U.S. Dealings With Cambodia

From his telling, Morris seems to fit in nicely with the Nixon White House crowd. Just before the political heat from the Cambodian incursion hits, he bails out “. . . in dismay and disgust” to make a living writing dirt on his former boss while espousing morality and self-righteousness. Just another Kitty Kelley story and no harm done, but then he goes on to rewrite the history of the modern Cambodian tragedy, blaming the genocide of millions of Cambodians on U.S. military action.

A quick overview for those of you who were not around then. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was a Marxist-Stalinist organization, trained by Hanoi and funded by communist China. The U.S. was fighting in Southeast Asia to stop the communist takeover of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Many American as well as Southeast Asians knew there would be a giant blood bath if the communists won, while many of the anti-war crowd believed that the communists would create a perfect society. The communists won. There was a giant blood bath.

Nobody, including Morris, can say for sure whether the U.S. incursion into Cambodia speeded up or slowed down Pol Pot’s victory. But to suggest that U.S. military action was responsible for Pol Pot’s killing spree is ludicrous.

JOHN J. WALLACE, Menlo Park