No shame
Taki
Occasionally horrors of such magnitude take place that only the perpetrators, the mercenary, and the totally insensitive go on about their business as usual. Such a situation exists today, and suddenly it is impos sible to write about high lifers and the zany goings-on of the rich. Because seldom in the course of human affairs has there been a horror to match the tragedy that has befal len the gentle people of Cambodia. In a nation of seven million people, three mil lion have been shot and bludgeoned to death by the brutal Khmer Rouge, while another two million are about to starve to death by orders of those nice people in Hanoi that so many of us here in the West egged on to win the war against the South. What makes one indignant to the point of crying out, however, is the reaction of the so-called civilised Westerners in general, and those mentioned above, the very same people who did their utmost to see victory by Hanoi and the khmer Rouge take place. For example: as William Safire, the fearless New York Times writer, pointed out recently, Dick Clark was a former Iowa senator placed in charge of the American programme to get help to starving refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. Clark is a typical politician. He spent years in the Senate demanding that the United States 'stop the killing', and withdraw her troops who were fighting communists trying to take over the South and Cambodia. He was a hero to the Jane Fondas, Shirley Maelaines, the Berrigans, the Ellsbergs. When he lost his seat in the Senate three years ago Carter took him under his wing and recently appointed him to the•important post of Refugee Director. Last week Clark quit his post just as the terrible consequences of the Left's brutalities came oncn our screens via Thailand's camps for the living dead. Clark quit because `Chappaquiddick' declared himself ready to run for President. And Clark went back to Iowa to canvass for the man who cares about the poor and the hungry. Teddy Which brings us to yet another phoney ,a man worthy of Clark and his kind. Teddy . also involved with refugees. Whenever Amnesty International discovers thaTtesodmdye Argentinians are missing , immediately goes on the warpath. This he's been too busy running to say much. He might lose the vote of his natural constituency, which is the Left, the onesWtlet.h. double standards, and the so i -called n . I ligentsia, (Read we condone any atrotsciait)y for the sake of socialism for intellig Arthur Schlesinger Jr was one ofCamelot'sforemost defenders. He wrote two boohast the Kennedys. Recently it came out t was JFK and Robert Kennedy who ordered the CIA to kill Castro — a small detail that escaped the historian .who is married to a very rich Cushing girl and attends more cocktail parties in a month than 1 do in a year. Schlesinger too has been deafening by his silence recently. His only reaction has been to complain in a letter to the New York Times about his role in the Bay of Pigs disaster. Somebody had written that he had purposely deceived Adlai Stevenson at the time. The historian was outraged. While millions are dying he is 'outraged' because of an article. Isn't it typical?
But Carter is not far behind. Here is a man who got elected preaching about his compassion. He recently signed a law selling 25 million tons of grain to the Soviets, the very people whose puppets are starving the Cambodians to death. Added to that there are 8 billion dollars' worth of credits by the West to Eastern countries, credits that could overnight be used as counterweights. But it is not to be. Seventy-five million dollars pledged by the US government for the Cambodians, and 25 million tons of grain for the Russians. And while this is going on Carter's adviser Zbigniew Brezhinski is seen shaking hands with, and smiling at, General Giap, the North Vietnamese butcher, in Algiers. Richard Ingrams, who rarely gets it wrong, made a good point in last week's Spectator. He did not fall for William Shawcross's Houdin i-like act of lifting the blame from where it lies and placing it squarely on Kissinger and Nixon. His thesis that the Khmer Rouge were gentle souls until suddenly provoked holds as much water as if the Titanic's captain tried to dismiss people's fears by saying that they had stopped to take on some ice. Two years ago, the head of the French CIA, Comte de Marange, a cousin of Newsweek's chief foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, told him that a major disinformation and discrcditation effort against America's presence in Vietnam was about to be launched.
A long time ago, during the McCarthy v the army hearings, a defence lawyer challenged the Senator. 'Sir, have you no shame?' said the lawyer. I can think of nothing more fitting to say to the people who were against the war and are now quiet, even making excuses for the greatest crime since the Gulag.
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