What Was Pol Pot Smoking? - A History of Cambodia in Less Than a 1000 Words

Angkor Wat - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Scott Sturman

Even third world countries have had their time in the sun, and Cambodia is no exception.  A half of a millennium of ascendency is longer than most, but the inevitable decline is predictable:  poor leadership, corruption, loss of national vision, and squandering of wealth and resources.  With the view of someone who has spent only five days in country, this overview may seem presumptuous.  However, if Hollywood stars can testify before Congress on matters of foreign policy and national security, these simple observations may not be that far off target.  

The list of the Seven Wonders of the World has expanded to accommodate the sensibilities of an increasingly number of sensitive national egos.  These compilations are a subjective exercise which shouldn’t make any difference to anyone, but making or not making the list is worth millions of tourist dollars.  In a controversial move, the New7Wonders of the World omitted the Pyramid at Giza, but after considerable protest, this original Wonder of the Ancient World was given an honorary spot.  Even if the “experts” now concede there are Eight Wonders, a visitor to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat will scratch one’s head and wonder why there aren’t nine.

Ta Prohm - photo by JoAnn Sturman

For about five hundred years from 800-1300 AD the Khmers, now known as Cambodians, expanded to become the dominant power of Southeast Asia.  The empire encompassed much of what is now Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, and Vietnam.  The most spectacular monuments to this past glory can be found near Siem Reap, Cambodia.  Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom are the most famous, but only two of the magnificent sites covering the region.   For an agrarian culture to build these marvelously ornate structures over several centuries in the jungles of Southeast Asia requires a significant amount of capital and labor.  A major source of this immense wealth was rice and fish, and without the unique geography of the area, it would not have been possible.

The secret is the tropical climate, the extraordinary flatness of the land, the Mekong River, and the Tonle Sap.  Siem Reap is located near the Sap River which connects Southeast Asia’s largest lake, the Tonle Sap, with the Mekong River at Phnom Penh.  In this distance of 139 miles the river drops only twenty feet from 59 to 39 feet above sea level.  It takes the Mekong another 127 miles to reach the sea.  At the onset of the monsoon each June, the swollen Mekong’s riverbed is insufficient to empty the effluence into the South China Sea.  The force of the nutrient rich water causes the Sap River to reverse direction and flow uphill to engorge the Tonle Sap.  The lake teems with fish, and its area expands six fold, only to recede in November when the monsoon abates.  The sediment filled, exposed lake bed allows for nearly perfect rice growing conditions. 

Ta Prohm - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Saloth Sar, AKA Pol Pot and son of a moderately prosperous Cambodian farmer, was sent to Paris in 1949, where he studied for four years.  A poor student, he became involved with the Communist movement and fell under the spell of Marxists who asserted the world’s problems were due to the urban class exploiting their rural brothers.  The remedy called for evacuation of all cities in order for everyone to work the land. This bizarre notion coupled with a fascination of Cambodia’s past grandeur made a profound impression on Saloth Sar .  He returned to Cambodia to eventually become leader of the Khmer Rouge.  In 1975 the Communist Party gained control of the country, and as its head, Sar took charge under the name Pol Pot, “Brother Number One.”

Pol Pot possessed a megalomaniac’s vision of Cambodia– a way for this sleepy, xenophobic country of farmers to regain preeminence in Southeast Asia.  At its zenith the Khmer Empire fueled its expansion with rice production.  In Pol Pot’s mind the generation of wealth and power based on crop production was undermined by urbanites and intellectuals, who exploited farmers and villagers.  Within a few days after  assuming control of the country, Pol Pot ordered all cities evacuated.  Men, women, children, babies, and the elderly, were compelled to live in the countryside, where they grew rice.  Any resistance was punished by a perverse form of execution, where the accused dug a pit and then was obliged kneel at its side.  Using a blunt instrument, an executioner stuck the condemned in the back of the head with such force that the victim fell into the grave.  In the view of the Khmer Rouge non conformists were not worth the price of a bullet.  Intellectuals and non Khmers were slaughtered even if compliant with the regime; ethnicity and sophistication were ample reasons for extermination.

Angkor Wat - photo by JoAnn Sturman

The Killing Fields cost 2 million of Cambodia’s 8 million people but did not deter Pol Pot from attempting to teach the Vietnamese a lesson through a number of bumbling military attacks.  Like a gnat which could no longer be tolerated, the Vietnamese Army defeated the Cambodians in a matter of days, forcing Pol Pot to flee to the mountains.  In an ironic twist the United States and Great Britain responded to the ouster of one of the 20th century’s most heinous psychopaths by supporting him financially and providing military advisors.  So deep was the distrust of the Vietnamese, that we and our most steadfast ally elected to succor a monster who slaughtered 25% of his countrymen.

Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Asia, is ostensibly a multiparty democracy under a constitutional democracy.  It suffers from nepotism, graft, corruption, poor education, and wealth maldistribution.   Despite cronyism and repression, economic progress is being made.  If these same people, whose ancestors built Angkor Wat, could be relieved of inept leaders and left to their own resources, they could do a lot more than grow rice.   

        Pol Pot's Handiwork

I'm Perfect - Perfectly Insane

Ngorongoro Crater - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Scott Sturman

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  “... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

---Declaration of Independence

Jefferson states the only duty of the citizen is to throw off despotic government.  The Constitution was crafted in a manner to prevent the need to exercise this ultimate duty.  Balance is the key: the balance of power between the branches of government, between the states and the federal government, and most importantly between the individual citizen and government.  However, the Founders understood the nature of men and the intoxication of power.  Democracy is not the natural state of governance; kings, emperors, and dictators are more usual, and democracy usually degenerates to authoritarianism.   Without a counter balance, politicians could enslave the people they were sworn to protect.  When dealing with velvet glove oppression, civil disobedience in the styles of Gandhi or King may yield a satisfactory political solution, but in the face of true totalitarians Second Amendment freedoms were needed in addition to words.

Gun control advocates, who proscribe gun ownership, are confronted with two “Al Goresque” inconvenient truths which are impossible to ignore: the Constitution’s Second Amendment and the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson prescribed the right of the citizen to alter or abolish government.

Growing up in the Mountain West, hunting and target shooting were thought to be traditional American activities, deeply ingrained in our culture and practiced overwhelmingly by law abiding citizens.  The government’s role should be to preserve these rights and to deny them to those who are a danger to their fellow citizens.

Fifty years ago there was a general feeling the police could and would protect the public, but even in these more idyllic times mass murders occasionally terrorized the nation.  In 1958 Charles Starkweather and in 1966 Charles Whitman killed their mothers and then went on to slaughter innocents.  Both came from two parent families, used rifles or shotguns, targeted defenseless victims, and suffered from significant psychiatric problems.

As a medical student, I spent a rotation on the lock down psychiatric unit at a veteran’s hospital and each morning made rounds on some very crazy people.  Many, including John, had violent pasts, and their tranquility was due to substantial doses of Thorazine rather than psychotherapy.  So each morning it was not without a degree of apprehension that I awoke this huge man dressed in his day clothes, to interview him and scribble a few notes on the medical chart.

“John, John, John,” I interrupted his sleep in a crescendo tone.  Like a waking dragon from the Hobbit his eyes opened slowly.  “John, how are you this morning?”

In an instant he sat bolt upright and exclaimed, “Perfect!  I’m just perfect!”

This was how it was every morning.  By his own testimony John was perfect, but despite the perception of perfection, there was a good reason why John had spent much of his adult life behind locked doors.  Without medication and continual observation, he was a walking time bomb.  Later, in the 1980s politicians decided to roll the dice and release John and many like him into the general population, hoping he would take his medication and behave himself.

In our city both the police and sheriff departments have streamlined the concealed weapons process.  There is a presumption law enforcement officers realize it is no longer possible to protect the public against violent criminals who have little to fear and have become more audacious by the day.  Not only do mentally ill patients mingle in the general population but dangerous criminals receive light sentences in prisons more disposed to warehousing than punishing. The height of absurdity is attained when once incarcerated, they may released prematurely, if a judge deems an over crowded jail is as an infringement of their constitutional rights.  While the Founding Fathers could anticipate the politicians’ lust for power, they were far less prescient at forecasting the leniency and lunacy of the judiciary.  This lack of balance and disconnection between the severity of the crime and its corresponding punishment has undermined a civil society which traditionally trusted law enforcement rather than the private citizen as the first line of personal protection. 

This holiday season all but one of the 2013 movie previews dealt with an apocalyptic theme.  Heavy on special effects and graphic violence, this is the stuff of Hollywood fortunes.  Yet Tinsel Town is the first to deny video games and movies have anything to do with promoting violence in society.  First Amendment rights are sacrosanct.  It is the Second Amendment which is the problem.

History is replete with examples of how authoritarian governments best consolidate rule; the problem is far less complicated with an unarmed citizenry who trust their rulers to do the right thing.  Transitions to totalitarianism can occur swiftly and in cultured, educated, and religiously based nations governed by the rule of law; one only needs to consider Germany's metamorphosis from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism to be reminded of the rapidity and completeness of the process.

With comparatively little civil unrest and few direct military attacks directed against home soil, Americans have become complacent and confident despotism is a problem found only in books and other countries.  One wonders if the jack boots began kicking doors down in the middle of the night, if most Americans would respond or sit in their homes grateful the thugs only paid their neighbor a visit.

Occasionally, random gun related tragedies occur which disgust all of us.  In these circumstances the same activists, who abandoned all pretext of common sense and wrote the laws which allowed criminals to run amok and federal powers to expand, demand the public disregard the advice of Jefferson and Madison and exchange constitutional rights for promises and hope. 

After visiting Cambodia last month, it became evident what happens if a lunatic has all the guns and a willingness to use them.  In three years from 1976 - 1979 Pol Pot brought the Killing Fields to this sleepy, agrarian country and slaughtered two million people, 20% of the population and the equivalent of 62 million in the United States.  “Disagree and you’re an enemy. Resist and you’re a dead man” was the rule.  But, of course, that could never happen here - not in a million years.