Christine Petersen wrote:

>Their half argument seems to go that because he
>compares the East Timor genocide to the killing fields, calling the former
>proportionally worse, that he is mitigating the atrocities in Cambodia. I
>never read a NC book where he discussed SE asia... Is there any place
>where he actually does do anything akin to this? I wouldn't think so.
That's a pretty fair precis of their "half argument." Back in the late
70s Chomsky and Edward Herrman wrote "The Political Economy of Human
Rights: The Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology," which first made the
Timor/Cambodia comparison, and analyzed the various conflicting accounts
of the scale of the Khmer Rouge genocide. (I can loan you a copy if
interested.) Their conclusion--which relied on State Dept reports as a
baseline against which to judge the credibility of other accounts (a
point lost in the brouhaha that followed)--was that the scale of the
genocide was probably inflated to serve propaganda interests, but that
the actual scale was "gruesome indeed"; at the same time, US complicity
in the *earlier* genocide--the bombing of Cambodia--was conveniently
elided in subsequent reporting. For that crime against the state they
were castigated as apologists for the Khmer Rouge.

As NC has ironically noted on more than one occasion, how can he and
Herrman be apologists for the Khmer Rouge when they use their crimes as a
yardstick against which to measure those in Timor? Being a state
apologist means never having to say you're consistent. Ditto US policy
towards Vietnam over its later invasion of Cambodia. Vietnam saves
Cambodia from genocide, and the Khmer Rouge, with U.S. backing, gets to
keep its seat in the UN? It would be funny if real lives weren't at
stake.

As for the Left's "duty" to atone for the Khmer Rouge--what duty? You are
correct that the KR was virtually nonexistent until the US terror bombing
of Cambodia shattered a peaceful, centuries-old society, after which they
were the only viable political force left. Chomsky posted something the
other day that dealt again with that forgotten chapter of history; I will
see if I can find it and repost it. Meanwhile, if anyone can recall any
significant New Left support for the KR, please correct me. There is a
book on Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, "Cambodia 1974-1979", by Michael
Vickery, that delves into the minutiae of that awful period in greater
detail than any other I know of. NC recommends it, and after having read
it, I can see why.

One last note about Horowitz. I may have been young at the time, but I
remember the Sixties pretty well. I knew who Mailer, Chomsky, Spock,
Ellsberg, etc. were. Horowitz wasn't even on my or anyone else's radar
screen, and if you read his book you can see why: the man hasn't an
original idea,  guiding principle or  single graceful turn of phrase in
his head. He's simply a hack, one who first hopped on the Stalinist train
in the 60s, then when that ran out of steam, hopped on another going the
opposite direction, but serving the same authoritarian masters. Yet he's
being marketed to later generations as some grizzled Veteran of the
Movement, a 60s luminary Who Saw the Error Of His Ways. It's all too
much. He's really just a trained seal, barking and clapping his flippers
for people who probably despise him, in return for a public stage on
which to act out his neurotic rage against his Comintern parents. Think
I'm joking? Read his book.

For me the choicest irony is that his current publication, a newsletter
with a circulation of at most 10,000 hilariously misnamed "Heterodoxy,"
is subsidized almost entirely with right-wing foundation grant money. At
least the leftist "Ramparts" was a market-driven publication. From what I
can tell, his days as a communist were the last ones he ever spent
earning an honest buck in the free market he now slavishly praises,
safely atop his foundation-subsidized soapbox.

Best,

Tresy