Comparing the current situation in Iraq to Vietnam and Cambodia’s own bloody history, King Norodom Sihanouk on Sunday predicted a disastrous end to the efforts of US and coalition forces there.
“There is and there will be till the end in Iraq a resistance more and more violent, more and more determined…more and more terrible, more and more tragic in terms of human lives on all sides,” King Sihanouk wrote in a message posted on his Web site.
“Vietnam and then Cambodia have known ‘that’ [fate]. And the ‘occupying’ foreigner always ends up by ‘[going] home,’” he said.
The King’s message comes amid weeks of intense fighting in Iraq. Calling former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein his “friend,” King Sihanouk admonished the “imperialist and neo-colonial powers” in Iraq, who, he claimed, are becoming less popular each day.
He cast doubt over the US’ plan to return sovereignty to the Iraqi people, saying the Iraqis believe a US-backed government would not represent them in any way.
King Sihanouk took aim at the US administration’s reasons for entering Iraq, saying that weapons of mass destruction, which the US used as a “pretext for the intervention of overly-powerful US armed forces in Iraq…remain until this day in a phantom state.”
“For the present time, some who occupy and trample Iraq take a great deal of pride from the fact that they have already succeeded in reducing to a pile of ruins, if not ashes, this country of a very old civilization that is Iraq,” he said.
He added: “There is no true dignity for the major powers who build their false dignity on the ruins of those smaller and weaker than themselves.”
