The US dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia during the Vietnam War

By Nika Knight, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 3-13-2017

U.S. fighter jets and an attack plane drop bombs on Cambodia circa 1973. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/cc)

Cambodians are responding with outrage to the U.S. government’s demand that the country repay a nearly 50-year-old loan to Cambodia’s brutal Lon Nol government, which came to power through a U.S.-backed coup and spent much of its foreign funds purchasing arms to kill its own citizens, according to Cambodia’s current prime minister Hun Sen.

While the U.S. was backing the Lon Nol government, it was also strafing the Cambodian countryside with bombs—a carpet-bombing campaign that would eventually see over 500,000 tons of explosives dropped on the small Asian country, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and leaving a legacy of unexploded ordnances. Continue reading →