Next time you feel oppressed by the rate of change, consider
what Cambodia has gone through since the end of World War II. In 30 years the
country shook off Japanese occupation and French colonial domination,
simultaneously adopted a royal government and a fast track to modernization,
and then became a collateral victim of indiscriminate American and Vietnamese
actions during the Cold War. The most wrenching change, of course, was the
half-decade reign of the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist movement that wanted
to remake the country into a non-industrial, subsistence economy without
religion or outside culture. Their efforts to do so wiped out infrastructure,
culture, and a quarter of the population, and set the country up for decades of
poverty and domination by neighboring nations.
