First, I would like to share this blog post/letter from the UCLA historian Vinay Lal (a friend) who teaches at one of the many college campuses that have seen students protesting (encampments at more than 80 colleges, with additional forms of protest at many others around the country) the genocidal campaign, ethnic cleansing, and routine violations of international criminal and humanitarian law by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank, including the forced evictions and transfers of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank: Violence at UCLA: Open Letter to Chancellor Gene Block.
“Ohio”
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio. — Neil Young
“In summary: There were Cambodians in the areas bombed; Kissinger does not tell the truth when he says there were not. The principal intention of the bombing was not to protect American lives; Kissinger does not tell the truth when he says it was. There were Cambodia casualties; Kissinger does not tell the truth when he says there were not. The bombing pushed the Communists further into Cambodia; Kissinger does not tell the truth when he says they moved the other way.” — William Shawcross, from the invaluable appendix, “Kissinger and Sideshow,” to his Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (Cooper Square Press, 2002 [revised ed., 1987]): 408.
“An important story of indiscriminate bombing in Cambodia came to light thirty-six years after the events. The new evidence makes clear that the bombing of Cambodia began not with Nixon in 1970 but on October 4, 1965. The records released in 2000 reveal that between October 4, 1965, and August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously known: 2,756,941 tons dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. As Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan argue persuasively, ‘Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgence that had 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.” — Mark Selden in Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young, eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History (The New Press, 2009): 94-95.
“Throughout World War II, in all sectors, the United States dropped 2 million tons of bombs; for Indochina the total figure is 8 million tons, with an explosive power equivalent to 640 Hiroshima-size bombs. Three million tons were dropped on Laos, exceeding the total for Germany and Japan by both the U.S. and Great Britain. For nine years, an average of one planeload of bombs fell on Laos every eight minutes. In addition, 150,000 acres of forest were destroyed through the chemical warfare known as defoliation. For South Vietnam, the figure is 19 million gallons of defoliant dropped on an area comprising 20 percent of South Vietnam—some 6 million acres. In an even briefer period, between 1969 and 1973, 539, 129 tons of bombs were dropped in Cambodia, largely by B-52s, of which 257,465 tons fell in the last six months of the war (as compared to 160, 771 tons on Japan from 1942-1945). The estimated toll of the dead, the majority civilian, is equally difficult to absorb: … 2 to 4 million in Vietnam.” — Marilyn B. Young in Tanaka and Young, eds. (above): 157.
“Operation Menu” was part of the Cambodian Campaign of the U.S. war in Vietnam which Nixon and Kissinger assiduously and illegally —and for a time successfully—attempted to keep secret. From the Wikipedia entry (albeit lightly edited):
“Operation Menu was a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) tactical bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970 as part of both the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. An official United States Air Force record of U.S. bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration; this was four years earlier than previously believed. The Menu bombings were an escalation of what had previously been tactical air attacks. Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon authorized for the first time use of long-range Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers to carpet bomb Cambodia. Operation Freedom Deal immediately followed Operation Menu. Under Freedom Deal, B-52 bombing was expanded to a much larger area of Cambodia and continued until August 1973.
In his diary in March 1969, Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, noted that the final decision to carpet bomb Cambodia ‘was made at a meeting in the Oval Office Sunday afternoon, after the church service.’ In his diary on 17 March 1969, Haldeman wrote: ‘Historic day. K[issinger]’s “Operation Breakfast” finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P[resident]. And the next day: ‘K’s “Operation Breakfast” a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive. A lot more secondaries than had been expected. Confirmed early intelligence. Probably no reaction for a few days, if ever.’
The bombing began on the night of 18 March with a raid by 60 B-52 Stratofortress bombers, based at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The target was Base Area 353, the supposed location of COSVN in the Fishhook.Although the aircrews were briefed that their mission was to take place in South Vietnam, 48 of the bombers were diverted across the Cambodian border and dropped 2,400 tons of bombs.The mission was designated ‘Breakfast,’ after the morning Pentagon planning session at which it was devised.On 18 March a 13-man ‘Daniel Boone’ team from MACV-SOG was landed by helicopter at the Base Area 353 impact site to capture survivors, but they were met by intense enemy fire and only 2 of the team members were rescued.
‘Breakfast’ was so successful (in U.S. terms) that General Abrams provided a list of 15 more known Base Areas for targeting.The five remaining missions and targets were: ‘Lunch’ (Base Area 609), ‘Snack’ (Base Area 351), ‘Dinner’ (Base Area 352), ‘Supper’ (Base Area 740), and ‘Dessert’ (Base Area 350).SAC flew 3,800 B-52 sorties against these targets, and dropped 108,823 tons of ordnance during the missions.Due to the continued reference to meals in the codenames, the entire series of missions was referred to as Operation Menu. MACV-SOG provided 70 percent of the Menu bomb damage intelligence. Nixon and Kissinger went to great lengths to keep the missions secret. In order to prevent criticism of the bombing, an elaborate dual reporting system of the missions had been formulated during the Brussels meeting between Nixon, Haig, and Colonel Sitton. [….]
Although [Prince] Sihanouk was not informed by the U.S. about the operation, he may have had a desire to see PAVN/VC [People’s Army of Vietnam/Viet Cong] forces out of Cambodia, since he himself was precluded from pressing them too hard. After the event, it was claimed by Nixon and Kissinger that Sihanouk had given his tacit approval for the raids, but this is dubious. Sihanouk told U.S. diplomat Chester Bowles on January 10, 1968, that he would not oppose American ‘hot pursuit’ of retreating North Vietnamese troops ‘in remote areas [of Cambodia],’ provided that Cambodians were unharmed. Kenton Clymer notes that this statement ‘cannot reasonably be construed to mean that Sihanouk approved of the intensive, ongoing B-52 bombing raids … In any event, no one asked him. … Sihanouk was never asked to approve the B-52 bombings, and he never gave his approval.’ During the course of the Menu bombings, Sihanouk’s government formally protested ‘American violation[s] of Cambodian territory and airspace’ at the United Nations on over 100 occasions, although it ‘specifically protested the use of B-52s’ only once, following an attack on Bu Chric in November 1969.
On 9 May 1969, an article by military reporter William M. Beecher exposing the bombing was run in the New York Times. Beecher claimed that an unnamed source within the administration had provided the information. Nixon was furious when he heard the news and ordered Kissinger to obtain the assistance of Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover and discover the source of the leak. Hoover claimed that Kissinger had told him that ‘we will destroy whoever did this.’ Hoover suspected Kissinger’s own NSC aide, Morton Halperin, of the deed and so informed Kissinger. Halperin’s phone was then illegally tapped for 21 months. This was the first in a series of illegal surveillance activities authorized by Nixon in the name of national security. The phones of 13 officials together with four journalists were illegally tapped by the FBI in search of finding the leak. The administration was relieved when no other significant press reports concerning the operation appeared, and the revelation of the secret bombing of Cambodia did not cause any public outrage. The journalist Stanley Karnow asserted that the illegal bugging in May 1969 marked ‘the first abuses of authority’ under Nixon that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal. Likewise, Congressman John Conyers wrote that the Operation Menu bombings led Nixon and his staff to become ‘enmeshed in the snare of lies and half-truths they themselves had created.’ Conyers wrote that Nixon’s belief that any action done by the president was justified in name of national security, first asserted with Operation Menu, created the mindset that led him directly to the Watergate scandal.
By the summer, five members of the United States Congress had been informed of the operation. They were: Senators John C. Stennis (MS) and Richard B. Russell, Jr. (GA) and Representatives Lucius Mendel Rivers (SC), Gerald R. Ford (MI), and Leslie C. Arends (IL). Arends and Ford were leaders of the Republican minority and the other three were Democrats on either the Armed Services or Appropriations committees. For those in Washington who were cognizant of the Menu raids, the silence of one party came as a surprise. The Hanoi government made no protest concerning the bombings. It neither denounced the raids for propaganda purposes, nor, according to Kissinger, did its negotiators ‘raise the matter during formal or secret negotiations.’ North Vietnam had no wish to advertise the presence of their forces in Cambodia, allowed by Sihanouk in return for the Vietnamese agreeing not to foment rebellion in Cambodia.
For four years Menu remained unknown to the U.S. Congress as a whole, although as previously mentioned five Congressmen had been informed. That situation changed in December 1972, when Major Knight wrote a letter to Senator William Proxmire (D., WI), asking for ‘clarification’ as to U.S. policy on the bombing of Cambodia. Knight, who had become concerned over the legality of his actions, had complained to his superior officer, Colonel David Patterson. He then received several bad efficiency reports, which ruined his career, and he had been discharged from the Air Force. Proxmire’s further questioning led to hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which eventually demanded that the Department of Defense turn over all records of U.S. air operations in Cambodia. When they arrived, the records did not even mention the Menu strikes. The committee was not convinced and the investigation continued. Less than two weeks later, it opened hearings on the nomination of General George S. Brown for the position of chief of staff of the Air Force. As commander of the Seventh Air Force in South Vietnam, Brown had been privy to Menu and disclosed as much to the committee. [….]
The committee uncovered excuses and deceptions that were perhaps more alarming than those occurring simultaneously in the Watergate hearings. The Menu revelations raised ‘fundamental questions as to military discipline and honesty, of civilian control over the military and of Congressional effectiveness.’ It was basically agreed, both by Congress and concerned military officers, that the deception employed during Menu went beyond covertness. According to Air Force historian Captain Earl H. Tilford, ‘Deception to fool the enemy was one thing, but lying to Congress and key members of the government, including the chief of staff of the Air Force and the secretary of the Air Force, was something else.’ The Congressman Conyers wrote that the bombing of Cambodia without Congressional authorization was an illegal act which Nixon should have been impeached for. Conyers introduced a motion of impeachment against Nixon regarding the bombing of Cambodia on the floor of the House on 30 July 1974, which was not taken as the House was fully engaged in the Watergate scandal at the time. [….]
While out of the country on 18 March 1970, the prince was deposed by the National Assembly and replaced by Lon Nol. The Nixon administration, although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol’s forces and loath to commit American military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, announced its support of the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. In response, the prince quickly aligned himself with the Khmer Rouge; this was a major boon to the communist insurgents, whose movement ‘started growing as on yeast.’ On 29 March 1970, the PAVN launched an offensive against the Khmer National Armed Forces, with documents uncovered after 1991 from the Soviet archives revealing that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. Historian Jussi Hanhimäki writes that ‘the MENU operations pushed the North Vietnamese forces … in east Cambodia westward. American bombers followed suit.’
Author William Shawcross and other commenters asserted that the ‘Khmer Rouge were born out of the inferno that American policy did much to create’ and that Sihanouk’s ‘collaboration with both powers [the United States and North Vietnam] … was intended to save his people by confining the conflict to the border regions. It was American policy that engulfed the nation in war.’ [….] The simultaneous rise of the Khmer Rouge and the increase in area and intensity of U.S. bombing between 1969 and 1973 has incited speculation as to the relationship between the two events. Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, said the following:
‘Apart from the large human toll, perhaps the most powerful and direct impact of the bombing was the political backlash it caused … The CIA’s Directorate of Operations, after investigations south of Phnom Penh, reported in May 1973 that the communists there were successfully ‘using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda’ … The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia was partly responsible for the rise of what had been a small-scale Khmer Rouge insurgency, which now grew capable of overthrowing the Lon Nol government ….” Shawcross’ and Kiernan’s views were echoed in a 2011 statistical study of U.S. bombing in Vietnam which concluded that the air war ‘was counterproductive … hampered the pacification campaign and more of it would likely have hastened the communist victory.’
When Phnom Penh was under siege by the Khmer Rouge in 1973, the US Air Force again launched a bombing campaign against them, claiming that it had saved Cambodia from an otherwise inevitable Communist take-over and that the capital might have fallen in a matter of weeks. By 1975, President Ford was predicting ’new horrors’ if the Khmer Rouge took power, and calling on Congress to provide additional economic, humanitarian, and military aid for Cambodia and Vietnam.”
“While most people know that students were killed at Kent State in 1970, very few know about the murder of students at Jackson State and even less about South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. In Orangeburg, two years before the Kent State murders, three students were killed and 28 students were injured — most shot in the back by the state police while involved in a peaceful protest. The Jackson State killings occurred on May 14–15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now JSU) in Mississippi. A group of student protesters were confronted by city and state police. The police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve.” — From The Zinn Education Project
Selected Reading (because it is comparatively less known, I have included several works on the Vietnam War in Laos, which is north of Cambodia and also shares a border with Vietnam):
- Berman, Larry. No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 2001.
- Branfman, Fred, ed. (with essays and drawings by Laotian villagers) Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd ed., 2013 (1972).
- Coates, Karen J. (photos by Jerry Redfern) Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos. San Francisco, CA: ThingsAsianPress, 2013.
- Conboy, Kenneth (with James Morrison) Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1995.
- Falk, Richard A., Gabriel Kolko, and Robert Jay Lifton, eds. Crimes of War. New York: Random House, 1971.
- Giles, Robert. When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later. Traverse City, MI: Mission Point Press, 2020.
- Hersh, Seymour. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983.
- Hitchens, Christopher. The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Twelve, 2012; 1st ed., Verso, 2001, 2002 with new preface).
- Kiernan, Ben. How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Kampuchea, 1930-1975. London: Verso, 1985.
- Means, Howard. 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2016.
- Ruffner, Howard. Moments of Truth: A Photographer’s Experience of Kent State 1970. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2019.
- Shawcross, William. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979; revised ed., Copper Square Press, 2002.
- Stevenson, Charles A. The End of Nowhere: American policy toward Laos since 1954. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972.
- Stone, I.F. The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished. New York: New York Review Book/Vintage Books, 1970.
- Tyner, James A. and Mindy Farmer. Kent State: In the Aftermath of Nixon’s Expansion of the Vietnam War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2020.
- Warner, Roger. Back Fire: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in Vietnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995 (slightly different later version: Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America’s Clandestine War in Laos. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 1996).
- Westad, Odd Arne and Sophie Quinn-Judge, eds. The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-79. New York: Routledge, 2006.
See too the following material (largely bibliographies) freely available for reading or download (pdf) on my Academia page:
- Bombing French Indochina during the U.S. War in Vietnam: a précis
- International Criminal Law
- The History, Theory, and Praxis of the Left in the 1960s
- The U.S. War in Indochina (‘Vietnam War’)
- Violent Conflict and The Laws of War—Moral, Legal, and Political Dimensions: a select bibliography
Patrick's Musings & Miscellany 
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