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 ideology of the Khmer Rouge proved to have so many problems within their regime. Their tactics for uprooting society proved to be ineffective and dangerous. The ideology of the KR was inherently wrong, it was however rooted in communism. The fact that it was rooted in communism was not the sole reason why it became so destructive, but it was the basis for their policies. I believe that there is no political ideology that has proved to be executed perfectly in the modern world but there are ways to infuse communist ideas into society without it turning into what the KR did. In a perfect communist world, every single person is equal; equal status, equal treatment, and equal opportunities. The KR did the exact opposite of that as they put themselves, Pol Pot, and Angkar, above every other Cambodian citizen. They starved them, tortured them, killed them, and so much more. In reality they were supposed to be equal and that there would be no person of power in all of society. It is no longer a communist society when people are in power. As highlighted in “A Problem From Hell”, the KR implemented collectivism so that none of the Cambodian people would ever get to relish in the fruits of their labor and hard work. Every single crop and fruit that they harvested was given straight to the government elite. This one again shows that the society was not equal, and that the KR was more deserving of better treatment. The KR is not the only regime to implement but it does prove an inherent problem with how the leaders interpreted and executed the ideology. They in fact made it become a non communist society. As highlighted in, “First They Killed My Father,” there was so much violence and inhumane treatment throughout the labor camps. The KR saw the Cambodian people as inferior and not deserving of basic human rights which only demonstrates their callous interpretation of a communist society. There was no equal treatment of all people, they KR had access to such a better life than the Cambodians did, and only through a violent rescue were some able to be freed. In a perfect world, there is no real problem with a communist ideology but in order for it to be successful it needs to be executed perfectly and realistically. The KR had unrealistic expectations for uprooting society so quickly and then faced so many other problems and basic violations of human rights while implementing their society.

The KR had a supposed idea of struggling for change for the benefit of Cambodia, but due to the secrecy and ambiguity of their actions, it was hard for anyone to understand when intervention was required. It is absolutely essential once it is realized that their regime is causing so much more harm than good. However, one of the biggest issues was that there was almost no intervention to bring the KR out of power. It was hard for people to know, especially Cambodians, to know that the KR’s idea for “change” would lead to a genocide, but once it became abundantly clear that this is what they were doing, international powers should have immediately intervened to save the society from further death and destruction.

The Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia shows how a political ideology can become extremely dangerous when it is enforced with absolutely no limits. Their goal in Democratic Kampuchea was to create a completely classless, agrarian society by restarting the country at “Year Zero.” In theory, communism promotes equality, but the Khmer Rouge tried to force equality by eliminating anyone they saw as a threat. They emptied cities, banned religion, separated families, and forced millions into labor camps. The fundamental problem was their belief that violence and total control were acceptable tools for building what they thought was the perfect society. When human lives become secondary to ideology, this type of destruction seems to become almost inevitable.

I do not think Cambodia proves that communism itself automatically leads to genocide. Instead, it demonstrates how extreme interpretation and unchecked power can turn any ideology into something so brutal and cruel. The Khmer Rouge leadership treated their ideas as the absolute truth and labeled disagreement as betrayal. Their paranoia and secrecy created a system where fear controlled everything. The issue was not just the theory, but the way it was applied with cruelty and zero accountability, once or ever.

In A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power explains that U.S. officials had information that suggested mass atrocities were happening, but often responded with doubt or hesitation. Reports were questioned or minimized because acknowledging genocide meant they had to take action. This shows that the failure was not only internal within Cambodia, but also international. Governments prioritized political concerns over human lives.

When thinking about ethnic limits in armed struggle, violence that deliberately targets civilians crosses the line. No better society can justify starvation, forced labor of even children, and mass executions. Once it became clear that Cambodian society began collapsing under the Khmer Rouge, stronger international pressure, sanctions, and humanitarian action should have happened sooner. National sovereignty is important, but it should not protect a government committing mass atrocities against its own people. When immense suffering is clear, the global community has a responsibility to respond, once they admit it was a genocide.

The tragedy in Cambodia reflects both the dangers of extreme ideological enforcement and the consequences of international inaction. It is a reminder that protecting human life must come before protecting political systems.

Another major issue was the Khmer Rouge’s complete rejection of outside influence and expertise. By isolating Cambodia from the rest of the world, they eliminated any possibility of accountability or correction. Foreign journalists were expelled, borders were sealed all up, and information was being tightly controlled, meaning no information would come in or out. This secrecy allowed atrocities to continue to be unseen. It also made it easier for other nations to claim uncertainty about what was happening. If there had been more transparency and a stronger international investigation early on, global pressure might have built faster. The Cambodian genocide proves that silence, whether intentional or just passive, will only enable injustice to grow unchecked.

Was communism the cause of the Cambodian genocide? Or was it something entirely different? Both can certainly be argued, but I believe that the Khmer Rouge’s extreme interpretation of communism and their torturous methods of implementing them led to massive human suffering and horrors that made up the Cambodian genocide. The Khmer Rouge’s main ideology was radical agrarianism. They rejected anything capitalist or industrialized, and forced Cambodians to leave their homes in the city and move onto rural complexes, as well as carry out extreme labor. Communism focuses on a classless society in general, and does not necessarily have to be agrarian. Marxism, for instance, focuses on the public controlling the means of industrial production, which usually occurs in a developed urban area. It can also be argued that the Khmer Rouge’s reign was not in fact classless at all. As seen in First They Killed my Father, members of the Khmer Rouge had exceedingly more privilege and resources available to them than the Cambodians they exploited. They also practiced violent classism by preferring “base people” to “city people”, giving them preferential treatment based on their original class. This contradicts the core tenet of communism, leading me to believe that the communist ideology was not the reason for the immense destruction in Cambodia. Additionally, in a communist society, goods and fruits of labor are ideally distributed equally among workers according to the amount of work they did. While food was mostly distributed equally among laborers in Khmer Rouge camps, A Problem From Hell’s excerpt 3 notes that “in most areas the state supplied less than a tin or less of rice each day”. No matter the amount of labor these Cambodians did, and that was often exceedingly high every day for every single age, they were fed a meager amount of food that didn’t allow them to work to the fullest extent possible. Starvation of workers inherently contradicts the idea of a work-based society.

Additionally, I believe that a society created on the basis of suffering has no business describing itself as a “better society” than the one before. I do concede that there certainly are many elements of the society that could be “better”, or improved, the society stems from hatred and death. Why would anyone want to live in a place like this? Let’s take America. America has been built on the backs of slaves and Native Americans who have been forcibly ripped from their homes and forced to work at the hands of colonists. Has our society improved from how it was hundreds of years ago? Arguably. Is our society good? Doubtful. I do not believe that Democratic Kampuchea would end up being a “better society” than Cambodia was under Lon Nol. It’s also interesting to note that Cambodians before the genocide were hopefull. Excerpt 1 emphasizes this fact repeatedly—that Cambodians didn’t even think there was a level of atrocity that could occur as much as the Khmer Rouge could inflict. So if the level of suffering a group inflicts is not even believable or conceivable to a society, the society that group will end up creating is not “better”.

As a class we have, at length, discussed models for digesting and parsing the ethics of war (even if seemingly oxymoronic): jus ad bellum, jus in bello, which, for the general, uphold such tenets as necessity, proportionality, and discrimination (between combatant and civilian). These ideas help us navigate bellum—war—but could they perhaps apply other forms of large-scale conflict?—maybe genocide? In a relevant sense, yes: if the question is how one draws the line as to which means are ethical and unethical for ‘bringing about change,’ and so long as war, through jus ad bellum, is understood as a change-seeking means, it follows that these ad bellum and in bello paradigms may apply not merely to war, but also to more general movements of change-seeking aim, great scale, and violent means. With this in mind, when contemplating the Cambodian genocide we thus deem it as having been grossly unethical: an intuitive truth, of course, yet further compounded by these ad/in lenses. Consider, for instance, the genocide’s lack of discrimination (which is why some do submit that it was not genocide); Samantha Power’s 2002 book A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide attests that KR members, “paranoid about the trustworthiness of even [...] devout radicals [...] began targeting their own supporters, killing anybody suspected of even momentary disloyalty. Given the misery in which Cambodians were living at the time, this covered almost everyone” (Power 119). Furthermore, the KR’s crimes lacked proportionality—not because they, in a sense, exerted too much force, but because they, in a sense, exerted too little. This is not to posit that the KR was any bit tame or gentle; rather, my position is that no amount of force exerted could have been proportional to their end goal (an agrarian, socialist utopia begun from zero), as the goal was infeasible given Cambodia’s status as anything larger than a small, isolated community. Lastly, and by extension of the impossibility of their vision, the KR’s enacted genocide thus lacked necessity. Even intuitively, ventures toward a thing unattainable can rarely be proven ‘necessary’—quixotic perhaps, or even inspiring, but seldom necessary.

When I first think about the question I really think “What could the US have done?” instead of the whole international community, because throughout history the US has been that “global police”. The US is only a true “global police” when its interests are reflected in assisting that nation. It’s honestly difficult to grapple with the fact that more than a million people died because it “wasn’t in anyone's national interests” so we turned a blind eye. I think that Samantha Power makes a good point in saying that not even the US public was interested during the conflict, they were so disillusioned from Vietnam that nothing in South East Asia mattered, not even violations of human rights. So I would say my answer for what other nations could have done is more, they could have done more. During the regime the US only provided public statements of its distaste for the Khmer Rouge but that isn't enough, saying that you don’t support something doesn't make it stop, it doesn't save people’s lives. Vietnam took action, invading Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, they did not go to kill civilians. Yes, all invasions and wars are started because of national interest but in this case should have been justified (in my opinion) because they freed the citizens of Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, and helped them. Millions more could have died if Vietnam did not interfere, and that leads us to the question of national sovereignty. I think in the global case national sovereignty is constantly overridden and then justified depending on who is involved. For a long time it seemed like the United States could pretty much do anything as an economic superpower, get involved with the economics and function of practically all developing countries and especially in the Middle East, the US sees something that isn't capitalist or democratic and it just has to interfere. But, that's just the justification for meddling in other nations and overriding their national sovereignty, "bringing democracy to all” is not the real reason nor is it a valid reason for interfering in another nation, because the US was never just bringing democracy, it creates a sphere of influence and easy access to resources. And so why did the US not use those same ideas to interfere in Cambodia, to actually help the Cambodians. People seem to forget that we are all human and that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are so interconnected as a human race and yet we just sit back and watch atrocities happen, we're disillusioned to every crime and conflict because we've been bred to be bystanders. National sovereignty should be overridden in dire cases, cases that are not selfish, cases that if without interference innocent civilians will die. Lets put it this way (not that genocides should ever be compared) if the Nazis hadn't actively started a war and were instead just wiping out their entire Jewish population would the US or any nation override Germany's national sovereignty to be able to stop the genocide? Why does interference depend on the people and the location? It's selfish, and it's scary to see that our world only functions off interest. Yes, what's best for our own nations should be top priority but when people's lives are at risk, no matter what, we can't just be bystanders. In Cambodia, any nation (especially those part of the UN) could have helped people evacuate, provided supplies and food security, and most importantly put boots on the ground (without insane civilian casualties) and end the Khmer Rouge. If the Vietnamese pushed the Khmer Rouge to the Thai border in the span of two weeks just imagine what any other military power could do. Other nations also should have assisted better with the refugee process or with the rebuilding of the nation. It’s important to recognize how much financial and industrial capacity developed nations have and how that power can be used to help the rest of humanity, and yet it doesn't, yet those nations sit back, relax, and wait till someone else gets the work done, unless it's a “threat to our own nation's interests.” It's just insane to me. (sorry I'm going on an unprofessional rant here)

So, in summary, nations did NOT do enough to assist Cambodians and national sovereignty should have been overridden the SECOND that refugees along the Thai border reported human rights violations, or even before that, since the US is so anti-communist. Why was it not anti-communist for the Khmer Rouge? It just didn't matter anymore, the Vietnam War broke US spirit and will in South East Asia and so nothing could be done by other nations besides Vietnam, but at that point the civilian casualties were high. How do we stop human rights violations and genocide before they happen?

The genocide of Cambodians led by the Khmer Rouge region was committed under the wavering eyes of the United States and the West at large. The Khmer Rouge’s ideology of punishment is very similar to that of the former Ayatollah of Iran’s. In “A Problem from Hell,” author Samantha Power writes that the KR’s approach was “to keep you is no gain; to kill you is no loss” (Power 119). This ideology, which is so horrendous that it is inconceivable that so many soldiers could believe it, is what led to the death of 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. The international community was silent and Cambodians inside the country did not have the power to overthrow the KR. Western nations, especially the United States and France, did not wish to involve themselves with Vietnam’s neighbor after so many lives and so much money was lost during the War. If it weren’t for Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and subsequent overthrow of the KR, millions more Cambodians would’ve suffered. Therefore, I believe that in the case of Cambodia, the overriding of national sovereignty was justified in order to stop the immense suffering of Cambodians. However, there are legal, political, and ethical questions to consider.

While studying the United Nations, we learned that invading another country is very often a violation of international law (jus ad bellum) without proper justifications for self-defense. Those are the legal implications that undermine international law. There are also political questions. For example, when the Vietnamese government pulled from Cambodia, it appointed former king Norodom Sihanouk as the ruler of Cambodia, as we have learned in class. As the article “The Rise and Fall of Democratic Kampuchea” written by Sok Udom Deth in 2009 informs, in 1970 Sihanouk made an alliance with the KR and his “call for his people to join the Khmer Rouge did much to strengthen them” (Deth 28). Sihanouk thus greatly contributed to the rise of the KR and its organization’s subsequent brutality. Therefore, it does not seem ethical that Vietnam should’ve given back power to such a controversial figure, especially a monarch not democratically elected. While these legal and political questions are very important, what is even more pressing are the lives lost in most forced overtakings of other nations.

When civilian and innocent deaths result, it’s more difficult to make excuses. At what point would the deaths of civilians be justified to stop the overall suffering of people? In Iran right now, for example, it has been confirmed that US strikes killed 175 schoolchildren. Our government has not apologized, initially blaming Iran for those deaths. It’s very difficult to think about, but some people are arguing that their deaths are part of the cause towards freeing all Iranians, and is thus a necessary part of this war. However, if our strikes fail, Iran’s regime does not change, and the suffering of Iranians continues, there should be no doubt that the deaths of those schoolchildren were not at all excusable. Therefore, I think it is critical to account for the possibility of innocent civilian deaths before interfering with another country’s sovereignty, even when the people at large are suffering. Even though Vietnam’s dismantling of the KR was done without much death at all—of KR soldiers and civilians alike—many other examples of invasions result in many civilian deaths that are deeply depressing and may constitute war crimes.

• 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?
• 
  
• The world is desensitised to war and violence perpetrated during war, especially those overseas, thinking of it as a necessary evil that they cannot control. But what defines this violence and how do we know when it has gone too far? In the case of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodians, the world had little interest in the topic for many reasons, but mostly Vietnam. To get involved would mean causing significant ripples in the already fragile relations that they had, so when the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh and began a new regime, the deaths that were reported seemed like the normal proceedings of a government overthrow. In the third reading it is mentioned that “This was the kind of killing that journalists and U.S. embassy officials in Phnom Penh had expected—political revenge against those the Khmer Rouge called traitors.” But what most did not expect was the mass killings that would later be identified as a genocide. As more evidence came in President Ford was taken aback by the harshness of this new regime. In the second reading he states that after hearing hard evidence from Cambodian radio transmissions that stated they had killed dozens of Cambodian officials and their wives. He states, “They killed the wives, too. They said the wives were just the same as their husbands.” Through this evidence, it is shown that there is violence beyond what was expected. It can be justified that in any overthrow there will be violence when taking over, but there was much more beyond that. This is where it crosses the line between ethical and unethical. Additionally, the killings went past that of government officials of the old regime. When killing monks, those who wore glasses, those who were even slightly different, the KR gained nothing from these killings and yet they carried them out with no mercy. This is where the suffering no longer amounted to any kind of better society. Maybe in the KR’s mind a better society was one of complete equality and no differences, but it should not have been brought upon by the mass killings of civilians. But also, it was not a completely equal society because those in power had a higher quality of life, completely disproving their ideologies. Furthermore, in this new regime, as stated in the third reading, “Everyone was an enemy, those who followed the old regime, those who followed the new, anyone and everyone could be persecuted.” This meant that society was built on mistrust and pain, making it entirely worse than it was before. This mistrust spread through both the civilians and the officials, leading to worsened relationships or none at all. When it is clear that such a society is bringing on such pain, there should be some kind of intervention from outside forces, because if everyone on the inside turns on each other, there will one day be no one left. And so I believe that there should be some kind of outside power, maybe the UN, maybe neighboring countries, that have the ability to assess these tensions and find ways to alleviate it. Additionally, now knowing what this kind of society can lead to, in the future we can recognize the signs and stop such societies from ruining themselves.

The Khmer rise power in Cambodia Was a radical interpretation of communism. Well, communism and theory six equality and eliminating classes, the commander had an extreme and distorted version that caused unimaginable suffering, and some could even argue Genocide.I think the ideology of the leaders in charge had to have been corrupt, and self centered. Even though the idea of communism is generally progressive, the Khmer did a variation of communism that was brutal and unfair. The reason it was selfish was because of the treatment of the citizens.

The thing that struck me the most was the treatment of children. They had the idea that no one has private property, and that included the children as well. The children would get taken away from their families and raised by the Khmer. The children would be trained as soldiers, not having a childhood, having to train for the military. We also found out that people had to leave their home, and couldn’t have their own possessions. The goal was to have everyone loyal to the revolution and eliminate influence that could change your mind. They used human beings and children as tools for their revolution rather than considering them a part of society.

Adults also had harsh policies getting rid of their freedoms. Civilians had to leave their homes and live in work camps in terrible conditions. The Khmer Disregarded human needs and turn their vision of quality into math murder.

Now the reason communism doesn't work is because of corruption and scarcity. In communism, if everyone is equal, then everyone will have very little. As we learned, people would only have a tiny portion of rice (as seen in “The Rise and Fall of Democratic Kampuchea”), which would have to last them the whole day. The Khmer realized this, and was forced to kill ¼ of their population. This is both systemically a communism problem, but morally a Khmer problem.

The tragedy of the Khmer Shows both misapplied ideology in Moreau correction of those empower. They were more of an Authoritarian leadership that wanted ideological purity rather than valued life.

Communism is bad, but what the Khmer did took it to an extent, and proves communism can’t actually work.

In A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power explains how the world ignored the warning signs of the Khmer Rouge’s actions in Cambodia. This shows how the Khmer Rouge’s extreme policies making people leave their homes, taking children from their families, and forcing everyone to work caused so much suffering. Power points out that these actions were clearly dangerous and deadly, but no one stepped in. This supports the idea that the problem wasn’t just communism as an idea, but the cruel and selfish way the Khmer Rouge leaders carried out their plans, harming millions of innocent people.

In conclusion, the Khmer’s Brutal rain in Cambodia was because of the principles of communism and the corrupt, selfish and violent interpretation of those principles. So many people suffered, including children and shows how communism can be manipulated to justify cruelty.

The devastation that came from Khmer Rouge’s ideology from 1975 to 1979 serves as a reminder of what can happen when ideological ideas override human empathy. Khmer Rouge’s main motive was how he believed that a perfect society could only be built by erasing the past entirely, which they called “Year Zero.” This was a forced regression into a certain lifestyle that turned cities, technology and even families into capitalism. In Sock Udom Deth’s writing titled “The Rise and Fall of Democratic Kampuchea, he highlights how the leadership which is known as the Angkar enforced self-reliance. They didn’t want to just change Cambodia, but replace human minds and turn people into a collective who all thought the same. While some believe this demonstrates a failed attempt at communism or a misinterpretation by leaders like Pol Pot, the reality is that the Khmer Rouge came up with the idea of a collective logic that was pushed to the extreme. When a government decides that the greater good is worth more than the actual lives of its citizens, the ideology turns into mass destruction. They targeted people with an education higher than seventh grade, and those who simply wore glasses proving that their vision wasn’t about helping the poor but maintaining control.

This brings the question of how someone can draw a line between ethical and unethical means of bringing about social change. While history has its struggles, the Cambodian genocide shows us that a revolution can loose its morals once it starts to kill the people it claims to help. People need to realize that no amount of starvation or suffering is tolerable for a better society. In the film First They Killed My Father, the struggle didn’t bring equality, but a societal change where children were forced to become soldiers and parents were scared of their kids. When it becomes clear that they are doing worse than before, the community has an obligation to act. Samantha Powers points out in A Problem from Hell that the response to this was defined as skepticism. She notes that the US and other nations used the excuse of not knowing the full extent of the horrors that were happening even when evidence was being presented right in front of them.

The community's failure to act upon these atrocities brings a huge debate. For a long time now, the world treated Cambodia’s borders as a way that allowed the Khmer Rouge to start a genocide. If the UN or another regulator had intervened more early on, thousands of lives may have been saved. Instead, it took an invasion by Vietnam to finally end it all. The tragedy in Cambodia teaches us that saying something will “Never Happen Again” is a hollow phrase unless we are willing to actually create new methods to finally override genocides. We need to learn how reconize the early signs of a genocide before it’s too late and so we can ensure that the idea of a better society never again becomes a justification for a mass destruction like this.

Although communism as an ideology is a well-meaning and optimistic idea, there has never been a case in which a fully communist government has demonstrated success and uplifted its people, and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia was no exception. Pol Pot took control of a previous dictatorship, in which the Cambodian people were oppressed and suffering at the hands of rich governmental figures. The Cambodian people hoped that the Khmer Rouge would provide them with a much-needed change in the power dynamic between government and the rest of society. Just as the people of China and Vietnam nearby had been intrigued by the idea of a fully equal society - communism, the Cambodian people began to support the Khmer Rouge and welcomed the change in power. However, Pol Pot’s idea of a communist society was far more extreme than any communist leader before him. He wanted to return to square one and establish a peasant society in which intellectualism, learning, and technology were banned.

This peasant society was the main difference between the Khmer Rouge and other forms of communism, and was also the most flawed aspect of the new government. The government had shifted from a dictatorship where the people already suffered to an extremist and totalitarian regime that ruled with fear and killing. Although the idea of returning to a peasant society was flawed in itself, because it involved the complete isolation of the Cambodian people from technology in nations nearby them, the brutality with which Pol Pot and his governmental figures ruled was furthermore detrimental to the Cambodian people.

I think that there was something inherently wrong with the way the Khmer ruled the Cambodian people, but I do not think this is because it embodies the theoretical idea of Communism as a whole. Communism is meant to be a society where there is no power inequality, and all people are supported and cared for. The Khmer Rouge was a brutal regime which oppressed all people through the banning of progression in all of Cambodia. Even the peasants who already lived in rural areas were impacted, as no new technology could have helped them improve their way of life. In addition, this violence led to conflict with Vietnam and cost the lives of even more innocent people.

The rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the late 1970s led to one of the most devastating human tragedies of the modern era. Khmer Rouge was led by Pol Pot, his regime wanted to reshape Cambodia based on their interpretation of communism. They attempted to do this which lead to the suffering and deaths of millions of people. Extremist ideologies, unrealistic economic planning, and torture lead to the Khmer Rouge to not last.

One of the biggest problems with the Khmer Rouge’s plan was their belief that Cambodia should go back to its deep roots as a rural agricultural society. Khmer believed cities were corrupt and equality could only exist if everybody were farmers. In 1975, when Khmer took power, they forced millions of people to leave cities into the countryside, starting completely new from nothing. Families were separated from each other, hospitals were emptied, and people who were already sick or old were forced to walk for miles. Many died during evactuations and once in the countryside, people were placed into labor camps where they were expected to work long hours with little to no food or medical care. Another problem was how the Khmer Rouge viewed education. They believed educated people were enemies of the revolution. Teachers, doctors, engineers, and even people who wore glasses were accused of being traitors. Most of them were imprisoned in camps or executed. By killing educated people, Khmer destroyed the country’s ability to function because hospitals had no trained doctors, farms didnt have planners, and basic systems that kept society together were gone.

Khmer also tried to get rid of private property, religion, and family structures. Children most the time were separated from their parents and raised in state controlled groups. Religion like buddhism which had been important in Cambodian culture for centuries, was banned by Khmer. By trying to get rid of important social and cultural institutions, the government created fear and confusion. Another problem was the crazy amount of paranoia within the hierarchy of leadership. Khmer constantly feared enemies, inside and outside of the country. As a result, they carried out purges in their own ranks and citizens. People were accused of being spies or traitors with little to no evidence. These people would be sent to prisons to be tortured and executed. This culture of suspicion meant that people were afraid to speak, question, or trust their neighbors.

Whether this genocide shows something inherently wrong with communismitself is still debated by historians. Communism focuses on creating classless society where resources are shared more equally. The Khmer Rouge took an extremely radical approach to this. Instead of slowly reforming and building society, they tried to erase everything overnight. The policies were extreme and unrealistic. They ignored how a society would actually function and treated people as if they were tools on farms. The Khmer Rouge’s rule is an important reminder of how destructive ideology canbecome when leaders prioritize their vision of the people they are trying to unite.