Friends-oh
A Boston-residing friend of Jett's was watching a replay of Fox & Friends around 9:30 this morning and saw a segment in which they got into the Jon Voight thing and in so doing mentioned yours truly two or three times.
If anyone happened to TIVO this segment, perhaps they could capture and post in You Tube and send along the URL? Something along these lines?
Listen to Voight, by the way, tell the Fox & Friends guys that "two and half million people were slaughtered in Cambodia and Vietnam" as a result of U.S. troops pulling out of Vietnam.
Uhhm, wrong. To my knowledge there was no massive slaughter in South Vietnam at all at the hands of the North Vietnamese after the takeover in '75. The slaughter that did occur -- approximately 1.5 million to 2 million people in Cambodia -- happened at the hands of the Khymer Rouge, the paramilitary communist force that ruled Cambodia from '75 to '79 under the leadership of Pol Pot. It's been argued, however, that U.S. bombing of Cambodia strengthened the hand of the Khmer Rouge. Voight's claim that our abandoning Vietnam in '75 led to two and half million deaths is therefore, due respect, an ignorant understanding.
"The relation between the massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians," says Wikipedia's Khmer Rouge page. "In 1984 Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia argued that it is 'untenable' to assert that the Khmer Rouge would not have won but for U.S. intervention and that while the bombing did help Khmer Rouge recruitment, they 'would have won anyway.' [3]
"However, more recently historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge.
"Kiernan and Owen argue that 'civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began." [4] In his 1996 study of Pol Pot's rise to power, Kiernan argued that 'Pol Pot's revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia' and that the U.S. carpet bombing 'was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot's rise.' [5]
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 2, 2008 at 3:08 PM
comment #1
D.Z. says ...
Also, if Voight really cared about the victims of Vietnam, he'd demand the government compensate the American soldiers and local children deformed by Agent Orange...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Lawsuits
Posted by D.Z. at August 2, 2008 3:53 PM
comment #2
Geoff says ...
Steve Douchey.
Posted by Geoff at August 2, 2008 4:01 PM
comment #3
George Prager says ...
BUSH 41: Well, yeah. I'm kind of on the sidelines, but I can't do golf and all that stuff anymore. But life is good. It's wonderful, and it's great having the family up here in Maine, and all is well. Do you see our man Ailes at all?
http://www.ktrh.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=&article=4039182
Posted by George Prager at August 2, 2008 4:07 PM
comment #4
Walter Sobchak says ...
"BUSH 41: Well, yeah. I'm kind of on the sidelines, but I can't do golf and all that stuff anymore. But life is good. It's wonderful, and it's great having the family up here in Maine, and all is well. Do you see our man Ailes at all?"
Ooooooo! I KNEW it! That explains EVERYTHING!
Posted by Walter Sobchak at August 2, 2008 4:36 PM
comment #5
mutinyco says ...
"You know, you want to be a part of it, patriotic, go out and get your licks in for the U.S. of A. And when you get over there, it's a totally different situation. I mean, you grow up real quick. Because all you're seeing is, um, a lot of death. And I know some of you guys are going to look at the uniformed man and you're going to remember all the films and you're going to think about the glory of other wars and think about some vague patriotic feeling and go off and fight this turkey too. And I'm telling you it ain't like it's in the movies. That's all I want to tell you, because I didn't have a choice. When I was your age, all I got was some guy standing up like that, man, giving me a lot of bullshit, man, which I caught. I was really in good shape then, man. I was captain of the football team. And I wanted to be a war hero, man, I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And now, I'm here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don't feel good about it. Because there's not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I'm here to tell you, it's a lousy thing, man. I don't see any reason for it. And there's a lot of shit that I did over there that I find fucking hard to live with. And I don't want to see people like you, man, coming back and having to face the rest of your lives with that kind of shit. It's as simple as that. I don't feel sorry for myself. I'm a lot fucking smarter now than when I went. And I'm just telling you that there's a choice to be made here."
Posted by mutinyco at August 2, 2008 6:16 PM
comment #6
mmcshrry says ...
The Weekly Standard has an article about David Zucker, Jon Voight, and AN AMERICAN CAROL.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/385rlkfy.asp
Posted by mmcshrry at August 2, 2008 7:03 PM
comment #7
George Prager says ...
Sobchak's posts are so few and far between. I imagine that the assisted living facility he lives in resembles the one in THE WENDELL BAKER STORY.
Posted by George Prager at August 2, 2008 7:30 PM
comment #8
George Prager says ...
This is a McCain ad from a while back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDTJDv4hevU
Barack Obama on a dollar bill.
Posted by George Prager at August 2, 2008 7:35 PM
comment #9
supertaster says ...
Wells, I'm not disagreeing with you, but you MUST start citing references more discriminant than wikipedia.
Posted by supertaster at August 2, 2008 9:52 PM
comment #10
supertaster says ...
that should be "discriminating"....
Posted by supertaster at August 2, 2008 9:59 PM
comment #11
Pinko Punko says ...
The Cambodia thing is a Ben Stein/Nixon hobbyhorse. Good ol Ben Stein.
Posted by Pinko Punko at August 2, 2008 10:58 PM
comment #12
BurmaShave says ...
Yeah a Stein/Nixon hobbyhorse that even Oliver Stone acknowledges at the end of NIXON. We weren't even a massive presence in Vietnam by '75. It was a matter of abandoning them entirely and cutting their funding. They'd already repelled a fairly serious NV invasion. This is really a do your homework moment for you guys, no offense.
Posted by BurmaShave at August 3, 2008 1:40 PM