The Great American Saloon Series/Taking Georgetown
Mysak, Joe
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL SON SANN BLUE 6~ilZ don't want to talk about the past," is how Son Sann put it. Testy, curt, and final. Didn't he say the same thing on the MacNeil-Lehrer show a week...
...I do not think they are slaughtering people . . . . I think it is a bad government for the country, but they are not carrying on a holocaust...
...I don't want to talk about the past...
...We have got our politicians running around this country and running around the world saying no more holocausts, and yet when it comes to something like this, then we ask for a very meager amount at best to help these people...
...There is something forced about that "but...
...At least for Son Sann it was a painful decision...
...The activities of the KPNLF and the Khmer Rouge are entirely autonomous, it is insisted, and not one penny of the proposed military assistance will go to Pol Pot...
...He had not come to talk about Lon Nol's coup of 1970, the rapid American pullout from southeast Asia in 1975 that opened the door to Pol Pot, or even the subsequent Khmer Rouge holocaust...
...Many in Congress don't want to talk about the past because they don't dare...
...In a certain way, Solarz's insistence on formal credentials is part of the same evasion of responsibility...
...not just a democrat, but the Prime Minister-in-exile of the UN-sanctioned Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea...
...Robert Torricelli (D-N J), another liberal on the Asian and Pacific Affairs subcommittee, is also an 9 outspoken advocate of aid to Cambodia...
...Malcolm Gladwell is the assistant editor at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...
...Late in June, Solarz performed the same gymnastics, albeit with a slightly different twist, for the New York Time...
...In the third world, we must distinguish between wars of national liberation--as in Afghanistan and Cambodia, where it is appropriate to aid indigenous resistance forcesmand civil wars--as in Nicaragua, where it is inappropriate for us to engage in efforts to overthrow internationally recognized governments...
...My view is that we would like to help the Contras, for example, in Nicaragua...
...Son Sann had come simply to support the efforts in Congress--led by liberal House Democrats such as Steve Solarz (DNY)-to grant $5 million in military aid to his forces (the KPNLF) and those of Prince Sihanouk.' This was a delicate mission, and if Cambodian history was to help at all, it could begin no earlier than 1978, when the country suffered its most recent indignity at the hands of the Vietnamese...
...The bill fulfills one of his axioms about foreign affairs: "that whenever we are being involved in circumstances such as these, other nations [in this case, the countries in the Pacific basin] are taking the lead...
...In other words, the Vietnam experience argues forcefully against precisely the sort of short-sighted, ill-conceived action contemplated in Cambodia today...
...He is willing to let the easy fictions of diplomacy take the place of moral judgments...
...Rep...
...Yet there is more here than cowardice masquerading as legality...
...Discussion of the hard issues, an appreciation of the kind of commitment the situation cries out for, has been pre-empted by a partisan contest over "toughness" and "will...
...Congressman.., I do not think that it is fair to say that there is a holocaust going on there, now...
...But I do not think the government in Nicaragua is carrying on a holocaust...
...He is happy to let others decide whether it is worth trading the difficulties of life today in Cambodia under the Vietby Malcolm Gladweli namese for a possible return of the Khmer Rouge...
...Now there is something very wrong here somewhere, isn't there...
...Didn't he say the same thing on the MacNeil-Lehrer show a week earlier...
...Wolfowitz...
...But it is telling that every time Solarz proposes supporting freedom fighters around the world, he justifies it not by discussing the intrinsic merits of the cause, but by drawing elaborate diplomatic distinctions...
...Now, if I can just make this statement, in Kampuchea, we are told, in fact you yourself had mentioned, that some 2 to 3 million people have been slaughtered...
...To be sure, both the KPNLF and its congressional backers take great pains to point out that the Kampuchean Coalition is in many ways a marriage of convenience...
...During House hearings earlier this year, one of them, Toby Roth (R-Wisc...
...How else could Steve Solarz declare that "we must be prepared to put our money where our mouth is" when he has spent his career doing exactly the opposite...
...In Cambodia, though, "the people who are resisting the Vietnamese occupation are essentially the government that we recognize . . . . A case might be made that it would not be inappropriate to help them through the Foreign Aid bill . . . . " The point, Solarz explained, was to "distinguish the manner in which we provide help in Cambodia from the manner in which we provide help in Nicaragua and Afghanistan...
...Given those credentials, who wanted to dwell on the fact that the largest member of the coalition is Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and who wanted a reminder that yesterday's butcher was today's formal ally...
...Evidently not...
...It does matter that Sol Sann and Pol Pot are allied, because they share a common goal: defeating the Vietnamese...
...What are the lessons of Vietnam applied to these circumstances if not inherently paralytic...
...For here at last squeamish congressmen seemed to have a truly legitimate freedom fighter...
...And does the bill take this into account...
...Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz: Mr...
...Now, it is interesting that in the three months between March and June, Solarz seems to have discovered something rather shocking about the Soviet-installed government of Afghanistan...
...Son Sann and Prince Sihanouk are members of the Coalition Government of Kampuchea...
...And unless the proposed 'Sann was brought to America by the Washington-based Freedom Federation, a fascinating human rights group that acts as a hub for Iron Curtain e'migr~ groups in this country...
...Perhaps the bill's House supporters have heeded Ben Wattenberg's recent warning that if the Democrats continue opposing an activist foreign policy "at a time when they are trying to show how tough they are, they will be demonstrating that they are wimps...
...Addressing his colleagues on the Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee in March, Solarz pointed out that "in the case of Afghanistan and Nicaragua, 2Not all of the bill's backers implicitly chose the Khmer Rouge over the Vietnamese...
...Beyond that, the past did not square with the image of diplomatic respectability Son Sann presented...
...If Steve Solarz does not want to be paralyzed by the lessons of Vietnam, he has to ignore them entirely...
...For Steve Solarz, apparently, that is enough...
...commitment is capable of matching and surpassing the kind of support the Khmer Rouge can get from China...
...Son Sann certainly realizes this, but as a nationalist seems to have decided that the Khmer Rouge is the lesser of two evils...
...It is to escape the Vietnam legacy that the debate in Congress over Cambodia has turned inward...
...Within the Kampuchean Coalition the Khmer Rouge has by far the strongest army...
...Asst...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 45...
...Five million dollars in aid is not enough to change that, and nothing less than an extraordinary U.S...
...Roth: 2 to 3 million people killed...
...The leader of the largest of the two pro-Western guerrilla forces fighting the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia was insistent...
...Is Congress prepared to make such a commitment...
...If not, we must face the fact that so long as the Khmer Rouge remains the dominant anti-Vietnamese faction, every dollar spent defeating Vietnam may actually hasten Pol Pot's return to power...
...didn't seem to know the difference: Roth...
...Vietnam taught that a war without clear long-term objectives cannot be won and should not be fought...
...the people we are either helping or being asked to help are fighting against recognized governments, whatever one thinks of those governments . . . governments represented in the UN . . . . One ought to [aid them] covertly rather than overtly...
...Congress's road to the same conclusion has been more tortuous...
...Solarz claims that "we need to learn the lessons of Vietnam, but it would be a tragic mistake if we were to be paralyzed by them...
...assistance does something to frustrate the Khmer Rouge's ends, the fact that Pol Pot is not a direct beneficiary of military assistance is meaningless: We will still fight his battles for him...
...That comes from the period when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia...
Vol. 18 • July 1985 • No. 7
