Bombing ISIS Into Existence

Weekend Edition June 12-14, 2015

"Washington, We've Got a Problem…"

Bombing ISIS Into Existence

by JOHN WIGHT


The arrival of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) onto the global stage in the summer of 2014 with its invasion of northern Iraq, leading to the group’s declaration of an Islamic caliphate from eastern Syria and across a now non-existent Syrian-Iraqi border, induced panic not only in the region but throughout the world.

Parallels between ISIS and the Khmer Rouge

Their success and sudden growth was and continues to be the sort of crisis that forces us to confront the truth that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. In this regard, we cannot avoid comparisons and similarities between Syria/Iraq today and Cambodia in the 1970s, when similar conditions of chaos and carnage, inflicted on the people of Cambodia as a result of the extension of the war in Vietnam by the United States with a mass bombing campaign that many consider to have been an act of genocide, led to the country’s takeover by the Khmer Rouge.

In 1973 the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia in just a few weeks than it dropped on Japan in the Second World War. This small country across the Republic of Vietnam’s western border, with in 1973 a population of between 7-8 million people, found itself on the receiving end of the equivalent of five Hiroshimas. The number of people killed by the US bombing campaign has never been verified, but it’s thought to have been in the region of 500,000. It was a crime against humanity to rank with any since the Second World War.

The Khmer Rouge at the time was a marginal Maoist cult in Cambodia. Led by Pol Pot, a former Buddhist monk, they had no base of support to speak of and their influence was near non existent. The mass bombing of the country, the destruction and chaos it wrought, changed that.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/12/bombing-isis-into-existence/