At 08:33 8/05/97 -0700, you wrote:
>You, Michael Coghlan, wrote:
>
>>Again, what do you  mean exaggerated? The numbers were
>>exaggerated? What's it matter if it were 10, 20, 100, or 500,000? The impact
>>is colossal. A week in Cambodia is enough to see the fear that still lives
>>in their eyes......or have I missed a point here?
>Yes. The point that Chomsky was trying to make in the Political Economy
>of Human Rights Vol. II was that the crimes of official enemies are
>always inflated to serve state propaganda, no matter how awful they are
>to start with. This does NOT mean that the actual numbers were "only"
>such and such (though anyone who questions official propaganda in this
>regard will surely be labeled as an "apologist for so-and-so").


 Look at
>it from the other end of the telescope: it's the cynical exaggeration of
>the real atrocities of the Khmer Rouge that insults the memory of their
>victims, as if an actual death toll of half a million, or a million
>weren't tragedy enough.


I'm sorry Tresy. I don't see your point here. The extent to which the
atrocities may have been exaggerated is an interesting one, but what is
really important here is that it DID happen. And though the bombing by US
planes obviously assisted  the KR's rise to power, the US DID NOT DO IT. The
KR did.


>What state interests did it serve to promote high-end speculations about
>the Khmer Rouge death toll? Well, one big one was to obscure the
>*earlier* genocide--namely the one conducted by U.S. warplanes against
>the Khmer population, which not only killed hundreds of thousands, but
>which, by destroying the fabric of Khmer society, laid the groundwork for
>the ultimate takeover by the Khmer Rouge. You can see the success of this
>propaganda mission in New York Times accounts of Cambodia's "nightmare",
>which is always dated from 1974--as if the years before that (which are
>never mentioned) were one long picnic.

Well, again talking to people I know through my work, ALL Cambodians talk in
terms of pre and post KR. Life before Pol Pot was not grand, but it
certainly got a lot worse afterwards.
>
>_________
>Tresy Kilbourne, Seattle WA
>"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't
>betray it I'd be ashamed of myself." --Noam Chomsky, responding to an
>accusation of betrayal by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
>
>