Don't worry, none of this includes a single word of apologism for the shameless killings done by Reagan's lone Communist allies in South east Asia.
However, I have had some changes in the way I look at the whole issue.
First of all, here is Pol Pot's confession and part explanations, as far as the mass murders conducted under his name are concerned. Some sentences are paraphrased to be shortened or to remove repetition.
Our experience was the same as our movement. We were new and inexperienced. And one thing kept happening after another, with us suddenly being forced to deal with it. And hence, I made mistakes. Anyone who wishes to blame me for the murders is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have the experience or the intelligence to totally control the people in the movement. On the other hand, it had to be done to stop Cambodia from becoming Vietnamese. It was the right thing to do, and we made serious mistakes. It's a historical fact that the Vietnamese occupied the South on 30th April 1975. They had told us much earlier they would come for us, once they were done with Vietnam. They invaded Cambodia in 1978. We didn't submit, but fought back. With international support, until the Paris agreements. Akashi said there weren't any Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. They were there, but without uniform. Civilians from Vietnam came as well. Cambodia was virtually under Vietnamese rule from 1979 to 1991. The border was not controlled by sea or land. The Paris agreements were not respected. Only two parties complied. We thought if we participated in the election, we'd all be killed. Son Sen was my best comrade and served me for years. But in 1997, my men seized three documents belonging to his brother in law, from the Kompong Thom province, under Hun Sen's authority. I didn't believe them. Unfortunately, they were accurate. If they wanted to destroy me, I had to defend myself. I never ordered young children to be killed. Only adults with a very long period of conspiring. Others were responsible for killing them. But I am indirectly responsible. I regret I did not handle it properly. Now, I sleep. Or I do nothing. My family stays away from me. I sit here with mosquito and insect bites. I am used to it. We have a saying. Old age, sickness, and death. Now, only death remains. It can come any time. I don't know when.
They invaded Cambodia in 1978. We didn't submit, but fought back. With international support, until the Paris agreements. Akashi said there weren't any Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. They were there, but without uniform. Civilians from Vietnam came as well. Cambodia was virtually under Vietnamese rule from 1979 to 1991. The border was not controlled by sea or land. The Paris agreements were not respected. Only two parties complied. We thought if we participated in the election, we'd all be killed.
Son Sen was my best comrade and served me for years. But in 1997, my men seized three documents belonging to his brother in law, from the Kompong Thom province, under Hun Sen's authority. I didn't believe them. Unfortunately, they were accurate. If they wanted to destroy me, I had to defend myself.
I never ordered young children to be killed. Only adults with a very long period of conspiring. Others were responsible for killing them. But I am indirectly responsible. I regret I did not handle it properly.
Now, I sleep. Or I do nothing. My family stays away from me. I sit here with mosquito and insect bites. I am used to it. We have a saying. Old age, sickness, and death. Now, only death remains. It can come any time. I don't know when.
Pol Pot is right that he bears responsibility for not controlling men under his command. But obviously, his excuse that he needed to control people better doesn't fly. If he couldn't control people who were basically caged tigers let lose, he shouldn't have let the cage tigers let lose.
However, I am starting to understand that the Cambodian killings were not a single, organized, systematic campaign of murder, but an outbreak of wild, irrational killing, done by unorganized groups of people for independent reasons, without a clear chain of command to control them. It was basically like a situation of African civil war, in which many crazed people eventually come to the point of doing so much killing that they kill for the sake of killing.
Would this be an accurate way of looking at it?
However, I am starting to understand that the Cambodian killings were not a single, organized, systematic campaign of murder, but an outbreak of wild, irrational killing, done by unorganized groups of people for independent reasons, without a clear chain of command to control them.
But the killing went on for a long time. How can it be an "outbreak", if it went on from the first day, to the last day?
a situation of African civil war, in which many crazed people eventually come to the point of doing so much killing that they kill for the sake of killing.
I don't buy that.
Politicians take all the credit when the system does its job well, and they always blame the system when it doesn't.
I have visited Cambodia many times and the situation you describe does not come close to reality. The KR rules Cambodia for 4 years. In the very first year they depopulated teh cities and forced all urbanites onto collective farms. Anyone with 'soft hands' or who wore classes was immediately sent to concentration camps and from there to an ex school 'toul sleng' for torture and interrogation ( I have been to it) thousands were then taken by truck 20km away and beaten to death with clubs in the infamous 'killing fields'
Naturally Noam chomsky and his leftist chums supported the KR
Chomsky didn't support the KR, looking at the controversy at a quick glance across the internet, which is admittedly not a good source. I managed to find an interview, in which Chomsky clarifies his position - the American media's publication of Cambodian genocide was milked out not for concern for Cambodian people, but for pure political gain. He says he does not condone what they did.
Chomsky lies (he is a leftist after all)
he supported the KR during the late seventies and only declared he didn't when it became impossible to deny how evil they were.
During the genocide he tried to claim that reports of the genocide were fake and invented by the CIA to discredit "progressive forces" afterwards he just lied.
Of course after it become impossible to deny the extent of deaths and Chomsky stopped being their sympathiser official USA picked right up where he left and started generously supporting them against the Vietnamese.
So you believe Pol Pot? Pol Pot's second-in-command, who still lives in Cambodia, admitted to killing scores of people, though "only the bad people." Pol Pot was a very bad guy who directly ordered scores of murders. When some electricians did a poor job of wiring his home, for example, he ordered their execution. He also imposed a brutal system on Cambodia that would inevitably lead to slavery and mass death. Even if Pol Pot somehow thought children wouldn't die in this situation (and I don't believe him when he says that), anyone with sense would realize that such a brutal system of immediate collectivization would quickly lead to mass starvation and the need to liquidate those who didn't go along or who were too young or old to work.
Pol Pot's version of communism was perhaps the most intense form of statism in history. When one imposes such a system, one creates an atmosphere in which chaos will reign. Adolf Hitler, for example, imposed a totalitarian, racist regime on Germany, and although Hitler himself did not advocate or initiate the mass slaughter of the Jews, he created a vast apparatus of total government control and institutionalized hatred that his underlings, such as Himmler, employed to carry out the mass slaughter of the Jews. (This is not to say that Hitler didn't order mass murder himself. He repeatedly did so -- ordering the euthanasia of those he deemed "undesirable" as well as millions of Russian civilians, for example.)
The same can be said for Stalin and Mao. They themselves ordered the deaths of millions, but they also created a regime based on great hostility towards free thinking and property rights. Their underlings -- in their zeal to carry out the divine goals of their leaders and even to go further -- imprisoned, tortured, and murdered even more people, committing crimes Stalin and Mao were unaware of but undoubtedly would have approved of.
The same is the case with Pol Pot. Cambodia did have a top-down regime, and the mass slaughter ultimately resulted from its top-down nature. Pol Pot wanted to "liberate" Cambodia over night, and in his view, this liberation was the immediate enslavement of the entire population. With the entire populace enslaved by a brutal regime, many abuses most likely occurred without Pol Pot's knowledge, as is always the case when a gang of murderers takes over a country, but just as many occurred under Pol Pot's direct orders, and the entire apparatus of misery and mayhem existed solely because Pol Pot immediately imposed on the country his insane vision of a propertyless society.
I would give you this piece of advice -- when the leader of a totalitarian regime says he's innocent of mass murder and blames his underlings, don't believe him. It's the oldest trick in the book.