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.