
...Actually I use them extensively...
...indeed, I said (p...
...396), "Statesmen have to be judged by the consequences of their actions...
...Thus Shawcross must show that Nixon and Kissinger actually caused the de stabilization of Cambodia, the fall of Sihanouk, the subsequent invasion, and the brutality of the Khmer Rouge-all this having been brought about by U.S...
...My claim is in fact that the Khmer Rouge became more and more vicious as the war progressed-both Ponchaud and Quinn bear that out...
...He was...
...It is true that I had other documents referring to the bombing of Area 740, though neither of them identified it as SUPPER...
...Kissinger...
...This evil appears to surpass mere human malice and to demand explanation in cosmological and religious terms...
...There is enormous difference between, "hot pursuit" and a B-52 bombing campaign sustained over more than a year...
...Whatever Kissinger and Nixon intended for Cambodia, their efforts created catastrophe...
...In writing Sideshow I did not just have access to U.S...
...The sheer gore of this intellectual dispute, the gore and the weirdness, have reminded me of why I never took a Ph.D...
...There is an essential difference between the arguments made by these two men...
...Perhaps it was in one of the sections excised for reasons of national security...
Vol. 14 • July 1981 • No. 7
