learntoquestion ltq discussions

Questions to Consider:

1. What fundamental problems existed in the Khmer Rouge's ideology and plan and that caused the destruction of so many lives in Cambodia? Does this demonstrate something inherently wrong with communism or does it demonstrate the ineffective and callous interpretation and execution of the ideology by the Khmer Rouge leaders?

2. With armed struggle and war a reality of life for people all over the world both past and present, how does one draw the line as to which means are ethical and unethical for bringing about change? How much suffering is tolerable to bring about a “better society”? What should happen when it is clear that a struggle for change is making society worse, as it was in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge?

3. What could have been done, on the part of the international community, to ameliorate the harm done to the people of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge between 1975-79? When, if ever, should national sovereignty be overridden to stop the immense suffering of people? How could this have happened in Cambodia and by whom?

Word Count Requirement: 500-750 words

Sources to Reference:

Please refer to the ideas, either using a description, quote or paraphrasing, from at least one of the sources in your response and please respond in some way to at least one of the question sets. You can also refer to the film, First They Killed My Father after we watch it as a class on Monday.

Excerpt 1 from Chapter 6 of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (Power, 2002)

(Cambodia: The Unknowable Unknown and Wishful Thinking)

Excerpt 2 from Chapter 6 of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (Power, 2002)

(Cambodia: From Behind a Blindfold and Official US Intelligence, Unofficial Skepticism)

Excerpt 3 from Chapter 6 of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (Power, 2002)

(Cambodia: This Is Not 1942 and and Options Ignored; Futility, Perversity, Jeopardy)

“The Rise and Fall of Democratic Kampuchea” by Sok Udom Deth (2009)

Rubric to Review: LTQ Rubric

The tragedy of Cambodian people under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979 demonstrates how dangerous ideological extremism and political indifference can be. During this period, millions of Cambodians died due to execution, starvation, forced labor and disease. The destruction was caused both by the Khmer Rouge's radical interpretation of Communism and also by the limited amount of response from the International Community as this crisis went on. Looking at these factors help explain how such immense suffering was made known to people and still nevertheless was allowed to continue.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Khmer Rouge's regime was its disregard for human life and its value. as described in the readings, “The key ideological premise that laid behind the Khmer Rouge Revolution was that to keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss”. This statement shows the regime's belief that individuals had no intrinsic value outside of their revolutionary project and what the regime could use them for. Anyone who was suspected of being disloyal, educated, or connected to the former government was seen as reactionary and they were eliminated without any hesitation. The Khmer Rouge believed they were purifying Society but they were really creating a system that was built on fear violence and suspicion that was overall inefficient, corrupting and inhumane.

The philosophy directly contradicted the principles that many political systems claim to uphold. As the reading explains, societies that value individual liberty typically emphasize the idea that it's better to protect innocent people even if it means letting go of some guilty individuals. The Khmer Rouge adopted the exact opposite mindset and instead of protecting individuals they assumed that potential enemies existed everywhere as a result thousands and thousands of innocent people were in prison tortured or executed simply because the regime for descent and this caused an extreme paranoia and disregard for human dignity and they were major factors that led to the great amount of loss of life that happened in Cambodia.

However, the tragedy can’t be explained just by ideology. The response of the international community also played a role in allowing the suffering to continue. According to the reading from A Problem From Hell, “once US troops had withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973, Americans deemed all of Southeast Asia unspeakable, unwatchable and from a policy perspective, unfixable.” This quote highlights how the exhaustion and trauma of the Vietnam War caused many Americans and policymakers to just completely disengage from the region. After years of conflict, the US and other countries were extremely reluctant to be involved in Southeast Asia again, even when reports of atrocities began to emerge.

This reluctance contributed to the lack of meaningful International action while the Khmer Rouge were allowed to just continue carrying out their policies. Although some information about the atrocities were available through refugees and journalists and their accounts, many governments hesitated to intervene or even fully acknowledge the extent of this crisis. Concerns about political costs and just overall weariness of Southeast Asia and uncertainty about the facts and fears of another military conflict all contributed to the slow response. In situations like this, the principle of national sovereignty often prevents outside intervention but Cambodia demonstrates that the dangers of allowing governments to act without any accountability is extremely harmful; it allows entire populations to be harmed.

The Khmer Rouge’s rise to power and four year reign of terror represents a catastrophic period of both radical and ideological failure of a paralyzed international community. At the heart of the destruction was Pol Pot’s "Year Zero" philosophy, which wanted to basically wipe Cambodian society clean by abolishing all modern institutions, including money, schools, and religion. As Sok Udom Deth argues in The Rise and Fall of Democratic Kampuchea, this was not merely a localized version of communism but instead an "ineffective and callous interpretation" that came from xenophobic and nationalistic ideologies. By categorizing the population into old and new people, it effectively created a caste system where people from the city were thought of as less than to those from the countryside. Their fundamental flaw that a utopia can be built upon the corpses of the “corrupt” demonstrates that when an ideology views human beings as disposable tools for a state objective, it strips the humans of individuality and creates a clear and easy path to murder, starvation, and indoctrination. The ethical line for any struggle must be drawn at the preservation of life. As soon as a movement requires the systematic starvation and execution of the very peasants it claims to liberate, it loses all moral legitimacy. In Cambodia, the "better society” was a twisted fantasy that justified the deaths of nearly two million people. This proves that no amount of suffering is tolerable for a vision that actively dismantles the foundations of human dignity.

Similarly to the horrors that were happening within the nation of Cambodia, the outside world was turning a blind eye to what they knew was truly happening in Cambodia. In A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power exposes how the international community, particularly the United States, adopted "wishful thinking" to avoid the responsibility of action. They assumed that either everything would sort itself out, or somebody else would step in to stop the Khmer Rouge. Despite intelligence reports and refugee accounts detailed in Power’s excerpts, Western powers largely remained "behind a blindfold," treating the reports as "unknowable unknowns" rather than a clear genocide in progress. This inaction was driven by a rigid adherence to national sovereignty and the lingering trauma of the Vietnam War, which led to a "perversity" where political caution outweighed the moral imperative to stop mass murder. Power argues that when a state turns its machinery against its own people, national sovereignty must be overridden to prevent human erasure. However, in the case of Cambodia, the international community allowed the slaughter to continue until 1979, when Vietnam finally toppled the regime. This delay in capture reveals a grim reality: the failure was not a lack of information, but a lack of political will. The tragedy of the Khmer Rouge serves as a permanent reminder that "never again" is a hollow statement without a global commitment to prioritize human rights over the convenience of silence.

Some fundamental problems that existed in the Khmer Rouge’s ideology included an extremist view on communism and against capitalism. They lacked the funding and infrastructure, as well as a central government needed for such an ambitious movement. In addition to this they also forced their ideology upon others in a negative light instead of encouraging it as a way to a better life. Thus, their attempts at converting a mass population into a homogenous belief system made their system much more unstable. Their closed minded ideology led many cambodians sick because they were prohibited from accesses western medicine since it was a sign of capitalism. The Khmer Rouge’s ideology does not demonstrate that something is inherently wrong about communism because in this case, the Khmer Rouge were extremist not idealist. In theory, communism could work if a society willingly decided that they could create a community based off of that ideology, many cultures, and smaller minority groups follow communist tendencies while not acknowledging that it is. It instead demonstrates an ineffective interpretation and a brutal execution of the ideology. I think that survival is a natural cause of suffering but the developement of arms and industrialization has benefitted some more than others to believe that they are superior to other groups of people. I think in any case where weapons of mass destruction is causing harm to others, it should be ethical to intervene but not by any means to do so. To bring a “better society” there should be no suffering whatsoever, there should be policies that benefit all in an equitable way, not so as to create a larger imbalance in our social structures. When there is a clear struggle for change because it’s making society “worse” in our moral code, there should be intervention and responsibility by those who can help to support those that cannot help themselves. On the part of the international community, they could’ve ameliorated the harm done to the people of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge by acknowledging what was going on and not having a tunnel vision in politics as people did during the time of the Vietnam war. I think people tended to lose faith in humanity especially after and during the Vietnam war that they also lost a drive for justice in Cambodia. Additionally, because people chose to turn a blind eye to events happening outside of those that would affect them, there was no awareness about the issue because the US government chose to ignore what was happening because of their own economic interests.

The atrocities that the Cambodian people endured under the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979 set an example for the world going forward. The Khmer Rouge believed that the Cambodian citizens had been tainted by the West and capitalism. They resorted to persecuting educated people like lawyers, doctors and police officers. The Khmer Rouge’s goal was to have a society in which there was no competition and the citizens were all on equal footing and working towards a common goal. They wanted to eliminate all classes except the poor people who did the manual labor and worked the land. Over four years the Khmer Rouge killed more than 1.7 million of it’s citizens through starvation, work and torture.

The international community could have stepped in to aid the Cambodian people in many ways. The country was essentially sealed off from the outside world, but stories of the atrocities being committed were trickling out. Once these started to become public, the international community could have done more investigating and exposing of this behavior. Due to the United States defeat in Vietnam, it did not want to get involved in the region again. The United States would make statements declaring that Khmer Rouge leadership was violating human rights but it stopped there. No actions were taken to end the regime. Diplomatic pressure by means of sanctions or refusing to recognize the regime could have ended the suffering of the Cambodian people sooner. Stronger services for refugees would have saved thousands of lives.

National sovereignty recognizes that countries are in control of themselves and other countries should not interfere. It is recognized that there are exceptions to this including when a government is committing genocide. This is also seen in the modern day war with Iran. The Iranian run government was killing thousands of its own citizens for simply protesting their displeasure with the government. After many failed attempts by other nations to get them to stop, the United States and Israel decided to make military advances on Iran. If it is widely known that citizens are being tortured and killed, it is the responsibility of the larger international community to step in and save lives.

The Khmer Rouge relied on a distorted Maoist communist ideology. Although they took communism to the extreme, this also shows the dangers of communism as a whole. When citizens have their property and their right to express their opposition to the government taken away, positive morale among the citizens is lost. By preventing people from working in the areas of education and law, the intellectual capacity of the people is severely diminished. This leads to less advances in medicine and less opportunity for people to educate themselves. This is exactly what the Khmer Rouge wanted as it would keep people in line and under their control. They did not care that the people were suffering as long as the manual labor was getting done and their needs were being met. The world should look at the atrocities the Cambodian people endured as a reminder that communism is bad for the survival of a country and the larger world as a whole. When people are allowed to live their lives in whatever way they please, it creates more opportunities for achievement and a better outcome for the world as a whole.

The Khmer Rouge’s far-left ideology was far too radical, which led to the destruction of millions of lives in Cambodia. On paper, communism does sound like it could operate under conditions that guarantee accommodations for everyone in society and inherently isn’t wrong. However, every communist takeover in history has carried out the ideology in extreme ways that lead to destruction. Emphasis on revolutionary violence becomes mass murder of intellectuals, minorities, and any individual that seems to stand out. Communist states quickly transform into authoritative, hyper nationalist societies that prioritize indoctrinating its people with an unwavering loyalty to communism. The Khmer Rouge tried to eliminate all religion, minorities, and Western influence through violent threats and mass murder. According to refugee accounts in A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power, “[Citizens] could not feed themselves. In most areas the state supplied a tine or less of rice each day” (Power 117). By emptying cities and detaching society from basic economics, the Khmer Rouge tried to rapidly transform Cambodia into a utopia. The sudden change only created widespread poverty and lack of resources due to an agricultural fantasy that the country would supply itself with food without modern technology. The film First They Killed my Father demonstrates the struggle of Cambodians forced onto rural lands, unable to survive because they lacked resources or were murdered. The mother was forced to abandon her children since she lacked the resources to continue feeding them, telling them to find another establishment that would take her children in as orphans. She clearly cared for her children and realized they were going to not survive living with her, so she had to make a difficult choice. The personal story of this family represents the mass starvation that the Khmer Rouge brought upon its own people in the name of “revolutionizing” the country. In addition, the ruthless leadership used the chilling slogan “to keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss” to devalue human life and justify their mass killings. Those who proved no use to the revolution were only disposed, showing a complete disregard for ethics in the regime.

Drawing the line between ethical and unethical means of social change requires consideration for methods and outcomes. Violence should sometimes be permitted for political change, such as in the case of usurping an oppressive government using military force. The targeting of civilians, repression, surveillance, and disregard for human rights cannot be justified by the claim to build a better society. Violence should only be used as a final means of obtaining a society that treats its people well. When the Khmer Rouge’s revolution became systematic murder, the movement changed from liberation into oppression under authoritarianism. In Cambodia, forced labor, starvation, and execution/torture of “enemies” were deemed as necessary sacrifices to developing the country’s goals. Their methods only caused constant fear in civilians and the death of over one quarter of its own population. The Khmer Rouge was causing unnecessary suffering to its people, casting it as temporary suffering as a means towards a goal rather than a defining feature of the group’s rule.

After the United States increasingly involved themselves in the conflict in Vietnam, the balance of other Southeast Asian countries began to deteriorate. One of the prime examples is Cambodia, where, once communism began to spread through Vietnam, fell victim to the U.S.’s attempts to prevent it. However, it was not until the Khmer Rouge got involved in the country’s struggles where thousands of Cambodians were tortured, starved, and ultimately murdered.

One of the major flaws of the Khmer Rouge’s regime started with their evacuation of the major cities such as Phnom Penh. By evacuating the entire city at once, they created a sudden wave of urgency and worry among the people. Not only this, but they also forced people who were unable to travel, such as elderly people in hospitals, to be removed from essential care and protection. With this surge of people and confusion, many died on the walks just to get to the suburbs. Additionally, another flaw was their control over the Cambodian people. Despite being a communist regime, they claimed that Angkar was always watching them and had power over them all. Likewise, the regular Cambodian people had extremely little to work with, while those who were a part of the Khmer Rouge, even young children forced into the program, oftentimes had more privilege and freedom than those who were civilians.

Based on this, there is nothing inherently wrong with communism, it has just never been executed correctly because there is always a person or a group who inevitably takes charge. As seen in the movie, First They Killed My Father, many of the young children like Loung were taken to be trained as Khmer Rouge soldiers. As Khmer Rouge soldiers, they were to essentially lead communism in the new Cambodia, which was renamed Democratic Kampuchea. By having young leaders, or even leaders at all, who were mandated to ensure communism was being executed properly, they ultimately prevented communism from succeeding because they held the power in a society meant to be equal.

However, had Cambodia not been in such a weak, fragile state, they likely would not have fallen victim so easily to the Khmer Rouge. All of the readings mention how, at some point, the United States’s government had acknowledged the problems going on in Cambodia. The only reason they did not intervene was because they feared further loss or damage to their soldiers. This job to ameliorate the damage that the Khmer Rouge did during its reign was not only the United States’s duty, but also surrounding countries such as Vietnam which allowed for the country to become so unstable. Ultimately, the things that could have been done to lessen the damage should have been done during the Khmer Rouge’s time of control rather than after over 1.5 million people were killed.

Thus, natural sovereignty should be overridden to stop the immense suffering of people, and had any country intervened and done something against the Khmer Rouge while they were endlessly murdering innocent civilians, there likely would have been less overall damage. In a broader aspect, if Cambodia had not been driven to complete and utter instability by the Vietnam War, specifically the United States and Northern Vietnam, many Cambodian lineages would still be alive today. It is the fault of all the countries and people who neglected to acknowledge, face the truth, and step in that so many innocent people died, and it is important to make sure that history never repeats that again.

The rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia caused the deaths of over 2 million people through several different acts. The Khmer Rouge's ideology and plans that caused the destruction of many lives in Cambodia included forced labor, execution, starvation and diseases. Under the rule of Pol Pot, the Cambodians wanted the society to become a society with no cities, money or social classes. Many people were forced to leave cities and join a farm, even if they had no experience in farming. This led to many of the problems they faced as they couldn't handle the harsh conditions and longing hours working. Another huge problem was that the Khmer Rouge did not trust people who were educated. Anyone who was seen as educated was killed and this included teachers and doctors which destroyed schools and hospitals. Another problem was anyone who had an opinion different to theirs, was seen as suspicious and executed. The Khmer Rouge claimed they were trying to create a fair and equal society in Cambodia. They believed in order to do this, they had to take extreme measures to create it but in reality it only made situations worse for people. With the ways to make society better causing mass deaths, is clearly unethical. The Khmer Rouge ruled with violence and instilled fear in people, which was extremely unethical. Society could have done more to reduce suffering. There could have been stronger reactions from international controls. Including the United Nations, they could have investigated the reports of violence and done more about it. I also think it would have been effective if people higher up in society were able to disagree with the way things were being handled and stick up for everyone and try to create change. Another way they could've helped would be to have helped people escaping Cambodia away from suffering. Cambodians fled to neighboring countries which were normally overcrowded and the refugee camps many of the times couldn't hold them. There was a lack of food, little medical supplies and supplies for people hoping for a better life. If people had the resources to get further, there would be less suffering and more places would be able to provide for them. These people had already lost their families and homes which made it difficult for them to live a prosperous life.

In conclusion, the tragedy in Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge shows how dangerous societies have been and how much suffering was caused to millions of people for years. They tried to change their society quickly with fear, violence and death which overall led to extreme suffering. Even when they said they wanted to create an equal and fair society, their unethical actions caused great suffering and mass death and destruction. This is important to learn as it helps us recognize the harsh past people faced and the traumatic things people went through. In order to keep this from happening again, it is important to see the warning signs and prevent further tragedies from happening in the future. The attempt to completely reshape society, even though they claimed they were trying to build a fair society. Their actions created widespread suffering and should be recognized as nothing but wrong and pure evil.

The first and most glaring problem with the Khmer Rouge’s vision of cambodia was the fact that it seeked to backtrack an extremely densely populated region to a time when people were more dispersed. In my opinion, it was extremely naive and shortsighted of the regime to assume that purely agrarian society would be functional with a population of many millions of people. This, in combination with communism, was very clearly a direct path to famine, starvation, and disease. I think that communism as an idea is wonderful - it brings equality to the forefront of society. However, I think it is overly idealistic, and is rarely, if ever, realistic. While Pol Pot and the KR took an extremely radical interpretation of it, it almost never ends in the general benefit of the country as a whole. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, the combination of communism and radical agrarianism was the perfect recipe for disaster.

It is interesting to examine the second question in the case of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge because they so clearly made society much worse. However, this brings into the equation the factor of intent. As much as one may think that they can help, even a massive group, ultimately there is a certain responsibility in attempting to create change. Generally, I would say that violence to create change is only justified if violence is being inflicted upon the suffering, and it would have to be a certain level of violence that cannot be tolerated. Otherwise, collateral damage and innocent lives would inevitably be lost to a cause that could be achieved through democracy and bureaucracy. When it is clear that a struggle for change is not benefiting the country but instead hurting it, I believe that outside intervention should occur on in the sense of “helping a neighbor”. In the case of Cambodia, the KR sank the country into the ground, and should have been stopped far before they were. The Vietnamese only intervened when they were invaded, not with the pure intention of assisting the country and its people.

Firstly, I am of the opinion that if you have the ability to intervene in something that is ethically wrong, you should take the opportunity. I would not only apply that to the individual but also to nations and how they navigate global conflict. However, I will also be the first to admit that this is an unrealistic expectation. In the case of Cambodia, however, the sheer brutality was so apalling and frequent that I think it was inexcusable for the US and most of the rest of the world to turn a blind eye to the situation. For example, in the second reading there were multiple quotes stating that officials from the US, France, and other countries around the world had no idea about what was happening. However, they used language such as they “could not believe it”. Such words give one the feeling that these officials were not ignorant but were instead ignoring the moral responsibility they know they had as powerful countries. Yes, political tensions were high due to the cold war and the situation in Vietnam, but I believe it is immoral to use that as a cop-out for doing nothing.

There were a number of different flaws within the ideologies and plans of the Khmer Rouge, which ultimately led to the destruction of the lives of over a million people. Some central issues, however, are the return to life without technology and the hypocrisy that then stemmed from this within the KR leadership.

When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, they immediately began their plan to eradicate all modern ways of living. They ordered all of the people out of the cities, telling them that the US was going to bomb them, then forced the refugees into work camps. They had everyone wear the same clothes, confiscated personal items, had people build their own homes, and had them work excruciating hours in the fields. People faced starvation and exhaustion in these camps, and they created atmospheres of immense tension and suspicion. The KR also banned all forms of modern medicine, and with this many people faced needless death. Aside from working in fields, people were now barred from education, and children were utilized as soldiers.

This plan, to essentially force all Cambodians into intense poverty, was the driving force in all KR actions, and was also what was fundamentally wrong with the regime. The plan uprooted the lives of the entire population, and caused immense loss in the process. What worsened the situation is the hypocrisy that then emerged within KR leadership. As people lived laborious lives struggling to simply survive, those in positions of power lived luxuriously off of the items they had stolen. For example, while their citizens passed from simple diseases, the leadership was allowed the modern medicine that could have prevented these losses. This hypocrisy only worsened the situation, and proved that not only did they lack true belief in the ideology they were so eagerly pushing, but also that they would excuse and stand behind needless deaths.

However, I don’t think that specifically the actions of the Khmer Rouge demonstrate something inherently wrong with communism. While communism has proven to be inefficient and harmful in numerous other situations, such as those in Russia and China which occurred at the same time, the situation in Cambodia mainly communicates the issues with the Khmer Rouge leadership rather than communism as a whole. Cambodian communism already strayed from the traditional institutions when it rejected modern technologies and forced people into the roles of peasants, but its focus on death is what really set it apart from the others. Most other communist regimes caused immense death, but the events in Cambodia, shows how death played an essential role in KR leadership, more so than other communist powers ever used. The Khmer Rouge lacked any care for their people, and their slogans were a huge indicator of this. For example, from “A Problem From Hell: This is Not 1942,” we see this in the KR slogan “to keep you is no gain; to kill you is no loss.” This proved that specifically the Khmer Rouge ideologies were why this situation caused as much loss as it did, and doesn’t actually speak for the other communist regimes or that form of government as a whole.

Overall, the central issues as to why the Khmer Rouge caused as much loss and destruction as it did was its emphasis on the return to peasant life, as well as hypocrisy within the leadership. However, this situation presents the issues within the Khmer Rouge rather than communism as a whole.