Great power conflicts and collapsing dominoes, looking tough and dangerous to the North...
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Sydney Schanberg:
As they pondered their options in the White House, the men who decided to bomb and then to invade Cambodia concerned themselves with many things: great power conflicts and collapsing dominoes, looking tough and dangerous to the North Vietnamese, relieving pressure on the American troop withdrawal from the South. They had domestic concerns, as well, which helps explain why they kept the bombing of Cambodia a secret for as long as they could. And they may be assumed not to have ignored self-interest in their own careers. But they specifically were not concerned with, were the Cambodians themselves. Not the people, not the society, not the country. Except in the abstract as instruments of policy. Dith Pran and I tried to record and bring home here the concrete consequences of these decisions to real people - to human beings, the people left out of the Administration's plans, but, who paid the price and took the beating for them
As they pondered their options in the White House, the men who decided to bomb and then to invade Cambodia concerned themselves with many things: great power conflicts and collapsing dominoes, looking tough and dangerous to the North Vietnamese, relieving pressure on the American troop withdrawal from the South. They had domestic concerns, as well, which helps explain why they kept the bombing of Cambodia a secret for as long as they could. And they may be assumed not to have ignored self-interest in their own careers. But they specifically were not concerned with, were the Cambodians themselves. Not the people, not the society, not the country. Except in the abstract as instruments of policy. Dith Pran and I tried to record and bring home here the concrete consequences of these decisions to real people - to human beings, the people left out of the Administration's plans, but, who paid the price and took the beating for them
Full Transcript
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As they pondered their options in the White House
00:00:04.637 --> 00:00:08.971
the men who decided to bomb and then to invade Cambodia
00:00:09.642 --> 00:00:12.999
concerned themselves with many things
00:00:13.446 --> 00:00:17.507
Great power conflicts and collapsing dominoes
00:00:18.818 --> 00:00:21.684
looking tough and dangerous to the North Vietnamese
00:00:21.987 --> 00:00:26.288
relieving pressure on the American troop withdrawal from the South
00:00:27.026 --> 00:00:29.524
They had domestic concerns as well
00:00:29.729 --> 00:00:34.053
which helps explain why they kept the bombing of Cambodia a secret
00:00:35.368 --> 00:00:39.998
And they may be assumed not to have ignored self interest
00:00:39.272 --> 00:00:40.864
in their own careers
00:00:41.641 --> 00:00:44.337
What they specifically were not concerned with
00:00:44.544 --> 00:00:47.003
were the Cambodians themselves
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Movie Summary
The real-life story of a friendship between two journalists, an American and a Cambodian, during the bloody Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia in 1975, which led to the death of 2-3 million Cambodians during the next four years, until Pol Pot's regime was toppled by the intervening Vietnamese in 1979.
Actors
Sydney Schanberg
