My understanding of Laos history

 

A long time ago there were people living here. I won’t say peacefully since their neighbors were always picking a squabble over the area. Seems this small piece of land is in the way to other pieces of land that the neighbors thought they wanted.

Then in the days when ships moved with the wind the French found the land to the east to their liking, we now call it Vietnam. The French never being satisfied with what the had wanted more for slipped over the mountains and decided that they should own this land too. I guess they would have continued west, but for some strange Siam (now Thailand) thought the British who found that place pretty cool and so decided to not ask the French to take them over too.

So this land that we now think of as two (Laos and Vietnam) was called Indo-China. Why? I don’t know. It is close to China, but nowhere near India. But Indochina it became. The French continued to be French and boss around the local people until … say …. 1939 when the Japanese decided they wanted to boss around some people and Indochina seemed like a groovy place on the way to someplace else, like Malaysia where they had ‘Black gold’, ‘Texas Tea’, oil. So the French went away so the Japanese could play big cheese for a while.

Over the next 6 years the whole world ganged up on Japan and their pals the Germans. The Germans and Japanese finally decided that getting beat up by the whole world was not worth it and went home, leaving Indochina with no big boss. The French thinking that since there was no boss there in 1945 that they would come back and reintroduce Croissant to the area.

For some reason the guys in (now) Vietnam didn’t think that baguettes was in their normal menu and asked the French to please take their frog legs someplace else. The French kinda liked it there and said they would like to stay. Well that didn’t go over well with either side, so for the next 8 or 9 years each side threw rocks at the other side until at Diem Bien Fu the French got tired of getting rocks thrown at them and called King’s Ex and went on their way, but not before cutting the country in half with an imaginary line giving the rock throwers the north half and the Baguette loving locals the southern half.

I think that one part of the world who sent the Japanese and the Germans home was afraid the other half of the world wanted what the Japanese and Germans used to have. So the one half of the world kept propping up the baguette loving leaders in the south.

Meanwhile U.S.A., part of the half that sent the Japanese a packing kept the southern half from uniting with the north half making a whole country. The north half kept sneaking down and to make their half larger. The U.S.A., knowing math that 50/50 is equal and 51/49 is not. So in the early 1960’s sent men with words to the south part to advise and shoo the northerners home. The northerners stomped their feet and refused. So the U.S.A. sent more advisors, but with guns this time. More foot stomping, more Americans until in say 1963 the two sides started throwing rocks and other things at each other for a long time.

So the north guys got tired of getting things tossed at the and decided the best way to visit the south was by going through their neighbors, Laos’ backyard. The outsider Americans call this The Ho Che Min trail or memorial highway or some such. They though it was cheating by the north, so the best way to stop a cheater is to cheat yourself I guess.

So, the ‘Secret War’ was on. Officially not in the Vietnam conflict, but since the Viet Cong were using the eastern edge of Laos to bring men and material to aid them in their war with the south the U.S.A. decided that a weed killer, Agent Orange, and tons upon tons of bombs should be dropped on this route to stop the Vet Cong. Innocent Laos was more heavily bombed that the entire bombs dropped in world war II. Since the bombs were dropped from 35,000 feet and most men can’t consistently hit the toilet bowl from one foot, you can imaging how much this stopped the Viet Cong. That and it is my understanding that if you can’t find your target, it’s better to go home empty, than to land with a load of bombs, so you might as well drop them any old place.

American technology is not 100%, and according to estimates only two thirds of the explosives exploded as planned. This leaves a third of more than all the bombs dropped in WWII waiting to kill, maim and generally terrorize Laos or years to come.

The sign says “Every eight minutes for nine years, bombs were dropped on Laos”. From 1964 to 1973. During this time, Huntley/Brinkley hardly mentioned this (if at all) on the nightly U.S. news.

Still fifty years later people are still getting injured and killed by UXO (UneXploded Ordinance) even with the years of help clearing the area of these still lethal gifts. Looking out a window on a bus in the middle of a field there can be a perfectly circular pond or divot in the earth. This is where they did go off. This area around the Plain of Jars was among the heaviest bomb during that time. Even the UNESCO Plain of Jars sites still have the occasional bomb crater on the site.

In 1994 the immediate Plain of Jars sites 1,, 2 and 3 were declared safe. It only took 30 years to clear a major tourist site. I suppose it might still take a bit longer to fully clear the rest of the country.

The country that wasn’t even in the war.