I assume that most of the people in this thread would like to have prevented Pol Pot. How exactly do you do that without stopping the communists in Vietnam?
Pol Pot was the result of President Nixon souring on the Cambodian government of Prince Sihanouk. Nixon covertly worked to depose Sihanouk and supported a government headed by Premier Lon Nol, who had cancer and lacked popular support. Lon Nol was outwardly more loyal to America, but less stable. Had Sihanouk not been deposed, Pol Pot probably would not have happened.
Sihanouk, IIRC, was not willing to allow American troops to use Cambodia for maneuvers against the Viet Cong, and he was somewhat friendly toward allowing VC and NVA troops seek sanctuary in Cambodia, not wanting Americans to participate. Putting up with that nuisance, in hindsight, would have been worth it to prevent Pol Pot.
The 93rd Congress voted, time and again in 1973, to cut off funding for the bombing of Cambodia to forstall the fall of the Lon Nol government. No one thought that Pol Pot would be a genocidal lunatic back then. In retrospect, the funds for bombing Cambodia should have been approved, but Americans were as war-weary as it got back then, and Nixon was in the midst of losing all of his credibility, on the way to his 1974 resignation.
