The New Criterion

The substantive point my article made about David Chandler was how bogus were his claims in 1976 about the consequences of the American bombing of Cambodia in 1973. I did not mean to say that Chandler had never been to Cambodia in his life, but rather that he had never gone there after the bombing to gather any evidence that the Cambodian peasants were driven so "out of their minds" they flocked to join Pol Pot's forces. What I said was perfectly true. Chandler's claim was not based on testimony from Cambodian peasants themselves. It was an invention.

His letter's assertion that he never said U.S. bombing accelerated the Khmer Rouge victory is belied by his own writings. In his 1999 biography of Pol Pot, Brother Number One, he makes that very point on page 96, although once again he lacks any firsthand evidence. He says there is "some corroboration" that the bombing produced "thousands of dedicated, enraged recruits" to the Khmer Rouge but he fails to provide even one exampl ...

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