After a class for schoolchildren, conducted by the U.K.-based Mines Advisory Group, about the dangers of still unexploded ordnance and the psychological and physical wounds from exploding bombs during the US bombing campaign of Laos (1964-1973) in conjunction with the Vietnam War, a member of the group asked the children what they would say it they met some of the people who dropped the bombs. A young Laotian boy raised his hand:
I would tell him they should pay us money.
Consider the horrifying statistics. The US dropped two million tons of ordnance on Laos, about 2,000 pounds for each of approximately 2 million Laotians. More than 270 million cluster bomblets and four million big bombs were dropped. It’s a wonder anyone in Laos survived, but the bombs’ danger has remained for thirty years. Approximately 80 million of the bomblets and 10 percent of the big bombs did not explode. They litter the Laotian countryside and everyone knows somebody who was maimed or killed stepping on or digging up unexploded bombs.
To date, the US has spent $12 million to remove the live bombs. It spent $13 million a day bombing Laos for 9 years. It recently spent $140 million on its new embassy in Laos. $12 million is a rounding error and an egregious insult. If the US government did to its citizens what it did to Laos’s, personal injury suits would send it into bankruptcy. Those who perpetrated this travesty should be tried for war crimes.
Nothing is going to compensate Laos for the terror, destruction and death inflicted by the US’s nonstop, indiscriminate bombing campaign, or for the danger and devastation caused by unexploded bombs for over three decades. There is nothing untoward about the little boy’s request. What is an unmitigated evil is the pittance offered for remediation, and the complete lack of monetary compensation. Candidates will thump their chests about “American Greatness” during the election season, but America’s treatment of Laos has been pathetic and immoral. If America wants to take the very long road back to greatness, it must address its guilt in Laos, just as it has insisted that Germany and Japan address their guilt for WWII.
The quote, facts and figures come from The National Geographic, “Life After the Bombs,” August, 2015. The one redemptive note in the article is the resilience and spirit demonstrated by the Laotian people since the war.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 