Agreed. Maoists (which the Khmer were) would bulldoze two thousand year old cultural sites. They were simple minded communists and could care less...Some of the most complex and distributed forms of government in the history of human kind existed in ancient china and these maoist boneheads wiped a lot of that history out of existence.
1. who gets to decide whether the owners of something get to destroy it or not?
2. the west has zero claim to any of it regardless of the circumstances. even if you think its justifiable to take it for preservation, what right do you have to keep it if it can be safely returned?
Possession is 9 tenths of the law. What right do you have to all the metal, diamonds, gold, oil etc that you're using right now if it can be safely returned?
