The Khmer Rouge

In 1975-79 Cambodia, then known as Democratic Kampuchea, was lead by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a Maoist peasant-worker communist society, that resulted in massive genocide and ethnic cleasning in Cambodia. One of the horrifying results of this regime were the mass graves known as "the Killing Fields" (check out the movie of the same name). Under the Khmer Rouge, the date was set back to Year Zero and people's identities were washed away. They wanted to raise a society washed clean of everything before it (and anything that could pose a threat to their power), so they brainwashed the children and turned them against their families. Anyone with any education that could pose a threat to the Khmer Rouge was sent to prison, interrogated, tortured, and summarily killed. Security Prison 21 (S-21) was the main interrogation center and prison during the Khmer Rouge, and I visited it today along with the Killing Fields.
I have been reading a book about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and it is frightening to think how such a regime could take hold and how a population could turn on its own. It is especially frightening because Pol Pot's regime appears to have been fueled by the same foreign policy that has been practiced in Latin America and the Middle East. When I read the few confessions by the Khmer Rouge and workers at S-21, I immediately wondered if such a place might exist in our time. Strangely, and I am embarrassed to admit this, I thought of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, some place far away from the press and eyes of the people. At the same time, I realize that it was the withdrawl of foreign forces from SE Asia that allowed Pol Pot's regime to proliferate, and the years of terror only ended when Vietnam invaded Cambodia. What is left, however, is a generation still bears the scars of genocide.