Can someone explain the context behind this? What was an American

>>34837995
The US was neutral at that time, they could be there. And I think Veitnam REALLY didn't want to shoot at Americans.

>>34837995
Because they were probably trying to drum up support from Murica by giving a tour through war torn areas and providing inflated death count numbers

Cuz those slant eyed gooks lacked the riceballs to take a shot at general mantis

>>34839804
"neutral" but they still supported Pol Pot, and the Vietnam war had only ended 4 years prior. Why would the USA send military staff under the auspices of the Vietnamese? We would never send officers to Cuba or Syria to go sightseeing.

>>34837995
Funnily enough, I can't find any reference to Mattis or any marine delegation going to see Cambodia in 1979, or any attribution for that quote.

>>34840049
There was an interim Cambodian government that still operated during this time. Even though it was under the auspices of the Vietnamese they still ran some shit autonomously. My uncle visited Cambodia as an American in the 1980's and never got into any shit, I'm guessing that it wouldn't be out of the question for certain military delegations to come in. Also, we were supporting a broad coalition of which the Khmer Rouge was a part of but it also included former royalists, moderates, and a couple ethnic groups. It wasn't the most popular decision but you have to understand that during this time period popular opinion in many countries actually turned against Vietnam for its Cambodian incursion. While they did oust Pol Pot from power, many saw it as an occupation of a sovereign country. This is part of the reason that the Vietnamese economy took a massive shit during this time because loans promised from neutral countries like Sweden and Japan were rescinded after the Vietnamese invasion (also because they tried going full socialist after 1975 and failed spectacularly).

>>34837995
The quick rundown
>US wanted a puppet state to fuck with vietnam
>Put a CIA agent in Cambodian government back when it was monarch
>Agent stages a coup and manages to topple the gov't but not before destabilizing the nation in a huge fight between loyalist and new regime forces
>Most people die in this fight for power not by pol pot's hands, due to the fact the new government backed by the US is corrupt as absolute fuck, and somehow worse than the previous monarchy
>Lon Nol (our guy) is challenged then by the various forces competing against his "democratic" and are called the Khmer Rouge
>after the fighting is over, the Khmer Rouge enter the capital Phnom Penh as heroes and liberators
>Pol Pot starts to kill people who try to start back up support of old governments who happened to be people educated by the west under Lon Nol "hurr durr the west is good hurr durr" and gets flak for it even though those people who scream in support of the west bascially supported the death of 1/5th of the whole nation so whatever
>pol pot gets everyone to farm to feed everyone after the complete collapse of infrastructure and tries to slowly rebuild the nation
>doesnt get to do it because vietnam fucks it up and invades because apparently they wanted a bigger slice of the boarder pie
>government destabilized again, pol pot goes into hiding, the government is replaced by what is essentially a vietnamese puppet government.
>5 years later UN takes over and gives it back over to the old Monarch government backed by the west that fucked things up to begin with and is literally the worst of both worlds
>decades later people are somehow surprised that Cambodia is still doing shit

TL;DR the US poisons every small nation it touches.

>>34837995
i hope everyone in this thread has seen the movie "the killing fields"
if you havent seen it, watch it this weekend.

File: 1200px-United_States_POW-MIA_flag.svg.png (91KB, 1200x773px) Image search: [Google]

91KB, 1200x773px

>>34837995
a whole generation has already forgotten. i hate everyone under age 35.

>>34841171
>>>/leftypol/

>>34841217
You got it wrong again anon.

>>>>/hell/

>>34837995

He said it himself. He was touring the killing fields. Either by invitation of the KR themselves officially or by a US-friendly politician or high officer. They were proud of their work after all, and happy to show their ally how reliable they were. No doubt Mattis gave his allies his full support to continue the kind of job USA had been supporting for decades in Latin America.

>>34841171
>tl;dr I support genocide
Fuck off

>>34837995
Who do you think it was doing all the killing?

>>34842036
Mattis wasn't in high-ranking position at this time.
>Show their ally
The Khmer Rouge during the time when Pol Pot was in charge wasn't our friends. As I said here
>>34841033
Situation was more complicated.

>>34842691
Genocide is good, the weaker people get killed because they deserve it
might makes right