fbpx
Wikipedia

Operation Freedom Deal

August 23, 2023

Operation Freedom Deal was a United States Seventh Air Force interdiction and close air support campaign waged in Cambodia between 19 May 1970 and 15 August 1973, as an expansion of the Vietnam War, as well as the Cambodian Civil War. Launched by Richard Nixon as a follow-up to the earlier ground invasion during the Cambodian Campaign, the initial targets of the operation were the base areas and border sanctuaries of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC).[9]

Operation Freedom Deal
Part of the Cambodian Civil War and the Vietnam War
Location
Cambodia
Commanded by Richard M. Nixon
Henry Kissinger
Date19 May 1970 – 15 August 1973
Executed bySeventh Air Force
Outcome
  • In U.S., adoption of the War Powers Resolution
  • Delaying the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge
  • Accelerated collapse of rural Cambodian society, displacement of tens of thousands from countryside to city, increased social polarization[1]
  • Pushing North Vietnamese troops further into Cambodia away from the South Vietnamese border[2]
  • Khmer Rouge used civilian loss to promote recruitment, strengthened the hard-liners within the CPK[3]
CasualtiesCambodian casualties: 50,000–150,000 (per Ben Kiernan, other estimates vary widely)[4][5][6][7][8] This figure refers to the entirety of the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, including the Operation Menu bombings. Vietnamese casualties: unknown

As time went on most of the bombing was carried out to support the Cambodian government of Lon Nol in its struggle against the communist Khmer Rouge. The area in which the bombing took place was expanded to include most of the eastern one-half of Cambodia. The bombing was extremely controversial, and led the U.S. Congress to pass the War Powers Resolution.[10]

Operation Freedom Deal followed and expanded the bombing of Cambodia conducted under Operation Menu in 1969 and 1970. Most of the bombing was carried out by U.S. Air Force (USAF) B-52 bombers. While the effectiveness of the bombing and the number of Cambodians killed by U.S. bombing remains in dispute, civilian fatalities were easily in the tens of thousands.[11]

Background

Further information on Cambodian politics: Cambodia under Sihanouk (1954–1970)
Further information on on military operations: Cambodian Civil War

With the end of Cambodian neutrality due to the coup that ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk and installed pro-U.S. General Lon Nol as president, the Cambodian civil war escalated as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) reacted to military actions by the Cambodians, Americans, and South Vietnamese.[12][13]

On 15 March 1970, Lon Nol issued an ultimatum to the North Vietnamese, ordering them out of the border areas. The PAVN/VC and their indigenous Khmer Rouge allies had occupied eastern Cambodia for the previous ten years and had established a logistical system and Base Areas along the border during their struggle for a unified Vietnam. They were not about to abandon their zones of control without a fight.

Operation Patio

Further information on the covert U.S. bombing campaign: Operation Menu
Further information on the U.S./ARVN incursion: Cambodian Campaign

The newly renamed Khmer Republic (which will herein still be referred to as Cambodia) enlarged the Khmer National Armed Forces (FANK) and launched it against the PAVN. Hanoi's response to the ultimatum and this offensive was the launching of Campaign X in April. PAVN and VC forces easily seized eastern and northern Cambodia, leaving only a few isolated FANK enclaves.[12]: 94 

The U.S. responded by first launching Operation Patio, which consisted of tactical airstrikes into Cambodia as an adjunct to the highly classified Operation Menu, the strategic bombardment of the Base Areas by B-52s.[13]: 19–35 [14] The Menu bombing pushed PAVN/VC forces deeper into Cambodia, which led to a more expansive U.S. bombing campaign.[15] The U.S. and South Vietnam then launched offensive ground operations in May 1970 during the Cambodian Campaign.

President Richard M. Nixon, however, had placed a 30 June deadline on the operation, after which all U.S. ground forces had to return to South Vietnam. This did not bode well for the Lon Nol government. Although the incursion had temporarily thrown the PAVN/VC off balance, they and the Khmer Rouge struck back against FANK forces. As a result of this state of affairs, Freedom Deal, the overt air support afforded to the incursion, was extended on 6 June.[16]

Operation Freedom Deal

In the post-incursion period, Freedom Deal was originally an interdiction effort, striking enemy supply lines in eastern Cambodia, and was restricted to a 50-kilometer (30 mi) deep area between the South Vietnamese border and the Mekong River. This restriction was, however, quickly voided due to Search and Rescue operations conducted by the U.S. Air Force in order to pick up downed South Vietnamese pilots, who regularly flew outside the Freedom Deal zone.[16]: 201–202  Within two months (and without public announcement), the operation was expanded west of the Mekong.[14]: 146 

The withdrawal of U.S. forces in May left only South Vietnamese and Cambodian forces to do battle with PAVN/VC and the Khmer Rouge. U.S. tactical aircraft then began supplying FANK troops with direct air support. Meanwhile, President Nixon had announced that the policy of the U.S. Air Force was only to interdict PAVN/VC supply networks (in the same manner that they were interdicted in Laos), and that they were only to be conducted within the specified zone (known as the AIZ or Aerial Interdiction Zone).[16]: 203 

Post-invasion escalation

 
A map of Cambodia

During the rest of the year, the Freedom Deal area of operations was expanded three times. Transcripts of telephone conversations reveal that by December 1970 Nixon's dissatisfaction with the success of the bombings prompted him to order that they be stepped up. "They have got to go in there and I mean really go in," he told Henry Kissinger. "I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there, and let's start giving them a little shock." Kissinger then relayed Nixon's order, saying, "A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves."[17] The president was inspired to reckless escalation by his belief in the "madman theory".[18]

By the beginning of 1971, the area of operations stretched from Route 7 to the Laotian border in the north and 120 kilometers (75 mi) beyond the Mekong to the west.[16]: 207  Between July 1970 and February 1971, approximately 44 percent of the 8,000 sorties flown in Cambodia struck targets outside the authorized zone. This led to Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Colonel Ray Sitton developing a policy of falsifying the reports of missions carried out beyond the boundary.[16]: 203–204 [14]: 146–148 [18]

Most of the strikes were flown in direct support of FANK troops, although American officials continued to deny the fact. Despite this effort, the communists occupied one-half of Cambodia by late 1970 and had cut all the land routes leading to and from the capital of Phnom Penh. In short order the USAF found itself shifting more and more of its diminishing air power from its interdiction campaign in southern Laos to the struggle in Cambodia. In 1971 Cambodian missions made up nearly 15 percent of the total number of combat sorties flown in Southeast Asia, up from eight percent during the previous year.

According to George McTurnan Kahin, Freedom Deal bombers treated the communist-held parts of the country as a virtual "free-fire zone". For most of the campaign, U.S. Ambassador Emory Swank and his team were only allowed to vet targets west of the Mekong. Often they had no idea what villages were being bombed.[19] Swank soon resigned, one of several foreign policy officials who left because of Kissinger's Cambodia policy.[15]

In Cambodia, the ground war dragged on, with the Khmer Rouge doing the bulk of the fighting against the government. On 28 January 1973, the day the Paris Peace Accord was signed, Lon Nol announced a unilateral cease-fire and U.S. airstrikes were halted. When the Khmer Rouge refused to respond, the bombing resumed on 9 February. The U.S. Seventh Air Force argued that the bombing prevented the fall of Phnom Penh in 1973 by killing 16,000 of 25,000 Khmer Rouge fighters besieging the city.[20]

In March the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed a much expanded bombing campaign. From then until the end of the operation on 15 August, sortie and tonnage rates increased. By the last day of Operation Freedom Deal (15 August 1973), 250,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the Khmer Republic, 82,000 tons of which had been released in the last 45 days of the operation.[21]

Outcome

 
An aerial view of bomb craters in Cambodia

During 1973 Freedom Deal aircraft dropped 250,000 tons of bombs (primarily high explosive), more than the 180,000 tons dropped on Japan during the Second World War.[22] As Khmer Rouge forces drew a tighter ring around Phnom Penh in April, the U.S. Air Force flew more than 12,000 bombing sorties and dropped more than 82,000 tons of ordnance in support of Lon Nol's forces during the last 45 days of the operation.[21] Since the inception of the Menu bombings in March 1969, the total amount of ordnance dropped on Cambodia reached 539,129 tons.[13]: 297  On 15 August, the last mission of Freedom Deal was flown.

Additional detail concerning the disputed effectiveness of the bombing of Cambodia is in the article Operation Menu. According to David Chandler: "If you just made a very cold, calculating, military decision, the bombing of 1973 was in fact a sensible thing to do [at the time], because had it not happened, the Khmer Rouge would have taken Phnom Penh [much earlier] and South Vietnam would have had a communist country on its flank."[23]

In contrast, Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent Sidney Schanberg asserted that the campaign actually fostered the Khmer Rouge's growth, recalling that the militia men "would point... at the bombs falling from B-52s as something they had to oppose if they were going to have freedom. And it became a recruiting tool until they grew to a fierce, indefatigable guerrilla army.".[24]

Cambodian deaths caused by U.S. bombing

U.S. bombing of Cambodia extended over the entire eastern one-half of the country and was especially intense in the heavily populated southeastern one-quarter of the country, including a wide ring surrounding the largest city of Phnom Penh. In large areas, according to maps of U.S. bombing sites, it appears that nearly every square mile of land was hit by bombs with roughly 500,000 tons of bombs dropped.[25]

When extensive bombing by the U.S. of Cambodia began in 1969 it was primarily directed against the PAVN/VC and their supply lines and bases. As the PAVN/VC dispersed their operations deeper into Cambodia to escape U.S. bombing the area bombed by the U.S. expanded. Increasingly, U.S. bombing missions had the objective of supporting the government of Cambodia in its war against the insurgent Khmer Rouge.[26]

The number of deaths caused by U.S. bombing has been disputed and is difficult to disentangle from the broader Cambodian Civil War.[27] Estimates as wide-ranging as 30,000 to 600,000 have been cited.[4][5][6][28][29] Sihanouk used a figure of 600,000 civil war deaths,[30] while Elizabeth Becker reported over one million civil war deaths, military and civilian included,[31] although other researchers could not corroborate such high estimates.[32] Marek Sliwinski notes that many estimates of the dead are open to question and may have been used for propaganda, suggesting that the true number lies between 240,000 and 310,000.[27]

Judith Banister and E. Paige Johnson described 275,000 war deaths as "the highest mortality that we can justify".[33] Patrick Heuveline states that "Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less".[34] Of these civil war deaths, Sliwinski estimates that approximately 17.1% can be attributed to U.S. bombing, noting that this is far behind the leading causes of death, as the U.S. bombing was concentrated in under-populated border areas.[27] Ben Kiernan attributes 50,000 to 150,000 deaths to the U.S. bombing.[35] According to Larry Clinton Thompson, 150,000 seems to be the best estimate.[29]

Another impact of the U.S. bombing and the Cambodian civil war was the destruction of homes and livelihood of many people. This was a large contributor to the refugee crisis in Cambodia with two million people—more than 25 percent of the population—displaced from rural areas into cities, especially Phnom Penh which grew from about 600,000 in 1970 to an estimated population of nearly 2 million by 1975. The Cambodian government estimated that more than 20 percent of property in the country had been destroyed during the war.[13]: 222 

The legacy of unexploded bombs has had a long-term impact on agriculture in the affected areas. More fertile soil is often softer, and thus bombs impacting such soil are less likely to explode. Farmers in formerly bombed regions often work less fertile soil due to the perceived risk of uncovering unexploded bombs.[36]

References

  This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

  1. ^ Chandler, David (2000). Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, Revised Edition. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. pp. 96–98.
  2. ^ Kiernan, Ben; Owen, Taylor (26 April 2015). "Making More Enemies than We Kill? Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications". The Asia–Pacific Journal. Retrieved 18 July 2017. First, the bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia, bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents.
  3. ^ "Cambodia: U.S. bombing and civil war". sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings. 7 August 2015.
  4. ^ a b Valentino, Benjamin (2005). Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. Cornell University Press. p. 84. ISBN 9780801472732.
  5. ^ a b Tyner, James (2008). The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space. Routledge. ISBN 9780754670964.)
  6. ^ a b Rummel, Rudolph. "Statistics Of Cambodian Democide: Estimates, Calculations, And Sources". Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  7. ^ "FRONTLINE/WORLD . Cambodia – Pol Pot's Shadow . Chronicle of Survival. 1969–1974: Caught in the crossfire | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  8. ^ Kiernan, Ben; Owen, Taylor (26 April 2015). "Making More Enemies than We Kill? Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications". The Asia–Pacific Journal. Retrieved 18 July 2017. The evidence of survivors from many parts of [Cambodia] suggests that at least tens of thousands, probably in the range of 50,000 to 150,000 deaths, resulted from the US bombing campaigns
  9. ^ Kennedy, David M.; Cohen, Lizabeth; Piehl, Mel (2016). The Brief American Pageant: A History of the Republic, Volume II: Since 1865. Cengage Learning. p. 669. ISBN 9781305887886.
  10. ^ Kennedy, David M.; Cohen, Lizabeth; Piehl, Mel (2016). The Brief American Pageant: A History of the Republic, Volume II: Since 1865. Cengage Learning. p. 669. ISBN 9781305887886.
  11. ^ Power, Samantha (2013). A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465050895.
  12. ^ a b Isaacs, Arnold; Hardy, Gordon (1987). The Vietnam Experience Pawns of War: Cambodia and Laos. Boston Publishing Company. ISBN 9780939526246.
  13. ^ a b c d Shawcross, William (1979). Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia. Washington Square Books. pp. 46–73. ISBN 9780815412243.
  14. ^ a b c Lipsman, Samuel (1988). The Vietnam Experience War in the Shadows. Boston Publishing Company. p. 130-46. ISBN 9780939526383.
  15. ^ a b Hanhimaki, Jussi M (2004). The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. Oxford University Press. pp. 70–79. ISBN 9780195346749.
  16. ^ a b c d e Nalty, Bernard C. Nalty (1997). Air War Over South Vietnam, 1968–1975 (PDF). Air Force History and Museums Program. p. 199. ISBN 9780160509148.
  17. ^ Elisabeth Becker (27 May 2004). "Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of Abuse". New York Times.
  18. ^ a b Grandin, Greg (2015). Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman. Henry Holt and Company. pp. 53–60. ISBN 9781627794503.
  19. ^ Kahin, George (2003). Southeast Asia: A Testament. Psychology Press. pp. 311–313. ISBN 9780415299763.
  20. ^ Etcheson, Craig (1984). The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. Westview. p. 118. ISBN 0-86531-650-3.
  21. ^ a b Morocco, John (1988). The Vietnam Experience: Rain of Fire: Air War, 1968–1975. Boston Publishing Company. p. 172. ISBN 9780939526147.
  22. ^ Lipsman, Samuel; Weiss, Stephen (1985). The Vietnam Experience The False Peace, 1972–4. Boston Publishing Company. p. 53. ISBN 9780939526154.
  23. ^ Ponniah, Kevin (9 September 2014). "US bombing defended". The Phnom Penh Post. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  24. ^ "Frontline/World. Cambodia – Pol Pot's Shadow . Chronicle of Survival. 1969–1974: Caught in the crossfire". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  25. ^ Kiernan, Ben; Owen, Taylor (26 April 2015). "Making More Enemies than We Kill? Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications". The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  26. ^ "Operation Freedom Deal". History Wars Weapons. Retrieved 10 April 2014.[dead link]
  27. ^ a b c Sliwinski, Marek (1995). Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique. L'Harmattan. pp. 42–43, 48.
  28. ^ "FRONTLINE/WORLD . Cambodia – Pol Pot's Shadow . Chronicle of Survival . 1969–1974: Caught in the crossfire | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  29. ^ a b Thompson, Larry Clinton (2010). Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus, 1975-1982. McFarland. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-7864-5590-4.
  30. ^ Sharp, Bruce. "Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia". Mekong.net. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  31. ^ "Mass Atrocity Endings | Documenting declines in civilian fatalities". sites.tufts.edu. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  32. ^ "Cambodia: U.S. bombing, civil war, & Khmer Rouge". World Peace Foundation. 7 August 2015. Retrieved 19 July 2019. On the higher end of estimates, journalist Elizabeth Becker writes that 'officially, more than half a million Cambodians died on the Lon Nol side of the war; another 600,000 were said to have died in the Khmer Rouge zones.' However, it is not clear how these numbers were calculated or whether they disaggregate civilian and soldier deaths. Others' attempts to verify the numbers suggest a lower number. Demographer Patrick Heuveline has produced evidence suggesting a range of 150,000 to 300,000 violent deaths from 1970 to 1975. In an article reviewing different sources about civilian deaths during the civil war, Bruce Sharp argues that the total number is likely to be around 250,000 violent deaths.
  33. ^ Banister, Judith; Johnson, E. Paige (1993). "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia". Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. p. 87. ISBN 9780938692492. An estimated 275,000 excess deaths. We have modeled the highest mortality that we can justify for the early 1970s.
  34. ^ Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979". Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academies Press. pp. 102–104. ISBN 9780309073349. As best as can now be estimated, over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade, the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the 'Khmer Rouge' regime. ... Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less.
  35. ^ Kiernan, Ben (2004). How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975. Yale University Press. p. xxiii. ISBN 9780300102628.
  36. ^ Lin, Erin (17 December 2020). "How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia". American Journal of Political Science. 66: 222–237. doi:10.1111/ajps.12577.

Sources

Published Government Documents

  • Nalty, Bernard C., The War Against Trucks: Aerial Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1968–1973. Washington DC: Air Force Museums and History Program, 2005. ISBN 978-0-16-072493-0

August 23, 2023
operation, freedom, deal, united, states, seventh, force, interdiction, close, support, campaign, waged, cambodia, between, 1970, august, 1973, expansion, vietnam, well, cambodian, civil, launched, richard, nixon, follow, earlier, ground, invasion, during, cam. Operation Freedom Deal was a United States Seventh Air Force interdiction and close air support campaign waged in Cambodia between 19 May 1970 and 15 August 1973 as an expansion of the Vietnam War as well as the Cambodian Civil War Launched by Richard Nixon as a follow up to the earlier ground invasion during the Cambodian Campaign the initial targets of the operation were the base areas and border sanctuaries of the People s Army of Vietnam PAVN and the Viet Cong VC 9 Operation Freedom DealPart of the Cambodian Civil War and the Vietnam WarLocationCambodiaCommanded byRichard M Nixon Henry KissingerDate19 May 1970 15 August 1973Executed bySeventh Air ForceOutcomeIn U S adoption of the War Powers Resolution Delaying the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge Accelerated collapse of rural Cambodian society displacement of tens of thousands from countryside to city increased social polarization 1 Pushing North Vietnamese troops further into Cambodia away from the South Vietnamese border 2 Khmer Rouge used civilian loss to promote recruitment strengthened the hard liners within the CPK 3 CasualtiesCambodian casualties 50 000 150 000 per Ben Kiernan other estimates vary widely 4 5 6 7 8 This figure refers to the entirety of the U S bombing of Cambodia including the Operation Menu bombings Vietnamese casualties unknown As time went on most of the bombing was carried out to support the Cambodian government of Lon Nol in its struggle against the communist Khmer Rouge The area in which the bombing took place was expanded to include most of the eastern one half of Cambodia The bombing was extremely controversial and led the U S Congress to pass the War Powers Resolution 10 Operation Freedom Deal followed and expanded the bombing of Cambodia conducted under Operation Menu in 1969 and 1970 Most of the bombing was carried out by U S Air Force USAF B 52 bombers While the effectiveness of the bombing and the number of Cambodians killed by U S bombing remains in dispute civilian fatalities were easily in the tens of thousands 11 Contents 1 Background 2 Operation Patio 3 Operation Freedom Deal 3 1 Post invasion escalation 4 Outcome 5 Cambodian deaths caused by U S bombing 6 References 7 SourcesBackground EditFurther information on Cambodian politics Cambodia under Sihanouk 1954 1970 Further information on on military operations Cambodian Civil War With the end of Cambodian neutrality due to the coup that ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk and installed pro U S General Lon Nol as president the Cambodian civil war escalated as the People s Army of Vietnam PAVN reacted to military actions by the Cambodians Americans and South Vietnamese 12 13 On 15 March 1970 Lon Nol issued an ultimatum to the North Vietnamese ordering them out of the border areas The PAVN VC and their indigenous Khmer Rouge allies had occupied eastern Cambodia for the previous ten years and had established a logistical system and Base Areas along the border during their struggle for a unified Vietnam They were not about to abandon their zones of control without a fight Operation Patio EditFurther information on the covert U S bombing campaign Operation Menu Further information on the U S ARVN incursion Cambodian Campaign The newly renamed Khmer Republic which will herein still be referred to as Cambodia enlarged the Khmer National Armed Forces FANK and launched it against the PAVN Hanoi s response to the ultimatum and this offensive was the launching of Campaign X in April PAVN and VC forces easily seized eastern and northern Cambodia leaving only a few isolated FANK enclaves 12 94 The U S responded by first launching Operation Patio which consisted of tactical airstrikes into Cambodia as an adjunct to the highly classified Operation Menu the strategic bombardment of the Base Areas by B 52s 13 19 35 14 The Menu bombing pushed PAVN VC forces deeper into Cambodia which led to a more expansive U S bombing campaign 15 The U S and South Vietnam then launched offensive ground operations in May 1970 during the Cambodian Campaign President Richard M Nixon however had placed a 30 June deadline on the operation after which all U S ground forces had to return to South Vietnam This did not bode well for the Lon Nol government Although the incursion had temporarily thrown the PAVN VC off balance they and the Khmer Rouge struck back against FANK forces As a result of this state of affairs Freedom Deal the overt air support afforded to the incursion was extended on 6 June 16 Operation Freedom Deal EditIn the post incursion period Freedom Deal was originally an interdiction effort striking enemy supply lines in eastern Cambodia and was restricted to a 50 kilometer 30 mi deep area between the South Vietnamese border and the Mekong River This restriction was however quickly voided due to Search and Rescue operations conducted by the U S Air Force in order to pick up downed South Vietnamese pilots who regularly flew outside the Freedom Deal zone 16 201 202 Within two months and without public announcement the operation was expanded west of the Mekong 14 146 The withdrawal of U S forces in May left only South Vietnamese and Cambodian forces to do battle with PAVN VC and the Khmer Rouge U S tactical aircraft then began supplying FANK troops with direct air support Meanwhile President Nixon had announced that the policy of the U S Air Force was only to interdict PAVN VC supply networks in the same manner that they were interdicted in Laos and that they were only to be conducted within the specified zone known as the AIZ or Aerial Interdiction Zone 16 203 Post invasion escalation Edit A map of CambodiaDuring the rest of the year the Freedom Deal area of operations was expanded three times Transcripts of telephone conversations reveal that by December 1970 Nixon s dissatisfaction with the success of the bombings prompted him to order that they be stepped up They have got to go in there and I mean really go in he told Henry Kissinger I want them to hit everything I want them to use the big planes the small planes everything they can that will help out there and let s start giving them a little shock Kissinger then relayed Nixon s order saying A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia Anything that flies on anything that moves 17 The president was inspired to reckless escalation by his belief in the madman theory 18 By the beginning of 1971 the area of operations stretched from Route 7 to the Laotian border in the north and 120 kilometers 75 mi beyond the Mekong to the west 16 207 Between July 1970 and February 1971 approximately 44 percent of the 8 000 sorties flown in Cambodia struck targets outside the authorized zone This led to Kissinger Alexander Haig and Colonel Ray Sitton developing a policy of falsifying the reports of missions carried out beyond the boundary 16 203 204 14 146 148 18 Most of the strikes were flown in direct support of FANK troops although American officials continued to deny the fact Despite this effort the communists occupied one half of Cambodia by late 1970 and had cut all the land routes leading to and from the capital of Phnom Penh In short order the USAF found itself shifting more and more of its diminishing air power from its interdiction campaign in southern Laos to the struggle in Cambodia In 1971 Cambodian missions made up nearly 15 percent of the total number of combat sorties flown in Southeast Asia up from eight percent during the previous year According to George McTurnan Kahin Freedom Deal bombers treated the communist held parts of the country as a virtual free fire zone For most of the campaign U S Ambassador Emory Swank and his team were only allowed to vet targets west of the Mekong Often they had no idea what villages were being bombed 19 Swank soon resigned one of several foreign policy officials who left because of Kissinger s Cambodia policy 15 In Cambodia the ground war dragged on with the Khmer Rouge doing the bulk of the fighting against the government On 28 January 1973 the day the Paris Peace Accord was signed Lon Nol announced a unilateral cease fire and U S airstrikes were halted When the Khmer Rouge refused to respond the bombing resumed on 9 February The U S Seventh Air Force argued that the bombing prevented the fall of Phnom Penh in 1973 by killing 16 000 of 25 000 Khmer Rouge fighters besieging the city 20 In March the U S Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed a much expanded bombing campaign From then until the end of the operation on 15 August sortie and tonnage rates increased By the last day of Operation Freedom Deal 15 August 1973 250 000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the Khmer Republic 82 000 tons of which had been released in the last 45 days of the operation 21 Outcome Edit An aerial view of bomb craters in CambodiaDuring 1973 Freedom Deal aircraft dropped 250 000 tons of bombs primarily high explosive more than the 180 000 tons dropped on Japan during the Second World War 22 As Khmer Rouge forces drew a tighter ring around Phnom Penh in April the U S Air Force flew more than 12 000 bombing sorties and dropped more than 82 000 tons of ordnance in support of Lon Nol s forces during the last 45 days of the operation 21 Since the inception of the Menu bombings in March 1969 the total amount of ordnance dropped on Cambodia reached 539 129 tons 13 297 On 15 August the last mission of Freedom Deal was flown Additional detail concerning the disputed effectiveness of the bombing of Cambodia is in the article Operation Menu According to David Chandler If you just made a very cold calculating military decision the bombing of 1973 was in fact a sensible thing to do at the time because had it not happened the Khmer Rouge would have taken Phnom Penh much earlier and South Vietnam would have had a communist country on its flank 23 In contrast Pulitzer prize winning correspondent Sidney Schanberg asserted that the campaign actually fostered the Khmer Rouge s growth recalling that the militia men would point at the bombs falling from B 52s as something they had to oppose if they were going to have freedom And it became a recruiting tool until they grew to a fierce indefatigable guerrilla army 24 Cambodian deaths caused by U S bombing EditU S bombing of Cambodia extended over the entire eastern one half of the country and was especially intense in the heavily populated southeastern one quarter of the country including a wide ring surrounding the largest city of Phnom Penh In large areas according to maps of U S bombing sites it appears that nearly every square mile of land was hit by bombs with roughly 500 000 tons of bombs dropped 25 When extensive bombing by the U S of Cambodia began in 1969 it was primarily directed against the PAVN VC and their supply lines and bases As the PAVN VC dispersed their operations deeper into Cambodia to escape U S bombing the area bombed by the U S expanded Increasingly U S bombing missions had the objective of supporting the government of Cambodia in its war against the insurgent Khmer Rouge 26 The number of deaths caused by U S bombing has been disputed and is difficult to disentangle from the broader Cambodian Civil War 27 Estimates as wide ranging as 30 000 to 600 000 have been cited 4 5 6 28 29 Sihanouk used a figure of 600 000 civil war deaths 30 while Elizabeth Becker reported over one million civil war deaths military and civilian included 31 although other researchers could not corroborate such high estimates 32 Marek Sliwinski notes that many estimates of the dead are open to question and may have been used for propaganda suggesting that the true number lies between 240 000 and 310 000 27 Judith Banister and E Paige Johnson described 275 000 war deaths as the highest mortality that we can justify 33 Patrick Heuveline states that Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the civil war in the order of 300 000 or less 34 Of these civil war deaths Sliwinski estimates that approximately 17 1 can be attributed to U S bombing noting that this is far behind the leading causes of death as the U S bombing was concentrated in under populated border areas 27 Ben Kiernan attributes 50 000 to 150 000 deaths to the U S bombing 35 According to Larry Clinton Thompson 150 000 seems to be the best estimate 29 Another impact of the U S bombing and the Cambodian civil war was the destruction of homes and livelihood of many people This was a large contributor to the refugee crisis in Cambodia with two million people more than 25 percent of the population displaced from rural areas into cities especially Phnom Penh which grew from about 600 000 in 1970 to an estimated population of nearly 2 million by 1975 The Cambodian government estimated that more than 20 percent of property in the country had been destroyed during the war 13 222 The legacy of unexploded bombs has had a long term impact on agriculture in the affected areas More fertile soil is often softer and thus bombs impacting such soil are less likely to explode Farmers in formerly bombed regions often work less fertile soil due to the perceived risk of uncovering unexploded bombs 36 References Edit This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency Chandler David 2000 Brother Number One A Political Biography of Pol Pot Revised Edition Chiang Mai Thailand Silkworm Books pp 96 98 Kiernan Ben Owen Taylor 26 April 2015 Making More Enemies than We Kill Calculating U S Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia and Weighing Their Implications The Asia Pacific Journal Retrieved 18 July 2017 First the bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents Cambodia U S bombing and civil war sites tufts edu atrocityendings 7 August 2015 a b Valentino Benjamin 2005 Final Solutions Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century Cornell University Press p 84 ISBN 9780801472732 a b Tyner James 2008 The Killing of Cambodia Geography Genocide and the Unmaking of Space Routledge ISBN 9780754670964 a b Rummel Rudolph Statistics Of Cambodian Democide Estimates Calculations And Sources Retrieved 6 February 2018 FRONTLINE WORLD Cambodia Pol Pot s Shadow Chronicle of Survival 1969 1974 Caught in the crossfire PBS www pbs org Retrieved 29 December 2017 Kiernan Ben Owen Taylor 26 April 2015 Making More Enemies than We Kill Calculating U S Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia and Weighing Their Implications The Asia Pacific Journal Retrieved 18 July 2017 The evidence of survivors from many parts of Cambodia suggests that at least tens of thousands probably in the range of 50 000 to 150 000 deaths resulted from the US bombing campaigns Kennedy David M Cohen Lizabeth Piehl Mel 2016 The Brief American Pageant A History of the Republic Volume II Since 1865 Cengage Learning p 669 ISBN 9781305887886 Kennedy David M Cohen Lizabeth Piehl Mel 2016 The Brief American Pageant A History of the Republic Volume II Since 1865 Cengage Learning p 669 ISBN 9781305887886 Power Samantha 2013 A Problem From Hell America and the Age of Genocide Basic Books ISBN 9780465050895 a b Isaacs Arnold Hardy Gordon 1987 The Vietnam Experience Pawns of War Cambodia and Laos Boston Publishing Company ISBN 9780939526246 a b c d Shawcross William 1979 Sideshow Kissinger Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia Washington Square Books pp 46 73 ISBN 9780815412243 a b c Lipsman Samuel 1988 The Vietnam Experience War in the Shadows Boston Publishing Company p 130 46 ISBN 9780939526383 a b Hanhimaki Jussi M 2004 The Flawed Architect Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy Oxford University Press pp 70 79 ISBN 9780195346749 a b c d e Nalty Bernard C Nalty 1997 Air War Over South Vietnam 1968 1975 PDF Air Force History and Museums Program p 199 ISBN 9780160509148 Elisabeth Becker 27 May 2004 Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises War and Stark Photos of Abuse New York Times a b Grandin Greg 2015 Kissinger s Shadow The Long Reach of America s Most Controversial Statesman Henry Holt and Company pp 53 60 ISBN 9781627794503 Kahin George 2003 Southeast Asia A Testament Psychology Press pp 311 313 ISBN 9780415299763 Etcheson Craig 1984 The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea Westview p 118 ISBN 0 86531 650 3 a b Morocco John 1988 The Vietnam Experience Rain of Fire Air War 1968 1975 Boston Publishing Company p 172 ISBN 9780939526147 Lipsman Samuel Weiss Stephen 1985 The Vietnam Experience The False Peace 1972 4 Boston Publishing Company p 53 ISBN 9780939526154 Ponniah Kevin 9 September 2014 US bombing defended The Phnom Penh Post Retrieved 8 November 2016 Frontline World Cambodia Pol Pot s Shadow Chronicle of Survival 1969 1974 Caught in the crossfire www pbs org Retrieved 7 February 2018 Kiernan Ben Owen Taylor 26 April 2015 Making More Enemies than We Kill Calculating U S Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia and Weighing Their Implications The Asia Pacific Journal Retrieved 8 November 2016 Operation Freedom Deal History Wars Weapons Retrieved 10 April 2014 dead link a b c Sliwinski Marek 1995 Le Genocide Khmer Rouge Une Analyse Demographique L Harmattan pp 42 43 48 FRONTLINE WORLD Cambodia Pol Pot s Shadow Chronicle of Survival 1969 1974 Caught in the crossfire PBS www pbs org Retrieved 29 December 2017 a b Thompson Larry Clinton 2010 Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus 1975 1982 McFarland p 34 ISBN 978 0 7864 5590 4 Sharp Bruce Counting Hell The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia Mekong net Retrieved 6 February 2018 Mass Atrocity Endings Documenting declines in civilian fatalities sites tufts edu Retrieved 6 February 2018 Cambodia U S bombing civil war amp Khmer Rouge World Peace Foundation 7 August 2015 Retrieved 19 July 2019 On the higher end of estimates journalist Elizabeth Becker writes that officially more than half a million Cambodians died on the Lon Nol side of the war another 600 000 were said to have died in the Khmer Rouge zones However it is not clear how these numbers were calculated or whether they disaggregate civilian and soldier deaths Others attempts to verify the numbers suggest a lower number Demographer Patrick Heuveline has produced evidence suggesting a range of 150 000 to 300 000 violent deaths from 1970 to 1975 In an article reviewing different sources about civilian deaths during the civil war Bruce Sharp argues that the total number is likely to be around 250 000 violent deaths Banister Judith Johnson E Paige 1993 After the Nightmare The Population of Cambodia Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia The Khmer Rouge the United Nations and the International Community Yale University Southeast Asia Studies p 87 ISBN 9780938692492 An estimated 275 000 excess deaths We have modeled the highest mortality that we can justify for the early 1970s Heuveline Patrick 2001 The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises The Case of Cambodia 1970 1979 Forced Migration and Mortality National Academies Press pp 102 104 ISBN 9780309073349 As best as can now be estimated over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the Khmer Rouge regime Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the civil war in the order of 300 000 or less Kiernan Ben 2004 How Pol Pot Came to Power Colonialism Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia 1930 1975 Yale University Press p xxiii ISBN 9780300102628 Lin Erin 17 December 2020 How War Changes Land Soil Fertility Unexploded Bombs and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia American Journal of Political Science 66 222 237 doi 10 1111 ajps 12577 Sources EditPublished Government Documents Nalty Bernard C The War Against Trucks Aerial Interdiction in Southern Laos 1968 1973 Washington DC Air Force Museums and History Program 2005 ISBN 978 0 16 072493 0 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Operation Freedom Deal amp oldid 1166455442, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.