Barack Obama arrived Monday night in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, becoming the first USA president to return to the scene of one of U.S. imperialism’s bloodiest crimes, even as his administration is preparing new wars on a far greater scale.
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Laos has a grim claim to fame, as the most heavily bombed country in history.
Acknowledging the scars of a secret war, U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said the United States has a “moral obligation” to help this isolated southeast Asian nation heal and vowed to reinvigorate relations with a country with rising strategic importance to the U.S. To put that sum into perspective, the US has spent roughly $100 million total to cleaning up unexploded bombs in Laos since the effort began two decades ago.
Thanks to global cleanup efforts, casualties from tennis ball-sized “bombies” that still litter the Laotian countryside have plummeted from hundreds to dozens per year.
American dominance in Asia, however, was only established through a series of criminal neo-colonial wars-in particular in Korea and Indochina-that cost the lives of millions, as well as countless diplomatic intrigues and CIA-backed coups.
“Until now still, [Laotians] are being injured by the bombs”, says Baosavanh Vetsaboun, a staffer at the nonprofit COPE, which puts on this exhibit and assists those who lose limbs to unexploded ordnance, or UXO.
“At the time, the USA government did not acknowledge America’s role [in Laos]”.
American B-52s dropped an average of one bomb-load every eight minutes, 24 hours a day. Roughly 30 percent malfunctioned and never exploded.
A pittance in USA aid-just $118 million-has been provided to deal with unexploded bombs. He also boasts that it was USA military might in the Asia Pacific that ensured “peace” and underwrote the region’s massive economic expansion over the past 40 years.
“He is maybe feeling his way into the new job”, the official said.
“So when you think about the fact these things were dropped from the air, they’ve experienced all those things, not to mention the fact they’ve been sitting in the ground 40 years, deteriorating, which makes them even more volatile”, she adds.
He pointed to the killing of Muslim Moros more than a century ago during a USA pacification campaign in the southern Philippines, blaming the wounds of the past as “the reason why (the south) continues to boil” with separatist insurgencies. Above, a bomb is used to grow plants in the village of Ban Napia, while the unexploded bomb below serves as a decoration for a hotel in Xieng Khouang province.
Speaking to reporters here, he said, “I do not want to quarrel with the most powerful country on the planet”, but immediately returned to his typical combative approach, saying: “Washington has been so liberal about criticizing human rights (abuses), human rights and human rights”. One of them was Maiyer Thao, age 15.
Arguing that the US has an obligation to help Laos, President Barack Obama has promised to significantly increase its aid to provide $90 million over three years.
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“I don’t know about other people, but I think the past is the past”, she said.
