the Khmer Rouge was provided by Kissinger and Nixon, through their systematic
campaign of terror bombing against Cambodian territory during 1973. This was called
Arclight, and began shortly after the January, 1973 Paris accords on Vietnam. With the
pretext of halting a Khmer Rouge attack on Phnom Penh, US forces carried out 79,959
officially confirmed sorties with B-52 and F-111 bombers against targets inside
Cambodia, dropping 539,129 tons of explosives. Many of these bombs fell upon the most
densely populated sections of Cambodia, including the countryside around Phnom Penh.
The number of deaths caused by this genocidal campaign has been estimated as between
30,000 and 500,000. [fn 7] Accounts of the devastating impact of this mass terror
bombing leave no doubt that it shattered most of what remained of Cambodian society
and provided ideal preconditions for the further expansion of the Khmer Rouge
insurgency, in much the same way that the catastrophe of the First World War weakened
European society so as to open the door for the mass irrationalist movements of fascism
and Bolshevism.
During 1974, the Khmer Rouge consolidated their hold over parts of Cambodia. In these
enclaves they showed their characteristic methods of genocide, dispersing the inhabitants
of the cities into the countryside, while executing teachers, civil servants, intellectuals--
sometimes all those who could read and write. This policy was remarkably similar to the
one being carried out by the US under Theodore Shackley's Operation Phoenix in
neighboring South Vietnam, and Kissinger and other officials began to see the potential
of the Khmer Rouge for implementing the genocidal population reductions that had now
been made the official doctrine of the US regime.
Support for the Khmer Rouge was even more attractive to Kissinger and Nixon because it
provided an opportunity for the geopolitical propitiation of the Maoist regime in China.
Indeed, in the development of the China card between 1973 and 1975, during most of
Bush's stay in Beijing, Cambodia loomed very large as the single most important bilateral
issue between the US and Red China. Already in November, 1972 Kissinger told Bush's
later prime contact Qiao Guanhua that the US would have no real objection to a
Sihanouk-Khmer Rouge government of the type that later emerged: "Whoever can best
preserve it [Cambodia] as an independent neutral country, is consistent with our policy,
and we believe with yours," said Kissinger [fn 8] Zhou En-lai told Kissinger in February,
1973 that if North Vietnam were to extend its domination over Cambodia, this "would
result in even greater problems."
When Bush's predecessor David Bruce arrived in Beijing to open the new US Liason
Office in the spring of 1973, he sought contact with Zhou En-lai. On May 18, 1973 Zhou
stressed that the only solution for Cambodia would be for North Vietnamese forces to
leave that country entirely. A few days later Kissinger told Chinese delegate Huang Hua
in New York that US and Red Chinese interests in Cambodia were compatible, since both
sought to avoid "a bloc which could support the hegemonial objectives of outside
powers," meaning North Vietnam and Hanoi's backers in Moscow. The genocidal terror
bombing of Cambodia was ordered by Kissinger during this period. Kissinger was
apoplectic over the move by the US Congress to prohibit further bombing of Cambodia
after August 15, 1973, which he called "a totally unpredictable and senseless event." [fn