Bill Kristol quotes a poignant letter from former Cambodian Prime Minister Sirik Matak to American ambassador John Gunther Dean, in response to Dean's offer to evacuate Matak after our Democrat-controlled Congress deliberately pulled the rug out from under democracy in Southeast Asia in 1975:
Dear Excellency and Friend:
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].
Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.
S/Sirik Matak
Kristol describes what happened next:
The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh a few days later. Sirik Matak was executed: shot in the stomach, he was left without medical help and took three days to die. Between 1 and 2 million Cambodians were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in the next three years. Next door, tens of thousands of Vietnamese were killed, and many more imprisoned. Hundreds of thousands braved the South China Sea to reach freedom.
If only there were some way to make Matak and the countless other victims of Democrat perfidy understand that most Americans are honorable. But if we give Democrats the power to do the same thing to Iraq that they did to Indochina, we'll have a hard enough time convincing ourselves.
Democrats' Cambodian legacy. Now they want a reprise in Iraq.
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