Saturday, April 18, 1998

A mass killer dies in his bed

Pol Pot is dead. A suitable epitaph would be: Good riddance.

He died at 73 in his jungle hideout, escaping retribution for his crimes against humanity that even in a century with more than its share of such crimes stood out for their pointless barbarity.

The sad and violent saga of Cambodia since it became a collateral victim of the Vietnam war does not end with Pol Pot's death.

Many of his lieutenants in the slaughter that left perhaps 2 million of their fellow Cambodians dead are still at large.

One is his successor as head of the Khmer Rouge, Ta Mok, known for obvious reasons as "The Butcher." They should be brought to justice.

Cleaning up the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge, whose days are clearly numbered, is one problem.

But Cambodia has another problem: Its current government.

The nation's leader is Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge himself, who seized power last year, ousting the legitimate winner of the national elections, Prime Minister Prince Ranariddh.

Since then, Hun Sen has quietly but bloodily extended his control so he can win elections he hopes to hold -- and rig -- this July.

He was once 'our guy'

The idea is that the elections will legitimize his rule and the international aid his country so desperately needs will resume flowing.

The United States is complicit in the Cambodian tragedy. We made it a battlefield in the Vietnam war and later a pawn in the Cold War.

As unbelievable as it seems, Pol Pot was once our guy. We backed him because the Soviet Union backed his opposition.

None of that excuses the horror for which Pol Pot alone is responsible, a horror that has touched countless lives around the world.

What's past is past. The United States and the rest of the international community owe Cambodia the opportunity for a democratically elected government that will protect its people and allow them to prosper.

Something else should die, too, with Pol Pot: the Marxist ideal of a totalitarian utopia that has given us the Soviet gulags, Mao's Cultural Revolution and the killing fields of Cambodia.

Its epitaph: Never again.