Michael Coghlan wrote:
> >It is a definite fact that he has. Consider the Cambodia case, where he
> >and Herman compared the Cambodian genocide to that in East Timor. They
> >were similar in absolute numbers killed, but the Cambodian was
> >exaggerated in the press, including faked photographs, forged refugee
> >testimony, etc,=20
>
> Excuse me. I realise that this is not the main point of your posting BUT:
>
> - what do you mean the Cambodian case was exaggerated?! I work with
> Cambodian people daily and hear first hand of the unbelievable trauma they
> have been, and still are, subjected to. I have been to Cambodia and seen and
> felt for myself the social, political, and more importantly, the psychic
> dislocation that lingers there. I stood in the genocide museum in Phnom Penh
> and saw the thousands of photos of the dead that the Khmer Rouge ghoulishly
> took and displayed. 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?
I mean, there were faked photographs publicised at the time, which the
media continued to use even after the fraud had been admitted. There was
a claim of two million slain, which was retracted and changed to
"thousands", but the media continued to report the millions figure and
failed to report the retraction. And so on. (Incidentally, the totals
C&H consider "the most careful attempt to sort out the confused facts to
date" give 750,000 total dead, 200-300,000 outright executions. The case
above is only about outright executions in the immediate wake of the
takeover.)
As for what it matters if the numbers were exaggerated, consider the
opposite case: that of Cambodia bombed by the US in the years preceding
the Khmer Rouge takeover. Now, exactly the same people who scream in
outrage that Chomsky "denies" the KR genocide because he wants accurate
figures instead of lies, also scream in outrage because he reproduces
the Finnish Inquiry Commission's findings that the US bombing killed
several hundred thousand people, instead of merely tens of thousands, as
US propaganda insists. This also, according to the same Commission,
created the conditions where the Khmer Rouge could become more than a
tiny, marginal group. Now, for pointing this out, Chomsky supposedly
portrays the US as the "Great Satan", blah blah blah.
It is in fact a point that Chomsky has made, that if *someone else* is
to blame for atrocities, then the "numbers don't matter" -- whereas if
the US is to blame, they suddenly take on an extreme importance.
(And btw, neither Chomsky nor I deny the enormous atrocities in Cambodia
or the suffering that has resulted from them.)
--
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Dan Clore
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