The Cambodia Coup (Part 2 of 2)
allowed us to stay, we would have stayed. One person did stay; a very courageous woman who is very dedicated to Cambodia, Janet King, who is there as we speak.
My wife was in Japan at the time, and she was not going to come back to Cambodia. So I left; it was a graceful way to move on.
Let me just say a word about the CPP. The Khmer Rouge couldn't dislodge them. The Thai couldn't do it, either. Three billion dollars spent on UNTAC [the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia] couldn't do it. And there isn't going to be another UNTAC, or another three billion dollars. If they couldn't get rid of him then, I don't think they can get rid of him now.
When I first arrived in Cambodia, I thoroughly supported the idea of a multi-party system. But looking at the political makeup of other ASEAN nations, as much as I hate to admit it, the one-party authoritarian system -- not monolithic, with factions -- had its advantages. It would give time for Cambodia to heal. Then maybe, maybe, we'll move into a two-party cooperative system.
When I left, I wasn't as sad as some other people about what had happened. I was sad for the loss of life, but not for the loss of the system. In a way, maybe Cambodia is coming home. They basically had a one-party system under Sihanouk, so I look at it optimistically. A one-party system with factions does not automatically mean that democracy is dead and buried forever.
The coup did prevent civil war. It did prevent the return of the Khmer Rouge. And this is scary: I asked some young Khmer, my students, who was worse -- the Vietnamese, who occupied from '79 to '89, or the Khmer Rouge. Maybe they're just not well versed in their history, but they said at least the Khmer Rouge were Khmer. That kind of put me back to step one. I couldn't understand it.
They hate the Vietnamese with a passion. Well-informed Khmer are telling me that to this day, there are 100,000 Vietnamese secret police in Phnom Penh. The Khmer are also dedicated to getting back Saigon, because, 400 years ago, it was part of the slowly disintegrating Cambodian nation. They asked me, point blank, how can we get back Saigon legally? This was a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They
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