After the Geneva Agreements in 1954, Ho Chi Minh saw to it that several hundred young Cambodians were taken north, indoctrinated in communism and given military training. They were later armed and sent back, where they became the basis of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia’s Eastern Zone. Knowing of Ho’s close ties to Moscow and his intent to emulate his hero, the butcher Joseph Stalin, by creating a Soviet-style Union of South East Asia, China began training and arming the Pol Pot faction of the Khmer Rouge as a counterbalance to Soviet influence. North Vietnam enabled the Khmer Rouge to take over Phnom Penh in 1975 by providing logistics, ammunition, artillery and backup by Vietnamese troops making them complicate in the genocide of at least one and one half million Cambodians. The Vietnamese communists continue their policy of neo-colonization, nibbling away at Cambodia by annexing sizable portions of its borders, coastlines, and islands through illegitimate treaties with their puppet regime in Phnom Penh. Their latest method is a “Development Triangle” scheme that involves flooding three northeastern provinces of Cambodia and the three southeastern provinces of Laos with Vietnamese settlers. The Vietnamese army has already established coffee, cashew and rubber plantations in the Laotian provinces -- the latter covering more than 7,000 hectares. The similarity between the Vietnamese communists and the al Qaeda and the Muslim jihadists is that they are both fanatical true believers who see it as their divine right and destiny to establish hegemony over their respective regions, regardless of the cost in human life. American involvement in Vietnam was justified in trying to prevent the “dominos” -- the Southeast Asian nations -- from falling victim to communism. Likewise, the US must stay involved in Iraq to keep radical Islam from spreading throughout the region, and to prevent the eventual take over of Iraq by Iran – another “domino effect.” But if the defeatists in our own Congress succeed in raising the white flag over the US Capitol, America will once again have abandoning its allies -- and once again, terror and slaughter will follow. Michael Benge spent 11 years in Vietnam as a Foreign Service Officer, including five years as a Prisoner of war-- 1968-73 and is a student of South East Asian Politics. He is very active in advocating for human rights and religious freedom and has written extensively on these subjects.   more »