The Secret War Lives On

Flowers of opening cluster bombs grayed the blue skies of north central Laos, raining fear and death. For nine years during the Second Indochina War, the bombs fell. Their targets: Viet Cong hiding in Laos, along with other people, mostly innocent farmers and their families. Indiscriminate maiming seeds rained down and buried themselves into the soft, loamy, reddish rice paddies, as well as nearby ponds and villages.

A high percentage of these anti-personnel cluster bombs, or “bombies,” failed to explode on impact. Many still lie today just below the surface, ready for a water buffalo or a farmer to step on the wrong spot -- or for an innocent blow by a hoe or spade. They sit and wait for a young boy to find one and then try to prove his bravery by playing with the deadly toy.

During the many years of bombing, thousands died or were maimed by unexploded ordnance, bombies and larger bombs. The local residents gave up and abandoned their water buffalo and their bomb riddled rice paddies and fled. After they begged for surcease in Vientiane, their pleas were eventually heard by the U. S. Congress, who had been kept in the dark about the bombing by the President. Hearings were held and the bombing finally ended. No one was ever punished for lying to Congress or for committing what most readings of the Geneva Conventions would define as war crimes.

The U.S. conducted the largest bombardment of a population in history in a few small provinces of a small country. More tonnage of explosives was dropped on Laos than in all of World War II. That deserves repeating: More bombs were dropped on the small country of Laos than during all of World War II. That is an absolutely staggering fact.

Historical view of the war in Laos…

We recently visited Xieng Khuang to tour the Plain of Jars. Each site had areas marked off-limits because much of the province remains to be cleared of Viet Nam era ordinance. For their own safety, tourists dare not wander off the marked paths.

At the three sites we visited, bombies had been cleared. Most sites contained several large craters, probably created by 500 pound bombs. Many relics dating back 2000-2500 years were overturned or destroyed. It was a sobering sight to stand at the edge of one of those craters, and then later to see a man with no legs. It was hard for us not to become emotional, realizing that what we were seeing had been our tax dollars at work.

Let me back off for a moment and look at this subject less passionately. War -- any war or method of war -- seems like a good idea at its beginning. President Lyndon Johnson, who presided over much of the Secret War, was probably convinced by his advisors that the war in Indochina was a good idea. It is doubtful that anyone considered the long-term consequences of the bombies being dropped during that war. The workers at Honeywell probably didn’t think that the products of their labor would still be killing and maiming children forty years later.

In recent years, the Bush Administration used convoluted reasoning and language to justify torturing people, clearly in direct violation of the Geneva Convention. To the President, using torture probably seemed like a good idea. Sitting behind his big desk in the Oval Office, he was being pushed by smart and persuasive advisors, all afraid of an unknown enemy. America’s image as the champion of human rights has been damaged for years to come.  It seems that even the worst ideas always seem reasonable and appropriate initially.

Someone has to bear the responsibility for those decisions. Who should bear that burden? Maybe it should be you and I, because we didn’t speak up and demand better from our leaders. Maybe -- just maybe -- we all share the blame.

The Lao people bear us no grudges; they actually like Americans. They seem to understand the concept of forgiveness far better than we do. It’s interesting that our supposedly Christian country, one that preaches forgiveness to everyone else in the world, won’t help a small country we’ve injured, simply because they refuse to reject Communism. Laotian Buddhists are forgiving us, citizens of the country whose bombs are still killing them. We need to reconsider our professed values and compare them to those we actually live by. Our words are clearly at odds with our deeds; eventually there will be a price for us to pay.

Death and dismemberment continue to happen throughout the country. In Xieng Khuang province, forty to sixty people are killed or maimed annually, over thirty-six years since the bombings ended. Forty percent of the victims are children, mostly boys who pick up the bombies. Young males are attracted to dangerous things; they have no concept of mortality, believing they will live forever. Many will live long lives, but without their arms and legs. That’s a difficult sentence for any young man to serve in a poor country where physical labor is your only asset.

Laos found itself in the middle of the war between the United States and North Vietnam for over ten years. The Vietnamese used the Ho Chi Minh Trail that runs along the Laotian border and then took the war west into the agricultural central plateau of the country. The Laotians reluctantly found themselves drawn into the war by both North Vietnam and the Allies.

The people of Laos didn’t contribute much to the war and were officially considered neutral, but they still paid a heavy price for their involvement. In addition to the loss of thousands of Laotians, much of the country’s agricultural land is still unusable because of remaining live ordnance. The government of Laos, with the help of international NGOs from Britain, Australia and other countries, is managing the painstaking job of clearly unexploded ordnance.

The United States has reportedly offered to help with the cleanup, but our strident anti-Communism has blocked negotiations.  A flag showing the hammer and sickle flew outside the window of our guesthouse recently, but that is the only sign we have seen of a Communist society. The army’s presence is minimal, usually just a truck or two passing us on the highway, their soldiers waving and smiling to us like all other Lao people. Our passports are not checked at each guesthouse, or along the roads, as they were in China.

If the Lao system is socialist, like China’s, we haven’t seen it. It’s hard working people live by small capitalism. The government doesn’t seem concerned with controlling its people, or stifling their free market efforts. The government provides decent roads (better than China), and some sub-standard schools, but not much else. They certainly are not a threat to anyone, especially us. The Cold War Era “domino theory” was long ago proven irrelevant.

It’s time for America to pipe down, and pitch in – and help clear the remaining bombs we’ve left in our wake.