My local newspaper (and I’m sure just about everyone else’s as well) contained a minuscule item on the cremation of the body of Norodom Sihanouk, whom the paper described as being revered by his people as the “King-Father” of Cambodia. An AP story by Denis Gray was the source of this tiny item tucked away inside the Utica OD, which opened as follows:
Cambodians bade goodbye Monday with tears, chanting and fireworks to former King Norodom Sihanouk, their revered “King-Father” who led them through half a century of political tumult that took them into the abyss of genocidal Khmer Rouge rule and back out again. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians thronged the capital for the elaborate royal cremation of the maddeningly mercurial leader whose charm often overshadowed missteps that to most of his countrymen have faded away in a fog of nostalgia for a simpler time.
While Gray’s story went into a bit more detail, this was most of what my newspaper carried. However, neither the original piece nor the excerpt bothered to mention the U.S. role in the catastrophe that destroyed Sihanouk’s country in the late 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, reading this, you’d think that their many troubles were the result of a bungling if “charming” monarch who misled his people into genocide. Gray’s piece gives only one vague hint of U.S. influence at any point, mentioning in passing that Sihanouk sided with the Khmer Rouge in opposition to “U.S.-backed government” in the early 1970s.
Talk about burying the lead! That “U.S.-backed government” was a coup regime headed by Lon Nol which we brought to power in the midst of an ever-widening war in Cambodia. Of course, we invaded Cambodia in 1970 – a fact that you’d be hard-pressed to find evidence of on a Google search, apart from a story on the World Socialist Web site. We bombed the living shit out of it from about 1969 until Lon Nol was overthrown in 1975. Then came the reign of terror, as well as countless deaths from starvation, exhaustion, and the usual outcomes of genocidal war. To read these stories, it’s as if before the Khmer Rouge arrived, Cambodia was a nation of happy, smiling people, no complaints whatsoever.
Naturally, I don’t expect them to get all of this into a 3-inch column item. But they could get a piece of the truth in there, couldn’t they?
luv u,
jp