Talk:Operation Menu

Transfer of Aftermath section to Operation Freedom Deal

It would seem that the latter two-thirds of the Aftermath section more properly belongs to the Operation Freedom Deal article rather than the Operation Menu article. Much of this section is about the impact of all the bombing of Cambodia rather than just the small percentage of bombing that occured during Operation Menu. Are there comments about transferring and adapting this material to Operation Freedom Deal? Smallchief (talk 21:21, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The only reason any of that is here is because the term "Operation Menu" is more widely known than "Operation Freedom Deal", largely because of the documentary "The Trials of Henry Kissinger", which uses the former term to reference the whole bombing campaign. Loads of passionate editors with superficial knowledge have been inflating this page for years; just look at some earlier versions.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:18, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Condemnations by Sihanouk and the UN

Hello. There appears to be some inconsistencies between sources about the condemnations of the American bombings (during Operation Menu).

The latest installment of this issue is the following sentence in the "Exposure" section:

"Although Sihanouk's government protested "American violation[s] of Cambodian territory and airspace" on innumerable occasions, it "specifically protested the use of B-52s" only once, following an attack on Bu Chric in November 1969." (Clymer, Kenton (2013). The United States and Cambodia, 1969-2000: A Troubled Relationship. Routledge. pp. 19–20. ISBN 9781134341566.)

Other sources talks about both the UN condemnations - which isn't mentioned in this article at all at the moment - and elaborates more on Sihanouk's public condemnations in mass-media at the time. Take a look here for example:

• Alex J. Bellamy (2012). Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity. Oxford University Press. p. 200. [1]
• Violence de masse et Résistance - Réseau de recherche : Cambodia from 1945, SciencesPo (Réseaux sociaux). Look for 1970 (2 May) for the public condemnation of the B-52's for example, mentioned in the quote above.

Many other sources can be found about the subject, but they appear to differ in their treatment, with some sources going into more details and other sources not mentioning it at all. I am not sure there are real inconsistencies, perhaps they just differ in their amount of information.

I am not so familiar with source number two, but wanted to include it, because it is French and because it is very explicit about the public condemnation from Sihanouk. It has the problem though, that the source for the statements is almost "out of reach". If the primary sources to Sihanouks public announcements were delivered, things would greatly improve of course.

I am not completely sure how we deal with this, but there are certainly more to it than the sentence that are now up and the whole issue is much more interesting and essential than speculative thoughts from the US administration. I think my source number one could be used right away, and I suggest we build on that until more sources are brought in.

(PS: I have explicitly written the refs and sources without the usual ref-tags, as this is a TalkPage) RhinoMind (talk) 17:32, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

There's not necessarily any contradiction between the sources. Clymer has all the same information about the formal protests by Sihanouk's government. Sihanouk's comments on May 2, 1970 (i.e., after the Lon Nol coup), can be included (if you wish), but they were probably sharper in tone than anything he said while he was still in power.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:13, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi. No, I don't want to push for an exact and explicit inclusion, but I hope the primary source could be provided at some point in the future. Thanks for including the UN link in the article text. RhinoMind (talk) 20:46, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I urge everyone to read page 200 of source #1 in my comment above. I have linked it above, but can provide again: [2] I suggest we rephrase the quotations in the article. If we quote anything it should be the actual protests. Alternatively, we could just include an honest and proper summary and description of them. RhinoMind (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Move and merge

@RhinoMind, Raquel Baranow, SmallChief, I was wondering how you felt about moving/merging this article with Operation Freedom Deal and changing the name to "United States bombing of Cambodia." That seems more in line with WP:COMMONNAME, and Menu already has a redirect from a similar name. It will also allow the article to fully encompass the recently declassified Johnson bombing of 1965-68. Let me know. -GPRamirez5 (talk) 18:30, 9 March 2018 (UTC) GPRamirez5 (talk) 18:30, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Smallchief. I personally don't feel very strongly either way, but I would want to be sure that no significant information was lost in the merge, as often happens.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Likewise. I have been concerned with the common perception that Operation Menu was the whole bombing campaign -- when in actuality it was only a small part. So, yeah, I could agree if the significant information from both articles was in the proposed article.Smallchief (talk) 21:39, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

The section "Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal" on the Cambodian Civil War page is supposed to sum up the US bombing of Cambodia. A proper rewriting of that section could perhaps sort out a lot of the confusion. We could start by renaming it "US bombings of Cambodia" as a proper umbrella-term. RhinoMind (talk) 04:14, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi. My initial thoughts are that it would make more sense, but I do not have a proper overview of the bombing campaigns and their political or military inter-relations to make any good assessment of the matter, to be honest. RhinoMind (talk) 22:01, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Back. I have a few questions about this merge proposal.

• Are Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal the only bombing campaigns in Cambodia? You link to an overview and mentions "The Johnson bombings of 1965-68", but I can only find a few sentences in your link, talking about pre Civil War Bombings in the Johnson years. Are there better sources to this perhaps?
• If the two articles are merged, it could turn out to be a very long article. Is this a good idea? Would it not be better to simply entwine and interlink the articles better? Just a thought.

I don't think much would be gained if the merge was followed by a simplification and rewriting of all the content. So if that is the agenda here, I would not support it. It would be a much better idea to improve both articles by themselves first. I think much could be done in this regard as is. Also take a look at the section Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal on the Cambodian Civil War page which is supposed to sum up the US bombing of Cambodia already. RhinoMind (talk) 04:00, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Russia and China

Russia and China's role in escalating the Vietnam War is completely missing from this article. Throughout the war Russia and China supplied the North Vietnamese with weapons, ammunition, fuel and even rice to feed the troops in the front lines. In the end the war was won by Russian-supplied T-54 main battle tanks delivered to the front line jumping off points in Cambodia via roads built in great part with the assistance of tens of thousands of Chinese volunteers. The bombings didn't happen in a vacuum. 2600:8800:4684:BD00:71AD:C7C2:D23:A2E2 (talk) 06:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Read the second para of background and then advise specifically what changes you believe should be made. Mztourist (talk) 06:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Different periods in the bombing of Cambodia were very different

Operation Menu was directed against Vietnamese Communist base areas in Cambodia, close to the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. The Vietnamese Communists had tried to keep their base areas as much as possible away from populated areas. And President Nixon was determined to keep Operation Menu from becoming publicly known, which would have been impossible if it had been obliterating a bunch of Cambodian villages. So while the number of Cambodian civilians killed by Operation Menu was probably not zero, it was very very small.

In 1970 (definitely by May, maybe as early as late March), Vietnamese Communist forces began operating much more than before in areas with substantial Cambodian populations. And Nixon announced publicly that he was bombing targets in Cambodia, so he had much less need than before to choose targets unlikely to lead to publicity. Under Operation Freedom Deal, which began in May 1970, the bombing was for the first time hitting significant numbers of Cambodian civilians, and it did so increasingly thereafter, with March to August 1973 by far the worst period. Large areas of Cambodia were devastated.

A number of statements on this page about what Menu did to Cambodia are actually based on what happened in Freedom Deal, not in Menu. I plan to delete some of these, but first I will delete the statement that Operation Menu was intended as an intervention in the Cambodian Civil War. That was Freedom Deal. Ed Moise (talk) 04:00, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree, I reverted some changes that blurred the different periods/operations: [3] Mztourist (talk) 07:49, 29 April 2025 (UTC)