When news of Henry Kissinger’s death spread this week, many former world leaders lined up to pay tribute.
Former US President George W Bush said the US had “lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs”.
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described the ex-US secretary of state as an artist of diplomacy, who was motivated by “a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it”. Boris Johnson called Kissinger “a giant of diplomacy and strategy – and peace-making”.
But peacemaker is not a term you’re likely to hear many in Cambodia use when describing Henry Kissinger.
During the Vietnam War, Kissinger and then-President Richard Nixon ordered clandestine bombing raids on neutral Cambodia, in an effort to flush out Viet Cong forces in the east of country.
Altogether, the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Cambodia from 1965-1973. For context, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during the whole of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Kissinger maintained that the bombing was aimed at the Vietnamese army inside Cambodia, not at the country itself.
Full story: http://bbc.com/news/world-asia-67582813
