Laos: Opposition To U.S. Taxpayers’ Funding of Bomb Clearing From Vietnam War-Era

April 11, 2013, Washington, D.C., and Vientiane, Laos

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Maria Gomez, Tele. (202) 543-1444

CPPA – Center for Public Policy Analysis

info@centerforpublicpolicyanalysis.org

The Center for Public Policy Analysis (CPPA) and a coalition of Lao and Hmong non-governmental organizations  (NGOs) are opposing  a controversial  multi-million dollar U.S. State Department program to remove unexploded Vietnam-era ordinance and bombs from Laos.

In opposition to the program, which the State Department is promoting with a current national U.S. tour, the NGOs are citing increased human rights abuses and religious and minority persecution in Laos.  The organizations are also raising concerns about the recent arrest and abduction of Laotian civic activist Sombath Somphone, widespread government corruption in Laos, illegal logging, and religious persecution by the Lao government and military.   Concerns have also been raised about the Lao government’s ongoing solidarity and support for North Korean (DPRK).

“We oppose any U.S. funding for bomb removal in Laos, given the Lao government’s ongoing persecution and killing of the Laotian and Hmong people,” said Vaughn Vang, Executive Director for the Lao Human Rights Council. “This is absurd and immoral, given the Lao government’s role in abducting, persecuting and killing its own people.”

“Before any further funds are given for bomb removal efforts in Laos by the U.S. taxpayers, the Lao government must release Sombath Somphone, and jailed Lao Student for Democracy protest leaders,  as well as information about the three Lao-Americans from Minnesota who disappearance in Laos at the hands of the Lao military and secret police in January,” stated Bounthanh Rathigna, President of the United League for Democracy in Laos.

“ It  is deplorable, for the U.S. to contribute money to the clean-up of bombs and unexploded ordinance in Laos from the Vietnam War-era, while corrupt Lao military officials are engaged in brutal human rights violations,  the abduction of activists,  and ethnic cleansing against many of their own Lao and Hmong people,” said Philip Smith, Director of the CPPA in Washington, D.C.

“The Lao military and security forces continue to drop bombs and launch horrific and bloody attacks against peaceful civilian minority communities, including the Hmong people, in the mountains and jungles of Laos,” Smith stated.  “The Lao Peoples Army (LPA) continues to heavily bomb its own freedom-loving people;  Currently,  the one-party communist regime in Laos is often engaged in machine-gunning, rocketing, bombing, and starving to death many innocent Laotian and Hmong civilians, and religious and dissident communities, in the mountains and jungles of Laos. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130304006755/en/Laos-Attacks-Intensify-Lao-Hmong-People

“Moreover, given the current U.S. Federal budget crisis, growing deficient, and serious economic problems in America, there is significant opposition at this time to the funding  of this misguided and highly questionable bomb-removal program in Laos,”   Smith commented.  “Clearly, Laos should  meet certain basic conditions, including the of release Sombath Somphone and imprisoned Lao student and dissident leaders before U.S. funds are provided for any such  bomb-removal e projects  in Laos.”

“It is also important to note that the Lao military and politburo are closely allied with the communist regime in North Korea, and no U.S. taxpayers’  money should go toward bomb removal programs in Laos until the Lao government renounces its relations with the Stalinist regime in North Korea,” Smith concluded.

The coalition of NGOs opposed to U.S. funding for the bomb removal program in Laos include the CPPA,  Lao Human Rights Council (LHRC), United League for Democracy in Laos (ULDL), Lao Institute for Democracy (LIFD), Lao Students for Democracy (LSFD), United Lao for Human Rights and Democracy (ULHRD),  Hmong Advance, Inc. (HAI), Hmong Advancement  (HA), Lao Veterans of America (LVA), Lao Veterans of America Institute (LVAI) and others.

###

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Maria Gomez or Philip Smith

Center for Public Policy Analysis

Tele. (202) 543-1444

info@centerforpublicpolicyanalysis.org

http://www.cppa-dc.org

Q&A: Bombs remain threat in Laos

Q&A: Bombs remain threat in Laos

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/08/5323692/bombs-remain-threat-in-laos.html

By Stephen Magagnini
smagagnini@sacbee.com

Doug Hartwick, U.S. Ambassador to Laos from 2001 to 2004

Published: Monday, Apr. 8, 2013 – 12:00 am | Page 1B

The last U.S. bombs fell on Laos 40 years ago, but thousands of tons of unexploded munitions are still claiming limbs and lives in the mountains, jungles and plains of Laos, said Doug Hartwick, U.S. ambassador to Laos from 2001 to 2004.

About 300 people a year continue to be killed, he said. Hartwick will visit West Sacramento on Thursday night as part of a nationwide tour helping the nonprofit Legacies of War publicize the devastating impact the unexploded ordnance is having on Laos.

Why did the United States bomb Laos?

During the Vietnam War, Laos was one of the most heavily bombed nations on Earth. We supported the Royal Lao government against the insurgency by the Communist Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese army. The U.S. did a lot of bombing on the Plain of Jars, in the mountains of northern Laos and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a series of trails from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam.

Since Laos wasn’t officially at war, the North Vietnamese thought it was much safer to move thousands of tons of supplies across the steep Annamite Mountains between Vietnam and Laos down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, so we began to bomb the trail.

What kind of bombs were dropped?

Along with other bombs, we dropped canisters filled with 200 to 300 anti-personnel bomblets the size of baseballs. They had modest fins on them that would spin and spray out. Even in Afghanistan, the rate of them not going off is very high.

At the U.S. Embassy, I had a bright young Lao aide trained as a lawyer. He said when he was a kid, they’d find them all around their school and throw them against the wall until one of his friends died in the explosion. In Laos they’re called “bombies” because they’re colorful, round grenades painted yellow.

What can Legacies of War and the U.S. government do about the bombs?

They can work with the State Department and Congress to make sure the U.S. keeps providing funds for medical assistance, education and bomb removal.

It’s a very expensive, slow-moving process. It’s not just defusing bombs. It’s getting resources to train the people who defuse bombs and educate people not to pick up and play with them. Laos is extremely poor. You can have children finding bomblets and playing with them until they go off, farmers triggering them while plowing rice fields, or poor people looking for scrap metal they can sell.

When I was ambassador, we gave around $2 million a year to mitigate the problem. Legacies got Congress to commit to around $10 million next year.

How have the bombs impacted the Hmong hill tribes in Laos?

A lot of the area that was bombed was the Hmong homeland. When the CIA was trying to support the Royal Lao government, they concluded the Hmong were very tenacious, excellent fighters so the CIA ended up recruiting thousands of Hmong. There are probably still 350,000 Hmong among the 6 million Laotian people. They’re the largest of Laos’ 60 ethnic groups.

What about the remnants of the Hmong resistance still hiding in the jungles?

I refer to them as Forest People, a band of Hmong who remained hidden in the mountains who were afraid the Laos government would arrest and abuse them. I tried to get the U.N. involved and toward the end of my tenure we had hundreds of of little groups who would come out on their own and get resettled.

We estimated about 5,000 people were up there hiding. Now we’re talking several hundred. Some of those groups in the mountains were being supported by Hmong groups in the U.S. who sent money. Every now and then a group would come out and attack a police station.

I worked hard with the Laos government, humanitarian groups and Hmong Americans to get them to come down. If the Laos government believed that someone had committed crimes, they could be pretty harsh. In my last year, about 700 came out. The Communist Laos government wouldn’t allow the U.S. Embassy to interview these people, but I believe they were treated humanely, given rudimentary cooking utensils and food. The provincial governments were looking for solutions, and that issue’s largely faded away.

What’s it like dealing with Laos today?

While the government’s still authoritarian, the communist aspects have largely fallen away. Human rights remains an issue, but it’s not as brutal as it might have been in the 1980s. Last July, Hillary Clinton became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Laos since 1955, and she spent time with a bomb victim. We’ve normalized completely with Laos. But long after the war’s done, they’re still paying the price. We need to keep up U.S. assistance and humanitarian assistance to mitigate this problem.

IF YOU GO…

What: Doug Hartwick, a former U.S. ambassador to Laos, and Manixia Thor, a leader of an all-women bomb clearing team, will discuss the problems of unexploded cluster bombs in Laos. From 1964-1973, the United States dropped more than 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos – more than was dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II, according to the U.S. State Department. U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, has said that less than 1 percent of the 75 million cluster bombs that failed to detonate have been cleared.

When: 6:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday

Where: West Sacramento Community Center, 1075 West Capitol Ave.

Donations: Suggested donations for Legacies of War are $5 for students and $10 for others.

For more information: Call (209) 201-3662, or visit legaciesofwar.org

Call The Bee’s Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

• Read more articles by Stephen Magagnini

Vietnam ‘secret army’ vets gathering in Conn.

 

Vietnam ‘secret army’ vets gathering in Conn.

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Lao-veterans-of-Vietnam-War-to-celebrate-service-4395124.php#photo-4397279

By STEPHEN KALIN, Associated Press

Updated 8:40 pm, Friday, March 29, 2013

This undated photo provided by the SGU National Headquarters shows former Maj. Sar Phouthasack. Phouthasack was part of the Special Guerrilla Unit, known as the “secret army” that the CIA established to conduct covert operations in Laos, where North Vietnamese forces were operating but U.S. forces were forbidden by Congress to enter. He helped organize a daylong event in New Britain on Saturday, March 30, 2013, to honor the special unit of Lao and ethnically Hmong men who were organized and funded by the CIA. Photo: SGU National Headquarters

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Early in the Vietnam War, the U.S. military trained former Maj. Sar Phouthasack in special combat operations and sent him back into his native Laos to put together a local force to patrol the Ho Chi Minh Trail, rescue downed U.S. pilots and conduct sensitive operations behind enemy lines.

Phouthasack was part of the Special Guerrilla Unit, known as the “secret army” that the CIA established to conduct covert operations in Laos, where North Vietnamese forces were operating but U.S. forces were forbidden by Congress to enter.

More than 35,000 local fighters from the unit died in combat in Laos, and thousands eventually relocated to the U.S. and became citizens.

Phouthasack helped organize a daylong event in New Britain on Saturday to honor the special unit of Lao and ethnically Hmong men who were organized and funded by the CIA. About 200 veterans are expected to gather from around the country in an event that is part of the U.S. Department of Defense‘s multi-year commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.

Since arriving in the U.S., the former fighters have not been eligible to receive military veterans benefits. In the coming weeks, unit veterans and the SGU National Headquarters in Windsor, Conn., say they will petition Congress for formal recognition of their service and for U.S. veterans benefits.

“We don’t ask for a million dollars or something like that because we know the government doesn’t have enough money,” said Phouthasack. He said he wants the standard benefits, such as medical care and the option of a military burial.

When the war ended in 1975, most unit members escaped the communist takeover in Laos by fleeing to refugee camps in Thailand before thousands moved to the U.S. Phouthasack served the U.S. military for 20 years in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand before he moved to Connecticut in 1983 with his family and became a U.S. citizen.

Dennis Tarciani, who served in the Marines during the Vietnam War and is a senior adviser at the SGU National Headquarters, said the unit members saved many American lives.

“One pilot was downed 12 times and saved by the SGU each time,” Tarciani said. “The SGU were recruited, trained, paid and led by the U.S. government. They feel that they were part of the American military.”

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy planned to attend the opening ceremony on Saturday, joined by U.S. Reps. John Larson and Joe Courtney, both Democrats, and other U.S. military officials.

Read more: http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Vietnam-secret-army-vets-gathering-in-Conn-4395124.php#ixzz2P1ycraA8

Vietnam recalled by former soldier

Vietnam recalled by former soldier

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: http://www.advertiser-tribune.com/page/content.detail/id/553953/Vietnam-recalled-by-former-soldier.html?nav=5005

March 30, 2013

By Erika Platt-Handru – Staff Writer (eplatt@advertiser-tribune.com) , The Advertiser-Tribune

In celebration of Ohio’s first Vietnam Veterans Day today, Tiffin resident and Vietnam veteran Larry Bean recalled his service during the war.

Larry Bean

Bean, 75, served four times during the years 1967-69 and was stationed in the country of Laos. There, he was at Lima Site 85, a top-secret location that housed a radar bombing control system that directed air strikes. Bean was a soldier who controlled the bombs B-52s would drop.

“It was too dangerous and too inaccurate to just drop from 30,000 to 40,000 feet,” he said.

Located on top of a mountain, Bean and his colleagues were sworn to secrecy, he said. They were out of uniform and even gave up their military IDs.

“My grandma didn’t even know if he was alive,” said Jennifer Hickman, Bean’s daughter. “He wasn’t allowed to write until he was given the OK.”

Everything had to be hauled up the mountain by hand, Bean said, all the while watching out for mines that had been planted by previous occupants.

“We carried it by hand through a path that nobody veered off of,” he said.

Bean, who described his experience as an adventure, said many of his fellow soldiers did not return alive from Lima Site 85. In March 1968, the site was overrun by PAVN commandos, or the people’s army of Vietnam, and several soldiers were killed.

“A lot of them are still there. They didn’t make it back,” he said. “A lot of people were unaccounted for.”

Bean said he will have a moment of silence today in remembrance of the fallen soldiers; he also planas to email his living friends to remember the Vietnam War.

“I think they should be remembered,” Bean said. “People put their lives on hold to go fight for their country.”

Hickman said she is glad Vietnam Veterans Day has been initiated and thinks it’s important the veterans get the recognition they deserve.

“I think it’s important. It was such a hard battle for them and a lot of people didn’t support them,” she said.

Hickman said she and her family are proud of Bean, who supports fellow troops 100 percent.

“My sister and I are extremely proud of him,” she said.

© Copyright 2013 The Advertiser-Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Commentary: Obama Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine | The National Interest

Commentary: Obama Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine | The National Interest.

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source:  http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/obama-doctrine-reagan-doctrine-7982#.UPoOXKEMUHY.wordpress

James Joyner, January 18, 2013

As his second term is about to begin, we may finally be seeing the emergence of an Obama Doctrine in foreign policy. It’s one that looks very much like the Reagan Doctrine.

In his 1985 State of the Union address, Reagan asserted that “we cannot play innocents abroad in a world that’s not innocent; nor can we be passive when freedom is under siege.” He urged that “we must stand by all our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.”

A few months later, Charles Krauthammer dubbed this “overt and unashamed American support for anti-Communist revolution” the Reagan Doctrine in a Time magazine essay. Its essence was use of proxies rather than direct American intervention. If a legitimate popular uprising was taking place against a communist regime in the developing world, Reagan reasoned that it was both morally right and in America’s interests to help it with arms and material support.

President Obama has quietly adopted a similar strategy, one using NATO allies, France in particular, as a proxy. First, we had the March 2011 intervention in Libya, in which American forces played a heavy role in the initial strikes, providing our “unique capabilities,” but then quickly transitioned to a supporting role, providing suppression of enemy air defense; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and air-to-air refueling assets to enable the mission. We appear to be on a similar path in Mali, quietly providing combat enablers in a mission with France in the driver’s seat.

Unfortunately labeled as “leading from behind” by a staffer during the Libya intervention, critics have charged the president with weakness—ceding America’s rightful leadership role to others. Viewed through the lens of the Reagan Doctrine, though, it’s prudent risk management.

While Republican neoconservatives and Democratic liberal interventionists alike urged Obama to take decisive action early on in Libya, Syria, Mali, and other cases the fact of the matter is that the United States simply does not have vital interests in those conflicts that would justify putting American troops into harm’s way. On the other hand, even realists have to admit that getting rid of Gaddafi and Assad and preventing Islamist takeover of a West African country would be good outcomes for the US. So, if France and other allies want to bear the brunt of fight but can’t pull it off without American communications, intelligence and logistical assets, there’s a strong argument to be made for providing that assistance.

Of course, the original Reagan Doctrine was hardly an unalloyed success story. Most notably, the backing of the anti-communist mercenaries known as the Nicaraguan Contras was a disaster militarily and politically. Conversely, the arming of Afghanistan’s mujahideen—in fairness, a policy that began under the Carter administration—arguably played a significant role in the eventual fall of the Soviet Union. (And, no, while the post-Cold War transition was abysmally handled, these are not the people who became al Qaeda.) In between, support for Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA movement in Angola, backing the government of El Salvador, and support for the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front in Cambodia were mixed successes.

Similarly, while the ouster of Gaddafi came without the loss of a single American life or piece of major equipment, it was by no means a total victory. The degree to which a democratic, pluralistic society will emerge has yet to be determined. And the spillover of arms at the end of the fighting there led directly to the takeover of northern Mali by the very forces that we’re now trying to oust by backing France’s lead.

Interestingly, despite the caricature of Krauthammer as a knee-jerk neocon these days, his 1985 Reagan Doctrine essay was quite mindful of the pitfalls: “By what right does the U.S. take sides in foreign civil wars? What about sovereignty? What about international law?” Krauthammer develops a nuanced argument for when and how intervention is warranted.

Additionally, he acknowledges, “The Reagan Doctrine is more radical than it pretends to be. It pretends that support for democratic rebels is ‘self-defense’ and sanctioned by international law. That case is weak.” Krauthammer ultimately argues that, if the United States is prudent in its selection of proxies, there’s both a strong moral and national interest case to be made for flouting international law. And, in the intervening years, the development of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine has gone some way to answering those questions.

General Colin Powell, an enthusiastic backer of the Reagan Doctrine as Reagan’s national security advisor, famously warned President George W. Bush, whom he served as secretary of state, of the Pottery Barn rule—”You break it, you own it”—during the march to war in Iraq. That surely applies just as well to wars one leads from behind. To the extent that intervention-by-proxy makes interventions less daunting, it will surely lead to more interventions. And to the extent the risk of those interventions is lowered by being in a supporting role militarily, it will surely diminish the focus on the longer-term consequences of said interventions. We haven’t done that well in thinking them through—even when we’re the main force.

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