“The best that can be hoped for here is little more than a negotiated surrender in which the only subjects open for discussion would be details, humaneness and orderliness of the Communist-led insurgents’ take over.”
That is the assessment by the United States embassy in Pnompenh of the prospects for the Lon Nol regime, according to a dispatch by Sydney H. Schanberg published in the March 7 New York Times. The embassy sees the “erosion of the Government’s position as inexorable and irreversible,” Schanberg reported, and feels “defeat is inevitable.” Schanberg based his account of the embassy’s attitude on “persons with access to its views and on conversations embassy officials have had with diplomats and other visitors.”
Pentagon officials revealed March 5 that they have a “fallback” contingency plan. When the Lon Nol forces collapse completely, marines may be sent in to protect the Pochentong airport or some other landing area while the 400 American civilians still in Pnompenh are evacuated by helicopter.
The U.S. helicopter carrier Okinawa with about 1,500 marines aboard has already entered the Gulf of Thailand for a possible evacuation operation. Another 300 marines at the U.S. base on Okinawa have been put on alert for similar duty.
Fears have been voiced in many quarters that Washington may use the rescue of U.S. civilians as a pretext for direct military intervention.
“If the situation is so dangerous, why don’t they start evacuating them now by air?” Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield asked in an interview, according to a report in the March 6 New York Times.
The Soviet news agency Tass drew a parallel with the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 to quell a popular uprising. The pretext then was to protect U.S. civilians also.
Norodom Sihanouk, who was ousted by Lon Nol in 1970, issued a warning March 7 against “direct intervention” by Washington in Cambodia. Asserting that the insurgents’ victory was imminent, he said: “In the face of a situation which has been described as desperate by the most important leaders in Washington, the U.S. and its valets in Saigon are preparing to intervene directly in the Cambodian war.”
But Cambodia 1975 is not the Dominican Republic 1965. What the U.S. imperialists got away with then would be much harder for them to carry through today, given the immense antiwar sentiment in the United States that has already limited Washington’s options in Indochina. The White House is well aware that any new escalation of the war could produce massive new protests.
In spite of the assessment by the U.S. embassy in Pnompenh that it’s high time to throw in the towel, President Ford pressed Congress to vote an additional $222 million in military aid for Lon Nol.
The attempt by Ford’s supporters in Congress to speed up the decision on extra aid by a procedural shortcut has been dropped. This has been portrayed as a “setback” for Ford’s plans, but could just as easily be part of the White House strategy of trying to shift the blame for “losing” Cambodia to Ford’s Democratic party opponents, who control Congress.
As the military position of the Pnompenh clique rapidly deteriorates, Lon Nol becomes more and more expendable. Ford made this clear at his March 6 news conference when he said that “the personalities involved will not themselves constitute an obstacle of any kind to a settlement.”
Lon Nol himself has become “a bargaining chip,” wrote the editors of the Washington Post on March 4. They suggested that the time had come to offer him for bids. “If Lon Nol were to step down and peace talks to begin, then a context would be established in which aid could truly serve the purposes of reconstruction and peace.” Some newspapers are even setting the stage for a dignified exit, talking about the “ailing” Lon Nol.
Pochentong airport, the Pnompenh regime’s only remaining supply line, was temporarily closed March 5 after the insurgents began shelling it with captured U.S. 105-mm. howitzers – more accurate than the 107-mm. rockets already battering the airport. The Pentagon-run airlift – described in the March 9 Washington Post as “an enormously risky and fragile operation” – was bringing in a daily total of 1,300 tons of food, fuel, and ammunition by March 6.
On March 7 Lon Nol’s troops lost their last beachhead on the Lower Mekong River. The entire garrison of 800 to 1,000 men had to be evacuated.
Morale in the puppet troops is plummeting. Most of the reinforcements sent to bolster the dwindling ranks are desk soldiers, invalids, or technicians.
On March 8, a dispatch from Pnompenh in the New York Times reported, “the capital was swept by false rumors that had President Lon Nol fleeing the country, the insurgents overrunning the airport and several embassies closing up entirely.”
Scattered looting was reported in Pnompenh. In the provincial capital of Siem Reap, about 200 miles northwest of Pnompenh, student protests against soaring prices broke out March 5.
In the March 8 New York Times Sydney H. Schanberg painted a picture of life in Pnompenh slowly coming to a stop:
“Primary schools are open only every other day now, and then only for a few hours. In Government offices, piles of paper mount steadily higher on the desks as the pace of work declines.
“Many professors stopped coming to class because with the astronomical prices here their pay does not even cover the cost of transportation to the university.
“Ambulances sometimes run out of gas coming from the battlefronts. Then, with the wounded inside slipping toward death, the vehicles simply sit stalled by the roadside because no one has money to get more fuel.
“In these and a multitude of other ways, one can see the institutional structure of Cambodia steadily grinding down in recent days like a slow-motion movie.”
Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1975/IP1310.pdf#page=7&view=FitV,3