AH challenge: Pol Pot the hero.

With a non-asb interference your goal is to make Pol Pot a hero with a POD of April 17th 1974 *the day he entered Phenom Phen *

The best I can come up with is he immediately moves about a larger aggressive stance on Vietnamese troops hiding in Cambodia, so Vietnam attacks earlier and disperses him to the mountains were he fights a guerrilla war.
 

Cook

Banned
Have Alberto Korda take his photo.
It worked for Che Guevara and while he didn't kill as many people as Pol Pot he certainly made a good try of it.
 
Umm...he has a brain transplant?

On a more serious note, I think Che Guevara is seen as a "hero" mostly because he never actually ruled anywhere, and thus never had the chance to commit any atrocities of the sort that usually ruin the names of communist dictators. So if Pol Pot never actually rules Cambodia, but instead runs around southeast asia trying to overthrow various governments before bad luck catches up with him (like Che Guevara did) its possible.

Though southeast asian communism also got a bad name due to the Vietnam war, so you probably have to avoid that as well.
 

Cook

Banned
Che Guevara had plenty of fun killing "enemies of the people" in Cuba.
But one photo by Korda gets the Andy Warhol treatment and suddenly he's on everybody's T-shirt.
 
Che Guevara had plenty of fun killing "enemies of the people" in Cuba.
But one photo by Korda gets the Andy Warhol treatment and suddenly he's on everybody's T-shirt.

well yes, but he
a. murdered an amount of people that's not particularly high, and laughably insignificant when compared to Pol Pot (or Mao, or Stalin, etc)

b. only actually took part in ruling a nation for a short period of time, les then a year IIRC, Revolutionaries always get better reputations then rulers when it comes to governments liek this

c. he rebelled against a military dictatorship (I think), and was martyred, which always helps.

and finally
d. he wasn't insane enough to consider a third of the countries population "enemies of the state"
 

Cook

Banned
The tragedy of Cambodia is that Pol Pot didn’t consider a third of the people as enemies, he just didn’t need them.
He actually said he only needed 1/3 of the people for the new Kampuchea, but Vietnam’s invasion interrupted him when he was only halfway finished.

Sorry King Henry, this is one I shouldn't have touched.

 
Che also wrote a couple of pretty good books well before he came to power and grew corrupt and evil. This capitalist roader pig liked his Motorcycle Diaries; it and one or two other of his books are good for teens and still selling well. Few of his contemporary readers were awake in history class when the "bad" Che of the history books appeared, if he appeared at all.

But, I don't think anything so elaborate's needed; along similar, but simpler lines to Mirza, I think a loyalist bullet killing him that day would do the job nicely; then he would be seen as a martyr to bringing down a tyrant rather than a far worse tyrant himself.
 
Che Guevara had plenty of fun killing "enemies of the people" in Cuba.
But one photo by Korda gets the Andy Warhol treatment and suddenly he's on everybody's T-shirt.

Yeah, Che Guervara executed torturers, murderers and CIA fifth-columnists. Enemies of the people, as you put it.

How that relates to Pol Pot is somewhat unclear, though.

Though, to be honest, I don't understand all this whining about Pol Pot, when Kissinger is still a respected US statesman. After all, Kissinger and the US killed at least as many Cambodians as the Khmer Rouge. (In fact, Kissinger should be shot as an enemy of mankind.)
 
I don't think recognizing one famous figure is a mass murderer should mean the others should be excused. Kissinger's and Nixon's victims were comparable in terms of numbers (600,000 dead Cambodians plus the several hundred assassinations Kissinger helped orchestrate in Latin America and the US with Operation Condor) to Pol Pot's.

About Che, as others have pointed out, he killed Batistianos plus executed some soldiers of his who tried to desert or were derelict in duty. There's no evidence he would've gone on to be guilty of anything remotely close to genocide. That's just fanatic anti Commie hysteria talking.

For the POD, I think given even a smaller opportunity Pol Pot would've been as brutal as conditions let him get away with. Even as a guerilla in the mountains, why wouldn't he have done similar to the Shining Path, executing any and all peasants he pleased?
 
I don't think recognizing one famous figure is a mass murderer should mean the others should be excused. Kissinger's and Nixon's victims were comparable in terms of numbers (600,000 dead Cambodians plus the several hundred assassinations Kissinger helped orchestrate in Latin America and the US with Operation Condor) to Pol Pot's.

About Che, as others have pointed out, he killed Batistianos plus executed some soldiers of his who tried to desert or were derelict in duty. There's no evidence he would've gone on to be guilty of anything remotely close to genocide. That's just fanatic anti Commie hysteria talking.

For the POD, I think given even a smaller opportunity Pol Pot would've been as brutal as conditions let him get away with. Even as a guerilla in the mountains, why wouldn't he have done similar to the Shining Path, executing any and all peasants he pleased?

So have him be martyred early on then? dieing before he can commit any atrocities would probably give him some positive press, he'd probably be fairl obscure though.

The tragedy of Cambodia is that Pol Pot didn’t consider a third of the people as enemies, he just didn’t need them.
He actually said he only needed 1/3 of the people for the new Kampuchea, but Vietnam’s invasion interrupted him when he was only halfway finished.
and that's even more disturbing then doing it out of paranoia and/or fanatical hatred.
 
Yeah, Che Guervara executed torturers, murderers and CIA fifth-columnists. Enemies of the people, as you put it.

How that relates to Pol Pot is somewhat unclear, though.

Though, to be honest, I don't understand all this whining about Pol Pot, when Kissinger is still a respected US statesman. After all, Kissinger and the US killed at least as many Cambodians as the Khmer Rouge. (In fact, Kissinger should be shot as an enemy of mankind.)

Che Guervara, executed people he CLAIMED were "torturers, murderers and CIA fifth-columnists. Enemies of the people", since there were no proper trials, we don't know if any of them were guilty of any actual crime under Cuban laws. Extra judicial executions of non-combatants, however, are always illegal.

As far as Kissinger's totals, he killed no one, since the North Vietnamese started the war in the first place, and were in Cambodia in violation of international law. No North Vietnamese in Cambodia, no reason for the US and South Vietnam to try to stop them from raiding into South Vietnam, nobody in Cambodia is killed.
 
The fascists sent to their deaths at Nürnberg weren't sentenced through proper trials either, yet I don't see you shedding any crocodile tears for them.

And the fact that you absolve the man that dropped the equivalent of 20 Hiroshima bombs on a neutral country*, just because that country wasn't strong enough to uphold its territorial integrity, killing half a million directly, and another million through starvation (yes, the starvation was caused by the US, even if the Khmer Rouge policy of "building the country with its own strength" effectively stopped any relief efforts), says it all.

And no, systematically bombing every civilian population centre in guerilla infected areas is not in accordance of international law. Its a war-crime, and war-criminals are shot.

*Besides other things, such as green-lighting the genocide in East Timor etc.
 
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