Category Archives: War

Day Of Infamy A La Thailand

Eighty-one years ago Japanese aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet. Nearly every capital ship in Pearl Harbor was sunk or severely damaged by bombs or torpedoes and the Pacific Ocean became a Japanese lake until the BattleMidway. The next day President Roosevelt declared before Congress, “December 7th shall live forever as a day of infamy.” […]

TORA TORA TORA 2023

Like JFK’s assassination everyone of a certain age remembered where they were during the announcement of the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. Many had to ask, “Where’s Pearl Harbor?” This morning to commemorate their ignorance I posed the same question to younger people on the streets of Manhattan. Few of […]

With My Bare Hands – Anthony Bourdain

I have always admired Anthony Bourdain, but never more than when he wrote in A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that […]

Duch Choi Cha’ kai Anh

Written on Jun 11, 2017 In 1975 the Khmer Rouge converted the Tuol Svay Prey High School on the outskirts of Phnom Penh into the murderous Tuol Sleng or S-21 prison. An estimated 17,000 prisoners were subjected to the following code of behavior enforced by Comrade Duch and his killers. 1. You must answer accordingly […]

Bomb Them To The Stone Age

Written Mar 22, 2012 On March 18, 1969 President Richard Nixon ordered American B-52s to bomb Cambodia, thus kicking off a deadly air campaign supposedly directed against North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge targets. 540,000 tons of high-ordinance bombs resulted in the deaths of anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000 civilians and countless wounded in the agrarian […]