Cambodia Bombing

THE CRIMINAL BOMBING of Cambodia continues unabated. American air strikes, aimed at shoring up the tottering Lon Nol regime, are purportedly prompted by the presence in Cambodia of North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front troops. Yet observers in recent days have exposed the American-Lon Nol claims as lies. They have confirmed what was suspected all along: The continuing war in Cambodia is being joined not by Vietnamese invaders, but by indigenous guerrilla forces, the Khmer Rouge.

With this revelation, even the flimsiest rationale for the American air strikes fades away. The U.S. air strikes are clearly intended to intervene in a Cambodian civil dispute, and constitute an illegal and unwarranted interference in Cambodian internal affairs.

The dictatorial Lon Nol regime reorganized itself last week, reportedly at the behest of the United States. The reorganization is supposed to pave the way for negotiations with the liberation armies who have surrounded the capital of Phnom Penh and threatened the survival of the Cambodian dictatorship.

The reorganization scarcely broadened the base of the Lon Nol government. Reminiscent of the countless cabinet shuffles in the South Vietnamese government in the middle sixties, the move makes no attempt to recognize the surging agrarian social revolution in the countryside.

If the American government were sincere about wanting peace in Cambodia, it would stop supporting a repressive dictatorship, and allow the people of Cambodia -- represented by the Khmer Rouge and the supporters of the deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk -- to determine their own destiny.