Phnom Penh Ultimate
Norodom
Sihanouk, the Sacred Compassionate Foot Lord Sacred Best Jaws of the
Lion Sacred Great Brave Warrior of Cambodia, has died at the age of 89.
When Sihanouk was first crowned in 1941, his contemporaries on the world
stage included Franklin D. Roosevelt, George VI, Haile Selassie, Adolf
Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco. Over the next 6 decades, like a
Southeast Asian Sam Drucker, Sihanouk served at varying times as
monarch, prime minister, Communist puppet, leader in exile, monarch
again, and, after abdicating in 2004, composer, filmmaker and Internet
troll. He won independence from French colonial rulers in 1953, relying
on diplomacy, rather than armed conflict as had occurred in Vietnam.
Surprisingly, his Buddhist socialist agenda was not as effective in
sustaining economic growth. He tried to
keep Cambodia neutral during the Vietnam War, but his ignoring Nobel
Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign along the
country’s border led to his ouster in a coup. He sided with the ruthless
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to return to power, lending his prestige
and popularity to a regime that would kill 1.7 million people over the
next 4 years. He was restored to a figurehead position with the end of
the civil war to oust the Khmer Rouge, and had spent most of the last
decade traveling to China for treatment of various ailments, lead paint
and melamine-tainted milk apparently being secret remedies for
hypertension and diabetes.
Labels: International
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