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∂AIL Editor:↓%2New York Times%1↓229 West 43d St.↓N.Y. 10036∞
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To the Editor:

	To put the matter as bluntly and abrasively as possible, it
now appears that Nixon was right about Cambodia and Indo-China generally,
and the academic world was mistaken.  According to recent articles
in the %2New York Review of Books%1, generally regarded as on the left
politically and one of the most active opponents of the Vietnam war,
since the "liberation" of Cambodia, the communists
have killed more than 2,000,000 people.  This is the largest proportional
genocide in any country in known history, and it is twice as many people
as were killed on both sides and among civilians in the Vietnam war.
According to the articles, the communists killed everyone whose social
background might make him a potential opponent including
children.
They further report that there was evidence that the Khmer Rouge was
murderously inclined as early as 1971, but the Western press chose to
ignore it, e.g. explaining away what later turned out to be the clubbing
to death of 17 newsmen as an accident of guerrilla warfare.

	Vietnam hasn't engaged in mass slaughter but admits to more
political prisoners in peace time than the Thieu regime was ever claimed to
have by its most fervent opponents.  

	Perhaps it can still be maintained that it was in America's interest
to abandon the anti-communist Indochinese, but it can no longer be claimed
that it was in the interests of the Indochinese.  I now wish to apologize
for my small part in the protests against the Vietnam war generally and
Nixon's Cambodian invasion in particular; I wish I had supported it.

.sgn