On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge (KR) forces stormed Phnom Penh and reestablished Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea — a supposedly self-sufficient, entirely agrarian society. Resetting the clock to “Year Zero,” the KR forced urban dwellers to the countryside, and began to “purify” Cambodia through a genocidal purge of intellectuals and minority groups. By the time the slaughter came to an end in 1979 — after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the KR from power — some 1.7 million people (21 percent of the population) were dead.

Pol Pot, the leader of the KR from 1963–1997 and prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea, fled to the jungle. He died in 1998 without ever having faced justice. In fact, since the removal of the KR, only three individuals have been convicted for their roles in the genocide (the first conviction was not handed down until 2010; the other two came last year).

But Pol Pot’s rise to power, the Cambodian genocide, and the absence of justice for the KR’s victims are inseparable from broader US intervention policies in Indochina from 1945–1991 — in particular, the US’s vicious bombing campaign waged against Cambodia.