Ideology

A doctoral dissertation written by Kenneth M. Quinn about the "origins of the radical Pol Pot regime" is "widely acknowledged as the first person to report on the genocidal policies of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge." While he was employed as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department in Southeast Asia, Quinn was stationed at the South Vietnamese border for nine months between 1973�"1974. While there, Quinn "interviewed countless Cambodian refugees who had escaped the brutal clutches of the Khmer Rouge." Based upon the compiled interviews and the atrocities he witnessed firsthand, Quinn wrote "a 40-page report about it, which was submitted throughout the U.S. government." In the report, he wrote that the Khmer Rouge had "much in common with those of totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union." Quinn has written of the Khmer Rouge that "[w]hat emerges as the explanation for the terror and violence that swept Cambodia during the 1970s is that a small group of alienated intellectuals, enraged by their perception of a totally corrupt society and imbued with a Maoist plan to create a pure socialist order in the shortest possible time, recruited extremely young, poor, and envious cadres, instructed them in harsh and brutal methods learned from Stalinist mentors, and used them to destroy physically the cultural underpinnings of the Khmer civilization and to impose a new society through purges, executions, and violence."

Ben Kiernan has compared the Cambodian genocide to the Armenian genocide which was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the Holocaust which was perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II. While each genocide was unique, they shared certain common features, and racism was a major part of the ideology of all three regimes. All three regimes targeted religious minorities and they also tried to use force in order to expand their rule into what they believed were their historic heartlands (the Khmer Empire, Turkestan, and Lebensraum, respectively), and all three regimes "idealized their ethnic peasantry as the true 'national' class, the ethnic soil from which the new state grew."

Barbette: Raised platform or mound allowing an artillery piece to be fired over a fortification's walls without exposing the gun crew to enemy fire.

Instant: Used in letters and reports, "instant" referred to a particular day in the same month. For example, Robert E. Lee's Report Concerning the Attack at Harpers Ferry, written on October 19, 1859, states that Lee arrived on the "night of the 17th instant". The "17th instant" would be October 17th.

Ramrod: Long, cylindrical metal rod used to push the cartridge down the barrel of a musket in preparation for firing.

Haversack: Small canvas bag, about one foot square, used to carry a soldier's food. Typically, these bags were painted with black tar to make them waterproof.

Defensive: Resisting or protecting against attack from someone.