CAMBODIA BOMBING

Bombs of Freedom

Vicious to a Whole New Level

A while back I stumbled across this report (a Yale University Genocides Studies Program — Bombs over Cambodia) and it’s been lodged in the back of my mind ever since. It illustrates the incredible hubris of politicians, the catastrophic outcomes of their hatred, and the clever hiding of war crimes. I simply have to share it.

In the fall of 2000, twenty-five years after the end of the war in Indochina, Bill Clinton became the first US president since Richard Nixon to visit Vietnam. While media coverage of the trip was dominated by talk of some two thousand US soldiers still classified as missing in action, a small act of great historical importance went almost unnoticed.

As a humanitarian gesture, Clinton released extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975. Recorded using a groundbreaking IBM-designed system, the database provided extensive information on sorties conducted over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Clinton’s gift was intended to assist in the search for unexploded ordnance left behind during the carpet bombing of the region. Littering the countryside, often submerged under farmland, this ordnance remains a significant humanitarian concern. It has maimed and killed farmers, and rendered…