Word: shawcross
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There is a serious side to the Spectator, too. The March issue includes an item protesting the availability of abortion, predicting liberals will "be dragged down to defeat by the terrible millstone of dead fetuses"), and another attacking author William Shawcross's work as "shoddy and deceitful." And there are even advertisements. The simplest, four by six inches, reads, "There is opportunity in America." Slightly more detailed, a subscription ad for "Policy Review" magazine, lists the endorsements of the aforementioned Mr. Tyrell, Sen. Danial P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and David Stockman, director...
...leading the reader along a carefully documented historical trail, he seduces the reader into accepting his undocumented conclusion that the United States ultimately bears responsibility for the Cambodian tragedy. To the otherwise uninformed reader, it comes as a shocking revelation to discover that Prince Sihanouk--with whom Shawcross heavily empathizes--provides evidence which thoroughly demolishes most of Shawcross' conclusions and substantially weakens his others...
...Hope is not a well-written book. Even analyzing it for content, it has far too many gaping holes to pretend to serve as a definitive history of the events leading up to the Cambodian holocaust. Yet, what little new information Sihanouk does provide is so damaging to Shawcross' positions that one has to wonder if any of his conclusions will stand up under the light of serious scrutiny...
...merely allowing for the likelihood that Cambodia lasted longer under Lon No1 than it would have under Sihanouk does not answer Shawcross' most forceful charge: that the Khmer rouge created the massive holocaust only because they had been "brutalized" by incessant American bombings and the actions of the U.S.-supplied Cambodian Army. This unsupported assertion has probably been the cause of more bad sentiment towards American involvement in Cambodia--and, indeed, anywhere else in the world--than any other aspect of American foreign policy in many years. But Shawcross' claim is almost completely false...
...somehow, Shawcross was able to deduce from all of this that the Rouge was "brutalized" by U.S. actions. Nowhere have the Khmer Rouge gone on record explaining their actions as a necessary result of U.S. bombings and other military actions, and Shawcross has not demonstrated that Khmer Rouge words or actions changed after the United States entered the fray. Perhaps Shawcross should listen to Sihanouk, who upon a stay in a liberated zone in 1973, observed that U.S. bombings were "violent and profuse, but fortunately not particularly effective...