Bombs Away; The Elephant(s) in the Room
Actually there are multiple elephants in the room we don’t know about, let alone talk about, in the United States. I’ll have more to say about actual elephants later, but for now, the so-called Secret War waged by the US from 1964 -1973. Perhaps the Vietnam War is mentioned in school textbooks, though much of our dark history, let alone our progressive turnaround on civil rights, is being erased by the current administration.
But I was there, my coming of age years, protesting the war with my friends with all our might, facing tear gas on the steps of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., rabble-rousing in Berkeley and Ann Arbor. But from all we learned from Walter Cronkite on the evening news, the caskets of soldiers being offloaded from planes back in the States, little did we know. The Secret War, alas, was not so secret among the population and villages of Laos.
UXO Visitors Center
It’s now documented that the US dropped 2,000,000 tons of bombs on Laos, on average, a plane load of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day for 9 years. Hard to wrap your head around, right? Especially since little did we (do we) know.
Of the 200 types of munitions, an estimated 270 million “bomblets” were dropped, with nearly a third, or 80 million, failing to detonate. To this day, former agricultural areas are off limits due to the threat of explosion. Children playing in the forest lose their limbs and eyesight almost daily. The statistics are sobering and saddening. The Secret War.
The Night Market jewelry vendors have signs saying their jewelry is made from undetonated bombs, and it’s an ongoing threat. My Aussie buddy, Sue, said they just discovered another cluster in the outskirts of Luang Prabang just last week. Supposedly the scrap metal can be worth up to $60USD, a fortune in Laos, so people continue to risk their lives to find this “treasure.”
This has been on my mind for a while, and a primary reason I’ve come here. My destination Vietnam; my question and aim, reparations. As if I could. Hopefully in small ways. But finding the extent of our ruinous venture in Southeast Asia during my “innocent” coming-of-age years is quite the reality check. Especially in light of the rampant, rage-filled, hate-filled rhetoric and reality of the criminal administration at work today.
For all the might and right and genius and good we brag on and acknowledge as “Americans,” I find our actions a shameful legacy. No wonder the hubris and heartlessness of the evil men and women at the helm of our country today. The denial, erasure from our textbooks, libraries and honest conversations. Having their cake, eating their cake, failing and afraid to look themselves in the mirror.
So it’s up to us. As Elie Wiesel most notably reminded: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. We must never forget.”
May we make swords into plowshares.
