When we consider Nixon, Kissinger and the destruction of Cambodia, William Shawcross’s Sideshow is probably the main event, if not the last word. At the end of the book, it is difficult to imagine that the author has left intact a single document on the subject, a single actor in the saga without investigating. The level of detail here is forensic, to such an extent, perhaps, that the actors in the story never really develop character, because they are always too busy, apparently, enacting their explicit roles.
Perhaps, it’s easier to say at first what Sideshow is not, so that its focus is quite clear. Sideshow is not about the Vietnam War, although of course this figures almost continuously, sometimes across the border, sometimes just on this side. Sideshow is also not a description of the Khmer Rouge government, its attempted genocide, or its atrocities, though of course it and its actions feature prominently in the final chapters of the book, after it seized power following the collapse of the Khmer Rouge. US-backed regime. , if this is not an oxymoron.
What Sideshow is describing is US policy towards Cambodia since the late 1960s, its effects on Cambodian society, its attempt to manipulate Cambodian politics, and the logic, if that is a relevant term, that underpinned participation. The utter confusion that is described is perhaps best illustrated by the sequence at the beginning of the book where the first B-52 sorties against targets inside Cambodia are described. These missions were not only secret, but it seems that even the crew flying them did not know in advance where they were going, and in the first instance the radio operator on board recognized that the mission had ended without knowing their position. In addition, all records related to the completion of the tasks were falsified in an attempt to hide the location of the dropped bombs from the rest of the world. Not bad to start.
A theme on Sideshow is how completely random the policy-making process was in Washington in the late 1960s. It has powerful personalities using platforms to promote themselves and only themselves. You have influential actors more influenced by Hollywood’s view of reality than anything they’ve ever experienced, either through reality or through informed reports. Somehow the world was always wrong if it didn’t conform as it should. A quote lingers on how democracy must prevail as an overarching goal along with how people must not be allowed to be stupid enough to elect socialists, as in Chile.
An instructive and memorable passage describes the Houston Plan, which sanctioned wiretapping, mail snooping, and general surveillance of anyone deemed to be of interest, including anyone who wanted to question what turned out to be fallacious orthodoxy. William Shawcross writes: “Nixon approved the plan…(whose)…discovery in 1973 greatly helped to generate such outrage in Congress that the legislature was finally able to force the White House to end the massive bombing of Cambodia, which It began to spread when Huston made his proposals in the summer of 1970. It would become a crucial part of the impeachment proceedings.When, much later, David Frost asked Nixon to justify his actions, he bluntly produced a new version of presidential infallibility: ‘Well, when the president does it, that doesn’t make it illegal. Which shows that other more recent holders were not really responsible for inventing the concept of infallibility.
And in another passage dealing with a different set of events, William Shawcross quotes Senator William J Fulbright as saying, “I don’t think it’s legal or constitutional. But right or wrong, he has done it. He has the power to do it because under our system there’s no easy way to stop it.” Some things, it seems, don’t change, no matter how pressing the need, or how many decades have passed in the meantime.
Long before the end of the book, an ending we now know played out, Cambodia’s descent into chaos seemed inevitable. It is a small nation and like a thorn in an elephant’s leg, it has been toyed with, scraped, pulled out and discarded. The elephant moved on and the thorn apparently left itself, eventually to prick itself.