Building on the last post, travel in Cambodia really drives home the new development mantra that "institutions matter". The Khmer Rouge period wiped out, along with a sizeable chunk of the population, almost all of the inherited knowledge about how things run. Everything fell by the wayside, even simple agricultural techniques, which you would think would be the one thing that a forced agrarianism would have retained. The US ambassador, who is the master of the pithy pull quote, told us that Cambodia has gone from being a net exporter to an importer of food because "the Khmer Rouge killed everyone who knew how to plant rice or irrigate a field". Rice yields in the country are a fraction of those in neighboring nations.
There are advantages to this for Cambodia now; the bad was (mostly) wiped out along with the good, although endemic corruption is one thing that seems to have survived the Khmer Rouge demonstration; perhaps this tells you just how deeply it's hard wired into us. The upside is that the ambassador says he's never seen a country so open to criticism and help; they have no traditions left to protect. He offers their progress in fighting HIV/AIDS as an example; no one in Cambodia had any interest in denying that there was a problem, or arguing about using condoms, or sexual virtue.
Obviously, this would not justify the genocide even if it were all upside; and it isn't. The new openness is a thin thread of silver in an enormous, brooding cloud that still hangs over the entire country. Social and family cohesion is weak, land title is often settled by dispossessing the informal squatters into dire poverty, corruption is endemic, and Cambodia is decades behind its neighbours in development. Those decades are told in human indicators like the achingly beautiful little children on the street with tiny elfin features, and hair bleached nearly blond by malnutrition.
On corruption, one good example for Cambodia to study is the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in Hong Kong, which made amazing progress in reducing corruption there (although it still took a decade or two). It used to be that you couldn't even get the government form to fill out for, say, a driver's license, in HK without bribing someone. One change was that all forms say "this form is free of charge" and there's a sign behind the person giving out the forms that says "all forms are free of charge". Such a change seems trivial, but it's cheap and apparently helps.
According to someone who spent a couple of decades at the ICAC, one of their most effective anti-corruption measures was made-for-TV movies dramatizing some of their cases. They partnered with a local TV station (TV-B) to make one each year. They also used to run public service TV commercials, with the wife upset and the children crying because their father had been accused of corruption. Maybe Bill Gates should have his foundation make movies to help teach Cambodians (and others) about democracy, rule of law, capitalism and anti-corruption.
Thank you for these posts, Megan. It's heart-breaking to hear about all that the Khmer Rouge did, but it's important for us to remember it. What's even more heart-breaking is that Mugabe is causing similar (maybe not quite as extreme, but close enough) devastation right now in Zimbabwe, and Chavez is trying to dismantle institutions in Venezuela.
The genocide ended 28 years ago. How can the Cambodians still be a blank slate?
Rich, it is really, really, difficult to put into words the totality of the devastation that was wrought. Imagine every educated person in the United Sates being killed, leaving only the least capable alive. What do you think our society would look like 28 years later?
I often cannot bear to think of Cambodia, and this post by Megan will foul my mood for the rest of the day, which is not to say that I wish she hadn't written it.
Its very important for us to remember it, especially so we can emulate their torture methods.
Rickm -
What exactly are you saying? What has the US done that is even remotely equivalent to what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodia? I wasn't sure whether it was fair to draw a comparison even to what Mugabe is doing to Zimbabwe, horrible and pointless as that is. I think that you're belittling the suffering of the Cambodians to try to score a few cheap political points against Bush.
Imagine every educated person in the United States being killed, leaving only the least capable alive.
I believe the movie Idiocracy tries to do just that, albeit comically and with fewer nods to Douglass North.
Will, don't look at the Tuol Seng photos. They will break your heart.
Ann-
waterboarding.
"cheap political points"? Are you kidding me? Oh yes, drawing attention to the US' 'legal' implementation of torture is now a "cheap political point"?
Obviously this thread will get sidetracked into arguments over torture and genocide, when what's actually significant here is the contrast Megan is drawing between Cambodia and Vietnam, and how vividly it makes the point that "institutions matter".
I think it's important not to simply chalk up the entirety of Cambodia's institutional weakness to the legacy of genocide, staggering as that legacy is. Other factors:
1. The length of the civil war, which paralyzed economic recovery until the KR finally laid down their guns in 1992.
2. The constant intervention of foreign powers right up to the present, which weakens the state and encourages state actors to seek foreign sponsors rather than cultivating indigenous political strength. Both Vietnamese and UN intervention have in this respect been a mixed blessing.
3. Massive spending by NGOs and catalyst lenders like the World Bank and ADB -- also a mixed blessing, as it perpetuates government unaccountability, privileges the nonprofit sector over business, and may drive exchange rates up, hurting exports. On the other hand, in a place like Cambodia, it's hard to see how one does without it.
4. A foreign-sponsored push towards electoral democracy that probably came too soon, and ultimately merely prompted Hun Sen's CPP to focus on crushing rival parties through patronage networks and violent intimidation, rather than building the country. (The US's effective sponsorship of the Sam Rainsy Party, through the International Republican Institute, has been counterproductive.)
5. The classic profile of a politically and economically weak country next to stronger neighbors -- Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai business bribing government for preference over local entrepreneurs. Vietnam is to Cambodia as the US is to, say, Batista-era Cuba.
Thanks, Rickm for giving us all the perfect object lesson in utter moral bankruptcy.
I'm going to bookmark this thread so the next time someone asks, "What do you mean by moral equivalence?" I can just point to you.
To be clear.
waterboarding != killing fields
Rickm sneered: Its very important for us to remember it, especially so we can emulate their torture methods.
Most people die when they experience heart failure, but it doesn't seem to have phased you in the slightest.
To be clear.
Rickm = asshole
Wow. For pointing out that the US is emulating the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge, I've been called an a-hole, morally bankrupt, and heartless. Do you extend these same epithets to Andrew Sullivan?
Rickm-
I don't think you got across that you were referring to the fact that the Khmer Rouge literally used waterboarding. Someone who didn't know that would have thought you were bringing it up out of the blue.
For pointing out that the US is emulating the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge
Rickm, if waterboarding was all the KR ever did, then it wouldn't be worth making the comparison, because the words "Khmer Rouge" wouldn't have any shock value. It's almost as if you called John Bolton "a mixture of Stalin and Hitler" because he has a mustache. Or as if you decided anyone wearing glasses was a member of the elite who oppressed the proleteriat.
The KR are remembered for a shocking and unique genocide whose effects are horrifying even today. Comparing them to Bush either grossly exaggerates Bush's iniquity, or it grossly underestimates that of Pol Pot.
By all means, criticize Bush, I don't care. Heck, compare him to the French in Algeria if you must. But realize that a comparison to Cambodian communists is idiotic even if you can find some similarities.
Rob-
It would be idiotic if there was a consensus that the torture techniques of Bush et al and were considered torture by the majority of the people in power. But their not. Thus, by comparing Bush's waterboarding to the Khmer Rouge's waterboarding, it makes it much harder to defend the act when Bush does it.
Rickm,
I don't see why the comparison makes it "harder to defend." Presumably Pol Pot had friends to whom he doled out political favors, perhaps including government money. Does that make John Murtha as bad as Pol Pot? Presumably the Stasi encountered and jailed at least some common criminals. Does that make my local DA as bad as East Germany? Presumably the USSR drilled their secret police on hand-to-hand combat. Does that make your average military DI as bad as Stalin?
Waterboarding stands or falls on its own merits. The fact that a horrible regime used it doesn't make it any more or less legitimate, nor does it indicate that our current administration is likely to suddenly switch us to a skull-based economy.
Presumably Pol Pot had friends to whom he doled out political favors, perhaps including government money.
Hard to do when you've eliminated money.
I would think that doling out political favours is especially easy after you have eliminated money. If people cannot buy anything on their own account, they will be more dependent on the authorities.
brooksfoe,
Thanks for your cogent comments and valiant attempt to keep this thread on topic.
My apologies to everyone for feeding the troll.
Rickm wrote: Wow. For pointing out that the US is emulating the torture techniques of the Khmer Rouge, I've been called an a-hole, morally bankrupt, and heartless.
No; you were called those things for taking a thread about the systematic destruction of Cambodian societal knowledge and institutions by the Khmer Rouge, and spinning it completely sideways into a discussion about one of your pet grievances with a current US administration, on the basis of a de-contextualized link that is tenuous at best.
Three US waterboardings under the watch of the Bush adminsitration...verus 1.7 million brutal Cambodian deaths under four years of the Khmer Rouge genocide. To this day you can still visit the memorials and find images of bloody hand prints and blood sprayed in arcs across every surface of the killing chambers. (No, I haven't been there. A friend of mine was, and came back with sobering descriptions and pictures.) And yet somehow, you really think a discussion framed upon the latter is an opportunity to start making pissy points about the former? Seriously, if you aren't just plain heartless, then what were you thinking?
Rickm wrote: Thus, by comparing Bush's waterboarding to the Khmer Rouge's waterboarding, it makes it much harder to defend the act when Bush does it.
Oh, that's what you were thinking. In a word: wrong. You haven't seen anything vaguely resembling the scope of the Khmer Rouge's activity while living under the Bush adminsitration. As Rob Lyman said, like or criticize Bush as much as you like. But at least recognize that your fellow man is not dumb enough to believe that three waterboardings (openly discussed, debated, and criticized, with no fear of reprisal, natch) have a relationship to a genocidal regime that systematically destroyed an entire society. As such, when you attempt to make the comparison, you don't inflict damage on Bush; rather, you heartlessly cheapen the suffering of several million people, and that of their descendents who still live in poverty to this day because of it.
Really Rob? r u 4 serious?
The short list of governments that have used waterboarding as a matter of policy include, the Bush administration, the USSR, the Khmer Rouge, and--gasp--the Nazis. My arguement is not that horrible regimes have waterboarded, ergo waterboarding is bad. It is that regimes that use waterboarding are horrible in part because of the use of waterboarding.
While I'd like everybody to be perfectly rational and evaluate waterboarding on its merits, I know that is asking a lot. If there is any instance when aggressive rhetoric should be used in political discourse, surely it should be when criticizing the government implementation of torture.
That is one mighty thin silver lining on one dark, dark cloud. two million people die and we get to start over fresh. By that logic, Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans.
It is that regimes that use waterboarding are horrible in part because of the use of waterboarding
Ok. That means that your argument is reducible to "waterboarding is bad."
That's a perfectly fine argument to make. Don't see what it has to do with Cambodia other than an attempt to suggest that if the KR did it, it must be bad, which argument you have now explicitly disclaimed.
The US has done less torturing than the French in Algeria, or the communists in Cuba, or Pinochet, or Saddam, or heaven knows how many other non-waterboarding regimes. Badness is not limited to, or controlled by, the use of waterboarding.
While I'd like everybody to be perfectly rational and evaluate waterboarding on its merits, I know that is asking a lot.
Ah, so offensive and demeaning exaggerations are necessary to get through to the morons you are forced to debate with. I understand.
If one has limited resources and talent, I wonder what three initiatives one would undertake to get an economy/society functioning better?
Does Cambodia attract tourists and other visitors?
Are there certain industries (since there seems to be no functioning institutional presence) that they can use to jumpstart future growth (like tourism)?
Like most Asian nations, I tend to feel like they will do quite well once they determine they want to.
Rob,
Do you think Andrew Sullivan's comparison to the use of the US, KR, and Nazi' regime's torture techniques are "offensive and demeaning"? Have you told him? He has a much bigger audience than I.
It will be interesting to observe the relative progress of pro-growth institutions versus special-interest and collusive groups, given the tension that tends to exist.
Brooksfoe brings up some good points. My first take is that outside interference, be it from international "do-gooders" or unscrupulous commercial interests, is likely to fuel the growth of the collusive/interest groups and undermine the development of good institutions. Which is of course sad, because the relative lack of such groups, combined with good institutions could set the stage for incredibly rapid increases in the standard of living there (due, in no small part to the existence of relatively wealthy neighbors).
(more of a nod to Mancur Olson than Douglass North here)
Rickm,
Yes, and no. I used to be a fan, but I haven't read anything by AS in several years because he seems to have gone off his onion.
Rob, your direction of inquiry on the torture issue is off-kilter. Rickm's facetious initial point was basically right: the US learned to waterboard by deliberately imitating the practices of the totalitarian regimes we fought in the 20th century. The CIA's waterboarding techniques were adopted from SERE instructors. SERE instructors learned to waterboard by imitating what had been done to US service members (and others) by the Viet Cong and NVA, by Japanese troops, by the Pathet Lao, by the Chinese in North Korea, et al. These are the same people the Khmer Rouge learned to waterboard from.
I don't think the US would have learned to waterboard from the Khmer Rouge, because I don't think US military personnel were ever captured by the KR; but that's a moot point -- they got it from the same place we did. We learned the technique by studying the Communists and Japanese who tortured our soldiers.
Hey, and bil. gives a shout-out to Mancur Olson!
This new Dani Rodrik books sounds fascinating along these lines. Anybody following the discussion at Crooked Timber?
Rob Lyman wrote:
"That means that your argument is reducible to "waterboarding is bad.""
If by 'reducible' you mean 'concludes', then yes. Waterboarding is bad. How do I know this? One is intuition, the other is that boy, I would never want to experience something like that. Another is, its clearly torture as defined by the Geneva conventions. How do I know its torture? Well, only really bad people do it. Thats one reason. Another is, when those really bad people waterboarded, everyone with a conscience recognized their use of waterboarding as a very bad thing. Now that our government does it--and worse--some people think its not so bad. These people include the current administration, and the majority of the people of the party in power. Pointing out that only really bad people waterboard does not assume that the target audience is a moron, nor does it degrade the victims of such an act, it is merely one hueristic among many that I hope will convince people that waterboarding is a very bad thing regardless of who does it.
the US learned to waterboard by deliberately imitating the practices of the totalitarian regimes we fought in the 20th century.
The US also learned to build the interstate highway system and space traveling rockets by the study of one particular totalitarian regime, as well as buying millions of their little air-cooled cars.
Fortunately, for all the accusations of new colonialism, we have declined to copy the old colonial practices of our friends the Belgians (or even our forebears in the American West) in the occupation of Iraq.
The source of a practice does not matter if the practice itself is acceptable; nor does an objectionable practice become acceptable because it was invented or used by a relatively benign or friendly power.
only really bad people do it. Thats one reason.
That's not a reason, that's question-begging.
nor does it degrade the victims of such an act,
No, it demeans the victims of worse acts, such as the millions of murder victims and their desperately poor survivors and descendants in Cambodia.
In that case, Rob, you should have had no beef with Rickm's initial post: "Its very important for us to remember it, especially so we can emulate their torture methods." What is it that you object to? You are not coherent on this point. We did, in fact, emulate their torture methods. On your theory, the objectionableness of those methods should stand or fall on their own merits, so you should have no particularly strong reaction to a reference to their use by the Khmer Rouge.
I mean, really, Rob, you should just go to the Tuol Sleng museum. The reason the waterboarding display is up there is because they have displays of all the horrible and nightmarish shit survivors remembered having done to them there. They don't have displays of lunch counters, library cards, whatever. They have displays of the shackles that forced your feet apart while you lay in stress positions for ages at a time, of the black and white photos of the ranks on ranks of people who were processed and executed, and so on. Get it? It's a museum of really horrible things. Waterboarding is there because it's a really horrible thing. It's useful data that this technique makes it onto the list of noteworthy awful stuff which survivors want to commemorate among the traumas inflicted on them by the worst regime in the history of the world. No?
brooksfoe, I know you're not that dense.
I object to the suggestion (which is implied, not stated) that the US's use of waterboarding makes it in any way comparable to the KR.
RickM, by his own admission, brought it up because he hopes that the association of waterboarding with the KR will tend to make it more objectionable to others. I (and others) object to that as a cheap debate tactic that demeans the widespread suffering of Cambodians.
t's useful data that this technique makes it onto the list of noteworthy awful stuff which survivors want to commemorate among the traumas inflicted on them by the worst regime in the history of the world. No?
Yes, that's useful data, because that's a list of awful things. But that's not the same as saying that if the KR did it, it must be bad.
I mean, death is an awful thing. This does not mean that Texas = KR because people are executed there.
brooksfoe, waterboarding was employed by American forces against Filipino insurgents in the early 20th century. It did not need to be learned from the Japanese.
We are going pretty far astray here, but my primary complaint against Sullivan has not been his denunciation of torture, which I largely agree with, but rather with the dishonest rhetoric he sometimes employed, which ranged from the faintly ridiculous, like when he placed the use of women's underwear or an Israeli flag on the level of waterboarding, to something far more serious, like when he misrepresents the historical record of American policymakers use of illegitimate violence towards captured combatants.
In his desire to protray the Bush Administration as uniquely evil, he has whitewashed the past record of American Administrations' pursuit of illegitimate violence against the captured enemy, often saying that no previous Administration prior to this one had ever deliberately pursued polices which resulted in horrific treatment. This is a lie, although it may be accurately said that this administration has been more clumsy in the pursuit of that goal.
In particular, FDR's administration deliberately pursued a propaganda campaign focused on the Japanese soldier (which was largely absent with regard to the German soldier) with the deliberate goal of encouraging illegimate violence against the Japanese soldier, while still formalistically banning such treatment in the rear areas, and punishing some instances of rear-area mistreatment. This propaganda campaign resulted in such charming practices as the removal of gold teeth from the mouths of still living Japanese soldiers by bayonet, among other atrocities.
If Rumsfeld had emulated Stimson, he would have bombarded the troops in Iraq with the message that Iraqi insurgent, and those suspected of supporting him, was a mere cockroach, except with conciously evil intent, and was to be treated as such in the field, while formally banning mistreatment in rear areas. Sullivan can denounce torture and the Bush Administration as much as he wants, but it would be preferable if he avoided pathetic fables about halcyon days of yore.
I'm still not clear about why the genocide of 28-32 years ago explains Cambodia's current situation. Other countries don't seem to need genocide to have low agricultural productivity, inefficient states, and pervasive corruption.
JEEZus fuckin' christ, Rob. "The US uses waterboarding! I mean, this is horrible stuff, the kind of stuff the Khmer Rouge used!" "How dare you compare the US to the Khmer Rouge?" "Do you deny that waterboarding is horrible; that the US uses it; or that the Khmer Rouge used it?" "No!" "Do you deny that the Khmer Rouge was horrible in part because it used waterboarding?" "No! That's true!" "So what exactly is your problem?" "I object to you comparing the US to the Khmer Rouge!"
Does this make any kind of sense at all? Why, no. I submit to you that it does not.
brooksfoe, I belive the point is that singling ou waterboarding among the awful practices of the Khmer Rouge rather minimizes the behavior of the Khmer Rouge. To employ a mildly hyperbolic analogy, Stalin was a hideously cruel father, but a comment which focused on this aspect of his life, when saying that someone else was emulating Stalin, would be a bit odd.
"Do you deny that the Khmer Rouge was horrible in part because it used waterboarding?" "No! That's true!"
That's not an entirely fair summary of my response.
As I said in my very first comment on the issue, "if waterboarding was all the KR ever did, then it wouldn't be worth making the comparison, because the words "Khmer Rouge" wouldn't have any shock value."
That is, while waterboarding may have been part of what make the KR bad, it was a pretty tiny part, in comparison to the magnitude of their other crimes. If they had never waterboarded anyone, their reputation would hardly be any better. The only purpose of bringing up KR in a discussion of waterboarding is to import genocide into the discussion in the hopes that the association will rub off on your opponents.
As usual, Will Allen has managed to make my point better than I have.
Megan,
Why was my earlier comment deleted?
Meanwhile..............
"Does Cambodia attract tourists and other visitors?"
Yes. People go to see Angkor Wat and the other ruins at Siem Reap. The formalities at the airport there are simple and transparent(ly corrupt) and there is a range of comfortable places to stay. There is also a school where kids train to do stone carving in the Khmer style, both for reproductions to reconstruct the ruins and also for sculpture to sell as a cheaper alternative to originals poached out of the ruins.
We went in July, and the climate is like Dallas. The kids we saw were big and well-fed and full of energy, especially when they were buzzing around us to buy crap. But that is just in this one area, certainly; there was a very lively adoption trade into the US until boitoh governments shut it down.
I haven't deleted anything. Did it ever show up, or was it held for moderation? My internet access is spotty, so I haven't been checking the queue.
Megan-
My comment at November 16, 2007 2:25 PM disappeared, then reappeared, or I'm absolutely bonkers.
My comment at November 16, 2007 2:25 PM disappeared, then reappeared, or I'm absolutely bonkers.
Do you want to take a poll on which of those is more likely?