Like this:

I’m not sure how many people are aware of this historical event, but it certainly is worth remembering, to see if any lessons can be gleaned from it.

I’d like to start off by mentioning that this kind of work, as well as a similar approach in comments on the web, is an example of what I call ” the problem of different standards”.  By this I mean the tendency to hold a particular country or group of countries to a high standard in terms of rights abuses or ethics, while not applying that same standard to the opposing country or a group of countries.  Often, critics will hold, for example, the US to a high ethical standard, while using no ethical standard for their opponents, such as the Taliban.  But I will come back to this point.

The film I saw about the CIA’s “Secret War” in Laos during the American- Vietnam War, was very good, interesting and informative.  It was of course discouraging to see how American war efforts overseas have had such devastating consequences, but its important to face the truth and reality of what has happened.

The film was created by Marc Eberle, and starts off with a captivating video scene of Hmong remnants found in 2003 by journalists in a remote part of Laos.  These Hmong people apparently had been living in the jungle of Laos since 1975 avoiding capture by the Laotian Communist authorities.  They look thin, emaciated, in poor health, wearing shabby clothes, kneeling and seeming to beg, muttering and clasping their hands in prayer position.

The film goes on to describe the CIA’s war in Laos, which was done apparently in great secret, so much so that the US public and Congress did not know about it.   The main part of the film focuses on an air strip run by the CIA in Laos’ Plain of Jars region.  An ostensibly private company called Air America was actually a CIA operation to transport supplies and weapons to  Hmong people.  CIA agents groomed a former Lao Government military officer Vang Pao to be the leader of the Hmong fighters.  Vang Pao was also Hmong and was able to inspire the Hmong people to fight for the US against North Vietnamese troops (with some Lao Communists) invading Laos from the North.  The strategy appears to have been quite successful, at least for a few years.

The main point, from a humanitarian perspective, is that the US supported the Hmong fighters with heavy bombing of the Laotian countryside.  While this served the strategic interest of the US, it had a heavy humanitarian toll on the people, and more tonnage was dropped on Laos than on both Germany and Japan during World War II.  The film follows several different people in interviews, such as an aid worker who struggled against the secret war, some of the CIA operatives, pilots, a Laotian insider, and Alfred McCoy, a journalist  who wrote a book about it, blowing the secret.

It gets more gruesome later in the war, as the fighting over the years takes a heavy toll on the Hmong population.  Later in the fighting, the film claims that Vang Pao was heavily recruiting child soldiers, some of who appeared to be around the age of 12.  Eventually Vang Pao and the last US agents leave, while a huge flood of Hmong refugees eventually made their way to the border and became refugees in Thailand.

The whole incident is particularly compelling in that the CIA was running such a huge bombing operation, but it was hidden from the public.  Even after it was uncovered in the media, the US government denied it until 2007, when apparently Republicans demanded it be recognized so that memorials for those who died could be established.

Vang Pao made headlines again a few years ago as he tried to send weapons to Laos to carry out a coup.  He and his cohorts, though, were caught in the act and charged in the US for violation of the Neutrality Acts, which forbids US citizens to wage war against a country that the US is not at war with.  Later however, he was pardoned, and appeared briefly in Marc Eberle’s film.

I thought Eberle’s handling of the material was good, and he avoided anti- Americanism, although there was a taste of it in the air in the audience.   Unsurprisingly, to some it acted as a frame for current US involvement in Afghanistan.

Again, I recommend this film/ video because it covers a very important historical event about which I think few people remember or are even aware of.   It also shows how dangerous powerful intelligence agencies can be (and I don’t think this only applies to the CIA).  Its also a reminder of how horrible war is- something which people often forget if war is not right in front of their face.

I do think, however, and I have had this feeling for a long time, that such authors/ artists tend to focus on one side of the equation.  They try to show how awful the US was, and all the unbelievably bad things the US did.  However, they hardly ever mention the negative things done by the other side of the battle.

For example, was it right for the North Vietnamese to essentially invade Laos and Cambodia as part of the Vietnamese’s war?  How many atrocities and deaths were caused by the decisions of the North Vietnamese communists?  It was essentially the Indochinese communist movement, which later led to the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime.  But this is not discussed in any of this type of expose of the horrible actions of various western countries.

Often these accounts take a fairly ahistorical approach which looks at events in hindsight, neglecting the fact that people making decisions at the time faced a very different situation than we do now, and they did not necessarily know what was the right thing to do.  I think it is often forgotten how truly awful Stalinist communism was.

Look at Vietnam now- they fought this bloody war in the name of communism (as well as self-determination).  Millions of Vietnamese people died in this war and what actually did it accomplish?  Only a few years after the victory of the North, in 1986, Vietnam began to abandon communist economics, until eventually all that remains is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian, single party state.  In addition to the absence of political freedoms, Vietnam apparently also has a poor record on worker’s rights- a few days ago a Freedom House index claimed that Vietnam is one of the worst countries in Southeast Asia for worker’s rights.  Which is pretty ironic considering that communism is supposed to benefit the workers.

To be intellectually honest, I would expect some of these authors to make an effort to cover the negative actions of the other side of the equation, but this doesn’t seem to be possible for those filmmakers/ authors, etc.  There may be a few reasons for this, which I may discuss in another blog post.

If anyone else can cite any historical lessons from this, please offer your comments…

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