Military Aid to Cambodia

Operation California flew the very first American relief plane into famine-ravaged Cambodia on Thanksgiving Day, 1979. We were accompanied by a Times reporter (Ellen Hume) who bore witness to the incredible devastation wrought in just 3 1/2 years by the brutal Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot.

It mystifies me why Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.) can advocate (“Military Aid Would Help Avoid a Return to the Killing Fields,” Op-Ed Page, May 31) further arms for the resistance forces of both Prince Norodom Sihanouk and the ex-Prime Minister Son Sann’s faction. Both led regimes which (with full American military support) failed to keep the Khmer Rouge from taking over Cambodia in April, 1975.

To visit the Thailand-Cambodia frontier periodically over the past 10 years is to know clearly and convincingly that the non-communist Cambodian resistance has failed miserably to mount more than a token military presence which has had no effect on the Vietnam-backed Hun Sen regime and which, in fact, has fought more military battles against their “allies” the Khmer Rouge for control over refugee populations, black markets and clandestine trade routes into the center of Cambodia.

Arming these factions is not necessarily what they themselves want (indeed, most observers believe they will abandon their alliance with the Khmer Rouge, return to the capitol of Phnom Penh and share power with the incumbent Hun Sen government). Solarz probably was vehement in his opposition to President Reagan’s plans for building and deploying the MX missile but is falling into the same trap as Reagan used so often: the bargaining chips for later negotiation. In this case, there have been 2 million lives lost and shedding more blood will help no one.

RICHARD M. WALDEN

President

Operation California, Inc.

Los Angeles