SIDESHOW

Rating:
Summary: A book that makes you think!
Review: I have had a lot of trouble finding this book. It had been recommened by quite a few people to me, but I had a hard time finding it.

I found it in of all places, a outdoor market in the capital of Cambodia this summer. Cambodia is great for finding bootleg copies of any books on Cambodia.

Shawcross has written a well documented, researched, and written book on Cambodia's role in the Vietnam War. It was easy to read and it certainly made you think.

Unfortunately, I disagree with the tone of the book. And ultimately I disagree with the author's point of view. But anyone interested in the Vietnam War, Nixon, or what happened in Cambodia should read this book. I ultimately disagreed with the book, you may or may not, but regardless it is a book that is well written and will make you think.

Check this book out!

Rating:
Summary: How the Americans destroyed Cambodia.
Review: In my title sentence, I basically give a summary of Shawcross's contention that Cambodia was destroyed by the United States. I think Shawcross makes good points on why the United States must bear some responsibility in the destruction of this small country. What is lacking is an even review of all the characters in the history (Khymer Rouge, Viet Cong, NVA, ARVN,
and the Thais) of Cambodia. The Vietnamese Communists have as much a stake in why Cambodia turned out as it did. I think Shawcross purposely overlooks this and points the finger at what he percieves as the evil doers of American policy--Kissinger and Nixon.
I think Shawcross does a good job of relating how the USA tried to salvage the intervention in Vietnam at the cost of destroying a small country. I think he proves that point. I also enjoyed his portrayal of all the principal American and Cambodian players in this drama. As I said, a more critical look at the Vietnamese would give this book a more even outlook. After I read this book, I understoon why Presidential Administrations did not involve Kissinger in future policy. Henry comes off as arrogant in the least, evil at the most. For more information on what happened after this time in Cambodia, please read Brother Enemy.

Rating:
Summary: How the Americans destroyed Cambodia.
Review: In my title sentence, I basically give a summary of Shawcross's contention that Cambodia was destroyed by the United States. I think Shawcross makes good points on why the United States must bear some responsibility in the destruction of this small country. What is lacking is an even review of all the characters in the history (Khymer Rouge, Viet Cong, NVA, ARVN,
and the Thais) of Cambodia. The Vietnamese Communists have as much a stake in why Cambodia turned out as it did. I think Shawcross purposely overlooks this and points the finger at what he percieves as the evil doers of American policy--Kissinger and Nixon.
I think Shawcross does a good job of relating how the USA tried to salvage the intervention in Vietnam at the cost of destroying a small country. I think he proves that point. I also enjoyed his portrayal of all the principal American and Cambodian players in this drama. As I said, a more critical look at the Vietnamese would give this book a more even outlook. After I read this book, I understoon why Presidential Administrations did not involve Kissinger in future policy. Henry comes off as arrogant in the least, evil at the most. For more information on what happened after this time in Cambodia, please read Brother Enemy.

Rating:
Summary: The Pernicious Mind of Dr. Kissinger
Review: On March 18, 1969 the United States initiated a bombing offensive on a neutral South East Asian nation, Cambodia, without the consent or knowledge of the U.S. Congress. The campaign was constitutionaly illegal and serves as a glaring result of unchecked Executive power.

Shawcross discusses the B-52 raids over Cambodia in great detail. His use of countless government documents, gathered through the Freedom of Information Act, brush away much of the smoke that had, prior to publication, clouded the incident in secrecy.

Shawcross sites many reasons why the architect of the campaign, Dr. Henry Kissinger, viewed the bombing of Cambodia as a dire necessity to U.S. national security. Kissinger held that North Vietnamese supply lines and sanctuaries located along the Vietnam-Cambodian border were costing numerous American lives and were preventing the Vietnamization of the war, hence prolonging U.S. involvment. Until these sancutuaries were destroyed, Nixon would not be able to achieve, his "Peace with Honor." Further more, Kissinger understood that the Vietnamese were in a strong position in negotiating peace. It was hoped that the massive bombing campaign would force the Vietnamese to consent to a mutual cease-fire. Kissinger's rationle does make a great deal of sense when studying the situation from a realist perspective, as does Dr. K's "Madman Theory," of war and foreign policy.

Kissinger believed that essentially a nation's foreign policy would prove ineffective if not backed by a threat of irrational force. When it became time to negotiate peace with Hanoi, the Nixon administration's insanity, represented by the devestation of a neutral nation, was supposed to bring strength to the American position.

Ironically, the bombing of Cambodia was one of the main factors in the demise of the Nixon administration, lead to an notable increase in Communist support, and ultimately was the catalyst for the third Indochinese war.

Indeed, Shawcross provides an interesting study on the effects the American campaign had, not only on the destablization of Cambodia, but also on the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. With U.S. urging, if not complicity, Lon Nol usurped acting head of state King Nordom Sihanouk, thus creating a strong bond with the United States. Being fueled with U.S. weapons, dollars and advisors, Lon Nol began to wage a war against communist insurgents as well as any party viewed as hostile to his regime.

As the conflicts raged in Lon Nol's Cambodia, evidence of the Nixon/Kissinger bombing campaign came to light. Congress was appalled and demanded the immediate halt to the air strikes. Kissinger was left without a valuable bargaining chip at the peace talks in Paris. The Vietnamese leadership knew that administration was on the political ropes, and that South Vietnam was on the verge of toppling completely.

As North Vietnamese forces closed on the southern capital Saigon, Khmer Rouge forces took Phnom Penh, signaling another communist victory in South East Asia. Now, instead of dousing the flames of communism in the region, the U.S. unintentionally created three communist states: Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

With the emergence of Watergate evidence, the Nixon administration was a sinking ship, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Aside from simply documenting the Cambodian bombings, Shawcross often attacks Kissinger the man. He often uses testimony, interviews and assorted documents in order to paint Dr. K as a demented war-monger, and liar; yet always staying between the lines of legality.

Kissinger was deeply resentful of the publication of such a scathing attack, going so far as to publish his own rebuttal, albeit written under the name of an underling. The banter between the Kissinger camp and Shawcross continued for a number of years, and I imagine Kissinger cringing everytime he sees a copy of Sideshow.

As scathing as Shawcross' attack on Kissinger may be, Dr. K was still a very adept diplomat, and during his time serving the Nixon administration did accomplish some stunning diplomatic coups, such as normalizing relations with China. In conclusion, like everything, there are two sides, and one seeking to truly understand history will analyze both sides with equal scrutiny.

Rating:
Summary: A Ghastly Misuse of Superpower
Review: Reading this together with accounts of the Laotian conflict, one realizes that the Vietnam War was in many senses a misnomer: the battle between communist insurgencies and American-sponsored nationalist forces spanned the entirety of Indochina; the Cambodian civil war providing the last (and easily the most tragic) chapter. Unlike Laos and Vietnam, however, blame for which can be apportioned largely to Kennedy and Johnson respectively, the prosecution of American policy in Cambodia was almost solely the concern of Richard Nixon and his dark eminence, Henry Kissinger.

The story of Cambodia in the 1970s divides into two halves: In the space of several years the ineffectual pro-Western president, Lon Nol (having ousted the mercurial Prince Sianhouk) squandered millions of dollars of American military and economic aid, his regime caving in 1975 to the insurgent Khmer Rouge. Under Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge government proceeded (from 1975 to 1979) to institute a ghastly "cultural revolution" in which the cities were emptied, the middle classes liquidated in killing-fields concentration camps, the country thrown into famine and the entire society wound back to "Year Zero."

The other "half" to the story of Cambodia is the American side, namely the story of the illegal (and botched) invasion of 1970 and subsequent covert bombing operations across the entirety Cambodia. Shawcross argues cogently that it was precisely because of the devastating bombing, and utter destruction of the peasant economy, that Pol Pot was able to marshal a powerbase capable of overthrowing Lon Nol's government. From there he argues that Kissinger bears partial (if indirect) responsibility for the consequences of the Khmer Rouge takeover, including the killing fields. Whether one can go that far is an issue that will tax historians and moralists for generations, but there can be no question that: (1) the B-52 raids failed in their stated objective of supporting Lon Nol; and (2) Kissinger (and his adviser John Negroponte) were blithely indifferent to the human suffering that the bombing brought. With John Negroponte now assuming a critical role in the Iraq war, this book remains a compelling study of how not to use superpower.

Rating:
Summary: A Ghastly Misuse of Superpower
Review: Reading this together with accounts of the Laotian conflict, one realizes that the Vietnam War was in many senses a misnomer: the battle between communist insurgencies and American-sponsored nationalist forces spanned the entirety of Indochina; the Cambodian civil war providing the last (and easily the most tragic) chapter. Unlike Laos and Vietnam, however, blame for which can be apportioned largely to Kennedy and Johnson respectively, the prosecution of American policy in Cambodia was almost solely the concern of Richard Nixon and his dark eminence, Henry Kissinger.

The story of Cambodia in the 1970s divides into two halves: In the space of several years the ineffectual pro-Western president, Lon Nol (having ousted the mercurial Prince Sianhouk) squandered millions of dollars of American military and economic aid, his regime caving in 1975 to the insurgent Khmer Rouge. Under Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge government proceeded (from 1975 to 1979) to institute a ghastly "cultural revolution" in which the cities were emptied, the middle classes liquidated in killing-fields concentration camps, the country thrown into famine and the entire society wound back to "Year Zero."

The other "half" to the story of Cambodia is the American side, namely the story of the illegal (and botched) invasion of 1970 and subsequent covert bombing operations across the entirety Cambodia. Shawcross argues cogently that it was precisely because of the devastating bombing, and utter destruction of the peasant economy, that Pol Pot was able to marshal a powerbase capable of overthrowing Lon Nol's government. From there he argues that Kissinger bears partial (if indirect) responsibility for the consequences of the Khmer Rouge takeover, including the killing fields. Whether one can go that far is an issue that will tax historians and moralists for generations, but there can be no question that: (1) the B-52 raids failed in their stated objective of supporting Lon Nol; and (2) Kissinger (and his adviser John Negroponte) were blithely indifferent to the human suffering that the bombing brought. With John Negroponte now assuming a critical role in the Iraq war, this book remains a compelling study of how not to use superpower.

Rating:
Summary: Taking Cambodia
Review: The key events here happened thirty years ago, and are best pictured by imagining the key characters in the title as gods who keep insisting, 'Take Cambodia. Take Cambodia." If this book is incomplete in any way, it might be in failing to appreciate how well Cambodia had reached agreement with a Vietnamese government in Vietnam to allow supplies for a Vietnamese army to be imported through the major port in Cambodia. There might be something in the book about how little the CIA knew about this arrangement until the dock records established what was going on thirty years ago. Another possibility is that the CIA was so enraged about how this worked that it wouldn't even admit that it knew that certain Vietnamese were as welcome in Cambodia as American troops were in Vietnam. This book may perpetuate some myth that Cambodia was a demilitarized zone which was violated by an American invasion. Closer to the truth is the possibility that Cambodia was unstable because American interests could be served by promoting utter devastation right where it existed. My favorite mob in Cambodia knew that Lon Nol had a brother named Lon Nil, who is listed in the index of this book. Lon Nil had a liver. I also have a book called 20 German Poets, selected, translated, and introduced by Walter Kaufmann. The first poem in the book, by Germany's first worldly historical poet, Goethe, is called "Prometheus." The second verse of that poem, translated into English on page 9, feeds a certain realization. "Wretchedly you nourish your majesty on sacrificial tolls and flimsy prayers, and would starve if children and beggars were not hopeful fools." If you don't like that, you won't like this book.

Rating:
Summary: One of the books which destroyed Nixon
Review: This is a book which describes the destruction of Cambodia. During the Vietnam war the Americans thought that a large portion of the supplies and infantry of the regular units of the North Vietnamese Army were moving into South Vietnam by the use of the Ho Chi Min trail. The trail was a series of roads which rang parallel to South Vietnam though neutral Laos and Cambodia. In reality it seemed that until the events of this book most supplies for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army were actually shipped by the Soviet Union through Cambodia.

Both Loas and Cambodia were neutral in the conflict and the United States faced a problem in getting them to stop the movement of troops and supplies through their territory.

The United States used the CIA to fund a private army in Laos to fight against the Pathet Lao the indigenous communist movement. In Cambodia a coup was organised to remove the government of Shinouk and to replace it with Lon Nol. Once that was done Lon Nol gave permission for the United States to bomb Cambodian territory and later for the South Vietnamese Army to mount armed raids into Cambodia.

The air raids were immensely heavy and dropped bomb loads which were similar to the entire tonnage of bombs dropped on Germany in the Second World War. The combination of the bombing and the coup led to the collapse of Cambodia's social fabric. Large numbers of peasants moved off the land to escape the bombing and swelled the capital. The American actions strengthened the hand of the local communists the Kyhmer Rouge and they started to win the civil war. This in turn led to more refugees. Towards the end the Lon Nol government was reduced to total dependence on imported food supplies flown in by the United States. I the end the Kyhmer Rouge were victorious and turned out to be one of the most murderous regimes of the century. (Some claim that on a per capita basis they were the most vicious in the 20th Century a good century for murderous regimes)

This book is an expose of what is a serious blot on the foreign policy record of the United States. It was a significant book at the time as a range of the actions carried out against Cambodia were illegal. However unlike some of the other tragedies of the last century the tragedy of Cambodia seems to be fading into the background.

Rating:
Summary: Back to the future -- Rome, Cambodia, Iraq ...
Review: While I've read this book many times over the years, my most recent reading struck me hard. The description of the May 8, 1970 meeting between Henry Kissinger and a number of his friends and personal advisors from Harvard did not seem especially interesting in past years, but jumped off the page this time around. Thomas Schelling told Kissinger that after the invasion of Cambodia the group no longer had faith in Henry or the Nixon administration's ability to conduct foreign policy, and would have nothing further to do with Kissinger. The group pointed out that the invasion could be "used by anyone else in the world as a precedent for invading another country, in order, for example, to clear out terrorists." Another section recounts Arthur Schlesinger Jr. quoting a historian's recollection of the Romans -- "There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented." Shawcross also notes that in 1964 the US condemned Britain for assaulting a Yemeni town used as a base by insurgenets attacking Aden. Another chilling touch is the mention of Lincoln's reaction when he was advised that the President could invade a neighbor if necessary to repel invasion -- Lincoln replied, "Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you give him as much as you propose." Lincoln's famous speech given as a young man in the 1830s in which he remarked that all the armies of Europe could not forcibly take a drink of water from the Ohio River and therefore "... if this great nation is to ever die, it will be from suicide" rings more true than the words of today's politicians proclaiming the right to declare preemptive war.

An excellent summary of the events that overtook Cambodia, "Sideshow" has much more to offer to us today as we try to figure out how we reached this turning point in our history and recall how badly things can go wrong whenever we deviate from the principles upon which our nation was founded.