Cold War Hangover

Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune promised a second installment and here returns to explain why the U.S. is lagging behind in international efforts to fund a Khmer Rouge trial.

He argues that the current U.S. view on Cambodia is a cold war hangover; and calls for its immediate change.

This extraordinary American refusal to give any money for a court that might bring some Cambodians a belated sense of justice for the most sweeping crime since Hitler's genocide amounts to the latest twist in a tangled U.S. policy whose main characteristic has been incoherence.

... in the light of a past that can make no American proud, the U.S. approach to a tribunal on which the United Nations and Cambodia have agreed amounts to another chapter in a squalid saga.

... the United States has a historic responsibility to help get the promised Khmer Rouge trial started. For that, the congressional ban on funding the court should be lifted and intense U.S. monitoring maintained of how money is spent and how the trial progresses.

To do otherwise would compound hypocrisy with hypocrisy, giving ammunition to America's enemies.

Link