Bombs Over Cambodia
New information reveals that Cambodia was bombed far more heavily
during the Vietnam War than previously believed—and that the bombing began
not under Richard Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson
story by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan
mapping by Taylor Owen
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 valuable land all but unusable. Development and demining organizations have put the Air Force data to good use over the past
six years, but have done so without noting its full implications, which
turn out to be staggering.
The still-incomplete database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that
from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far
more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941
tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as
having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed
at all.
The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier
than is widely believed—not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson.
The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past
three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that
had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting
in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a
coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately
the Cambodian genocide.
http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf
