To the Editors:

The article by Keith Windschuttle in the June issue, "The journalism of warfare," repeats my somewhat emotional claim, made in 1976, that the U.S. bombing of Cambodia in 1969-71 and 1973 drove at least some Cambodians out of their minds. I based this comment on written reports and oral testimony that were widely available at the time. I never claimed that the U.S. bombing (heartless and inexcusable though it was) accelerated the Khmer Rouge victory. Windschuttle goes on to state that I was in no position to make this statement, because I was a graduate student at the time and had never been in Cambodia.

As a dual U.S.-Australian citizen who has lived in Melbourne since 1972, I have followed Windschuttle's trajectory from left to right and also his virulent attacks on historians who are careless with sources and assertions. To hoist him on his own petard, I should inform him and your readers that in 1976 I...

 

A Message from the Editors

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