Fact: Richard Nixon was the most liberal president of the past 40 years...

liberal gets defined in very strange ways by people who have vary strange reasons for doing so.

also, being president does not automatically make whoever is deserving of credit for everything that gets accomplished during the time of their presidency. very little of it has anything to do with their actions. as far as i can see.

 

Actually since circa the 1930's the president has by far played the leading role in determining how national politics are played out. The term 'imperial presidency' just didn't come out of nowhere.

 

In Cambodia today, there are basically two political parties. The Royal party, which doesn't wield much influence, to which the King belongs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funcinpec

And the Cambodian peoples party, which was at one point the political arm of the Vietnamese occupation which was in place untill 1992. It is by far the predominant power in Cambodian politics, and the headwigs (Hun Sen and Sok An) all look/are majorly ethnically Vietnamese. I met Sok An and his kids two weeks ago, my companys built a couple pools for them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_People's_Party

Anyway, the history directly leading up to the Civil War involved Sihanouk, who seemed from my perspective to have Cambodia's best interests in mind, tried to fight for independence from the French, while staying diplomatically neutral. But while trying to remain neutral, he received direct foreign aid from the United Nations and China. Had his hand in a lot of pockets.

Anyway, it was impossible to stay neutral when the Vietnam war was reaching it's peak in the late 60's, so he made concessions to the Northern Vietnamese to allow bases to be built in the eastern part of the country. to avoid invasion, and to open ports in Kampong Som to shipments of weapons intended for use by the Northern Vietnamese.

When this happened the United States launched a bombing campaign against Cambodia eastern Cambodia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu

Lon Nol, the Army Chief of Staff, used this as an excuse to oust the wildly unpopular Prince Sihanouk. Apparently the original intention was to put pressure on Prince Sihanouk to close the Port and close the Northern Vietnamese bases in Vietnam to continue to remain neutral, but the King's brother Prince Sirik Matak Put Pressure on Lol Nol to depose King Sihanouk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirik_Matak

Anyway, when Anti-Vietnamese riots started in 1970 in the capital, Phnom Penh, and the King was in China, Lon Nol seised control of the country, and deposed the king.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_coup_of_1970

Sihanouk wrote later that this was CIA intervention, but other than his memoirs, I have personally never seen evidence of this. This is before the days of wikileaks, and I'm not saying it didn't happen.

The Lol Nol Government was right wing, and was supported immediately both financially and militarily by the United States. They never had much power beyond the major cities, which in Cambodia are all on the Central and West Coast. My Khmer business partner see's these as the Golden Years of Cambodia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Republic

Anyway, most historians agree that there was a wide range of Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in the Khmer Republic around this time, and that was used to provide a wide volunteer army, to fight against the Eastern front of Vietnamese bases in Cambodia.

The volunteer army wasnt exactly friendly towards the villagers in the Eastern front. Burned down villages, sacked and pillaged, so a five year civil war went on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War

Right before the Fall of Saigon (15 days before I think) the Khmer Rouge finally marched into Phnom Penh, victorious.

Where historians disagree is to the degree the Khmer Rouge during the civil war was backed by popular uprising of citizens, or to whether it was a direct win on the front of the Northern Vietnamese army. The size of the army's estimated 200,000 well trained voulenteers backed by the United States would make me assume that it wasn't simply just a popular uprising by Pol Pot.

In either Case, the Khmer Rouge took over in 75. He evacuated all the cities, killed all the intellectuals including doctors, banned watches, and through forced migrations, starvation caused by selling off their rice for guns, and mass executions, Pol Pot managed perhaps the most successful mass slaughter in one country in the shortest amount of time in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

Anyway, the Khmer Rouge stayed in power till the Vietnamese realized how truly nuts they were (ethnic slaughters of Vietnamese *and all light skinned Khmers or other foreigners* and invasions of Vietnam)

They ousted the Khmer Rouge (after they had gotten the chance to kill a fifth of the country in 4 years. Kind of impressive) and installed their own government. The PRK, who later evolved into the CPP.

The Vietnamese government still wields a lot of influence in Cambodia to this day.

On a fun side note, Sihanouk was allowed to return to the thrown, as a symbol of Cambodia, but abdicated the thrown to his son. The current king of Cambodia is homosexual.

The way the king is selected is by a meeting of the royals families and not direct succession, so this doesn't mean there won't be a future king, which was my first thought when I found out that the King is a very long term bachelor. :biggrin:

 

oh wow man, thanks alot! best citation ever your awesome

 

Reagan’s most memorable accomplishments

Reaganomics
Shelling Shiite by the seashore
My dinner with Andropov
Invading the impenetrable island fortress of Grenada
Interior Secretary James Watt
Choosing a V.P. who married his mother
The Marine Barracks in Lebanon

Challenger, go with throttle up


Hotwater