the Khmer Rouge regime killed somewhere between 1.5-2 million of its own people in the late 1970's --> about 25% of the Cambodia's population... now this is a complicated topic involving many players and is time and location specific (ie. Cold War in Indochina post-Vietnam War) but ask yourself how some of the following has aged -
* "The Thais and the Chinese did not want a Vietnamese-dominated
Indochina.
We didn't want the Vietnamese to dominate. I don't believe we did anything for Pol Pot. But I suspect we closed our eyes when some others did something for Pol Pot." - Henry Kissinger (Richard Nixon's and Gerald Ford's Secretary of State)
* "I encourage[d] the Chinese to support Pol Pot ... we could never support him, but China could." - Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor)
* to punish Vietnam for overthrowing the Khmer Rouge and ending the genocide,
China invaded Vietnam in February 1979, while the US slapped more sanctions on Vietnam and blocked loans from the IMF to Vietnam
* the US voted for the
Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge-dominated
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea to retain
Cambodia's UN seat until as late as 1993, long after the Khmer Rouge had been mostly deposed by
Vietnam during the 1979
Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and ruled just a small part of the country
* and there are allegations of far greater US involvement with the Khmer Rouge well into the 1980's with financial support, military aid to Khmer Rouge guerrillas, diplomatic efforts (eg. Singapore diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, who recalled: "ASEAN wanted elections but the U.S. supported the return of a genocidal regime. Did any of you imagine that the U.S. once had in effect supported genocide?" Kausikan described the disagreement between the U.S. and ASEAN over the Khmer Rouge as reaching the threshold that the U.S. threatened Singapore with "blood on the floor"
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too often we are distracted by the superficialities spoon fed to us by mainstream outlets