"The Nixon Doctrine in its purest form..."

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2013)

Ironies abound in THE KILLING FIELDS. "Cambodia is the Nixon doctrine in its purest form," boasts one of the twentieth century's greatest war criminals (who himself lived a long and happy life, thereby putting the lie to any and all notions of karma). The Vietnam War, we're told, resulted in 3 million deaths (70-80% of all casualties were civilian). Does that total factor in the Cambodians who were murdered in the war's "aftermath?" (90% of all deaths in Iraq were civilian, by the way. Evidence has now come to light that the U.$. actually AIDED Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq. That's right: the same government threatening to bomb Syria back into The Stone Age actually had an active part in the mass murder of Kurdish civilians. Or was it IRANIANS, during the Iran-Iraq War? "Six of one, half dozen of the other," U.$. politicos might say, but the distinction DOES matter, especially if you're Iranian or Kurdish... I may be wrong about the Kurdish murders, but I'm not going to change my comments until I see some paperwork showing otherwise. And there are 30,000 drones in the skies over the U.$., even as I write...) Another of the ironies is what happened to Haing S. Ngor (Dith Pran in THE KILLING FIELDS) after he came to the U.$.: having survived genocide in Cambodia, he was murdered here, in the street. Maybe THIS is the true Killing Field.