What was Operation Menu?
Operation Menu was the secret bombing by US B-52s of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base camps and supply areas in Cambodia, a country that was officially neutral in the Vietnam War. The first raid, code-named Breakfast, struck on 18 March 1969. Over the next 14 months 3,630 flights dropped about 110,000 tons of bombs. The raids were hidden from the American public and from Congress through a special reporting system.2
On 18 March 1969 US B-52 bombers were diverted from targets in South Vietnam and struck suspected communist base camps across the border in Cambodia, for the first time in the war. The raid was code-named Breakfast. Those that followed were named for other meals, and the whole campaign became known as Operation Menu.3
Sanctuaries across the border
Cambodia was officially neutral. Its leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, called it an island of peace, but the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through the east of the country with his consent, supplying North Vietnamese troops on Cambodian soil. According to the Dictionary of American History, the North Vietnamese had built up stockpiles of arms and munitions in these sanctuaries and launched attacks into South Vietnam from them, then pulled back across the border to rearm.4 › Operation Lam Son 719, 1971
President Richard Nixon's program was to end US ground involvement in the war. The Dictionary of American History says US casualties were then running at about 250 a week, and that the bombing was meant to reduce the threat to US ground forces as they were withdrawn. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, was in the account of the scholar Sophal Ear the chief architect of the plan.5
Breakfast
History.com says Nixon approved the first mission at a National Security Council meeting on 15 March; Sophal Ear writes that it was confirmed at a meeting in the Oval Office on 17 March. The diary of Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, records the day it went ahead: "Historic day. K's 'Operation Breakfast' finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P."6
The sources do not even agree on the start date. History.com dates the first strike to 18 March 1969, while the Dictionary of American History, on Encyclopedia.com, gives 9 March. The later missions took the names Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Dessert and Supper, each standing for different targets inside Cambodia. History.com counts 3,630 flights that dropped 110,000 tons of bombs over 14 months, through April 1970.7
A secret kept from Congress
Because Cambodia was officially neutral, the bombing and all the Menu operations that followed were kept from the American public and from Congress. History.com describes an intricate reporting system set up at the Pentagon to prevent disclosure. The secret did not hold for long. The New York Times reported the bombing in May 1969, but there was little public reaction at the time.8
Inside the government, the raids were judged a success. In a memorandum of 27 March 1970, now published by the State Department's Office of the Historian, Kissinger told Nixon that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US command in Vietnam strongly affirmed the value of the B-52 strikes in Cambodia, and that Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and General Creighton Abrams had called them one of the most telling operations of the whole war. The same document shows that Nixon had asked in February whether the strikes needed to be re-examined.9
From Menu to a wider war
In March 1970 Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup and replaced by the US-friendly Lon Nol. US and South Vietnamese ground forces entered Cambodia that spring, and tactical air operations began on 24 April 1970. When the bombing of Cambodia became public, it turned into a major target of the antiwar movement, and a protest at Kent State University on 4 May 1970 ended with National Guardsmen killing four students.10
After US ground troops left Cambodia on 30 June 1970, air strikes continued at the request of the Cambodian government. Congress finally ended the bombing as of midnight on 14 August 1973, after some 3,500 raids over four and a half years.11
The cost to Cambodia
Because the campaign was kept secret, data are limited. Sophal Ear notes that estimates of the deaths caused by the US bombing of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973 range from 24,000 to a million, with most in the hundreds of thousands, and that more than a million rural Cambodians fled to the capital, Phnom Penh. Many experts consider the bombing illegal under international law. Ear, who as a child escaped the Khmer Rouge, does not think the bombing alone brought Pol Pot to power, but argues that it helped destabilize Cambodia and gave the Khmer Rouge a recruiting tool. The Dictionary of American History likewise links the bombing and the political turmoil that followed to the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975. For the wider war, see our account of the Tet Offensive.12
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, “Bombs Over Cambodia”. ↩
- HISTORY.com Editors, “U.S. bombs Cambodia for the first time”; Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”. ↩
- HISTORY.com Editors, “U.S. bombs Cambodia for the first time”; Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”. ↩
- Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”; Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”. ↩
- Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”; Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”. ↩
- HISTORY.com Editors, “U.S. bombs Cambodia for the first time”; Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”. ↩
- HISTORY.com Editors, “U.S. bombs Cambodia for the first time”; Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”; Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”. ↩
- HISTORY.com Editors, “U.S. bombs Cambodia for the first time”. ↩
- US Department of State, “Memorandum From Kissinger to President Nixon, 27 March 1970”. ↩
- Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”; Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”. ↩
- Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”. ↩
- Sophal Ear, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”; Dictionary of American History, “Cambodia, Bombing of”. ↩
Sources
- Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, “Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War”, The Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 5 (May 2007)
- HISTORY.com Editors, “U.S. bombs Cambodia for the first time”
- Dictionary of American History, via Encyclopedia.com, “Cambodia, Bombing of”
- Sophal Ear, The Conversation, “Henry Kissinger's bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge”
- US Department of State, Office of the Historian, FRUS 1969 to 1976, vol. VI, document 215, “Memorandum From Kissinger to President Nixon, 27 March 1970”
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