Every so often I begin to feel as though I'm being too hard on this
American Corporate Empire(ACE). Then along comes an article such as
the one by Robert Scheer, and I remember just how cold and heartless
Greed can be, when allowed to roam the Earth virtually unchecked.
There are two constantly repeated statements by the Ruling Class that
drive me wild. The first one comes around over and over during
election campaigns. "I am not bought by large donors."
And the second one comes from the unthinking propaganda drilled into
our heads from the ground up, "We are being attacked because we are
attempting to spread democracy around the world".
In both cases, the evidence contradicting the statements is so
overwhelming that we can only surmise that the Ruling Class believes
the Working Class to be simple minded bumpkins.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/10/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Truthdig
Robert Scheer: U.S. Pledge of $90 Million to Laos for Cluster Munitions
Legacy Is ‘Chump Change’
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/robert_scheer_us_pledge_of_90_million_t
o_20160909/
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Posted on Sep 9, 2016
As President Obama toured an exhibition of prosthetics made for Laotians
who
lost limbs when bombs exploded years or even decades after the United
States
dropped them on Laos during the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. announced it
would
provide $90 million over the next three years to help Laos clear the
remaining explosives.
The unexploded bombs are 30 percent of the total that the United States
dropped on the country—a total Obama described as “more bombs on Laos than
[on] Germany and Japan during World War II.” So far, such ordnance has
killed or injured more than 20,000 people.
On Thursday, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer
told(http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&;
Itemid=74&jumival=17195) The Real News Network that the sum the U.S. has
offered Laos is “chump change.”
Read a full transcript of Scheer’s remarks provided by The Real News
Network
below.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly(http://www.truthdig.com/alexander_kelly) .
DHARNA NOOR, TRNN:Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Dharna Noor joining
you in Baltimore.
On Wednesday President Barack Obama became the first sitting president of
the US to visit Laos. Obama visited a prosthetic center that works with
victims of bombs that initially failed to detonate when dropped on the
country during the Vietnam war. He also toured an exhibition of prosthetic
limbs and met with those involved with clearing unexploded ordinance in the
Laos countryside.
The US announced earlier this week that it would provide an additional 90
million dollars over the next 3 years to help Laos clear the remaining
ordinance.
BARACK OBAMA [in video clip]:But for all those years in the 1960’s and 70’s
America’s intervention here in Laos was a secret to the American people who
were separated by vast distances and the Pacific Ocean and there was no
internet and information didn’t flow as easily. For the people of Laos
obviously this war was no secret. Over the course of roughly a decade the
United States dropped more bombs on Laos than Germany and Japan during
World
War II. Some 270 million cluster bomblets were dropped on this country.
NOOR:About 30% of the bombs dropped on the then secret war on Laos, failed
to explode. They killed or injured more than 20,000 people since the
1970’s.
This comes as the United Nations wrapped up its annual meeting on an
international treaty that bands the use of cluster munitions. The US has
still not signed on to the agreement.
Now joining us to discuss all of this is Bob Scheer. Bob is the editor in
chief of Truthdig and a veteran journalist. His latest book is They Know
Everything About You: How Data Collecting Corporations and Snooping
Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy. Between 1964 and 1969 he was
the Vietnam correspondent, the managing editor, and the editor and chief of
Ramparts Magazine where he helped expose the secret war in Laos. Thanks for
joining us Bob.
BOB SCHEER:Great to be here.
NOOR:So why was the US bombing Laos during the Vietnam War and why didn’t
the American public know the US was doing so? We just heard Obama say that
essentially the American population wasn’t privy to this information
because
Laos is far away and because we didn’t have the internet. But your exposés
from Laos actually helped disseminate information about the bombing
campaign.
SCHEER:It’s not just Laos, it was what we were doing in Vietnam and what we
were doing in Cambodia. And it was basically genocide. It was carpet
bombing. It was declaring huge areas where people had to leave or would be
killed with very short notice. Fire free zones and so forth. We
deliberately
caused disease and illness with agent orange and everything.
I first went to Laos in 1964. It was a very primitive country. Very
isolated. And I recall at the time going to different villages and giving
kids a pencil was considered a gift. Life was agriculturally on a very
primitive level and they had nothing to do with foreign policy. There was
no
threat to the United States and already we were meddling in their affairs
as
such as they were. Then I went back a year later and saw some of the
effects
of the bombing and then I returned later and finally back in the 80’s I
went
back to assess the damage there.
The story was very similar to what happened in Cambodia and in Vietnam.
Because the fragmentation bombs, these guava bombs, these pineapple bombs,
they were quite often disguised as toys that children would play with. They
were made to seem inoffensive. And when they went off they caused a lot of
damage, sending all sorts of little pellets out or pieces of metal. And
quite often they didn’t explode and they just sat there preventing farmers
from using their fields.
Vast areas of Laos are to this day you can’t [inaud.] and can’t farm there.
And I remember being there both in Laos and Cambodia, particularly in
Cambodia I got involved in a Canadian project where they were clearing
fields. It was painstaking. It was very dangerous activity and there was no
real funding from anywhere else in the world. It was one of the most brutal
uncivilized, vicious attacks on a people that we’ve seen in human history
and the president is lying. It’s a bold faced lie to say oh people couldn’t
get the information because we didn’t have the internet.
First of all there was good reporting. The late journalist Fred Branfman
for
instance, he lived there for years and documenting was. He risked his life.
He wasn’t alone. There were plenty of journalist. When I went there were
other journalist writing. They couldn’t get mainstream media to cover the
story in any effective way. But the most important thing was that the US
government was very effective in lying about what it was doing. They
claimed
it was trying to stop a Ho Chi Minh trail going down from North Vietnam to
South Vietnam. I was able to expose the fallacy of that. What you really
have what Obama will not admit because it continues to this day that when
you’re dealing with war, when you’re dealing with foreign policy, truth is
the first casualty.
It’s been well documented. That’s why George Washington, the famous
patriot,
our most famous patriot warned about the impostures of pretended
patriotism.
That’s why Jefferson warned about foreign entanglements and the ability of
our government to lie about what it’s doing during war time is unparalleled
in any other activity. So that’s why the US government continued a barrage
of lies under democrats and republicans. Went right up to the end of the
war. Never took ownership, never took responsibility, no top official went
there until Hillary Clinton went there in 2012 and now Obama has finally
gone 60 years later. It’s just an example of committing atrocities at will.
It’s both barbaric and the president still has not come to grips with this.
This was a war against peasants. People who were using oxen to till their
fields. Who barely knew what a pencil was and you went to war with them to
destroy them, to demoralize them, and it had nothing to do with them. It
had
to do with China, it had to do with the Soviet Union, it had to do with
some
crazy ideas about the Cold War and then after Richard Nixon we made peace
with China. There are our bankrollers. They supply all our commodities now.
And that was the reason we’re in Laos. We were supposed to be sending a
message to rid China or to the Soviet Union. It was all using these people
as props in your drama.
NOOR:Having witnessed all of this trauma and all of this horrific policy
first hand then what’s your reaction to Obama’s speech as a whole. I mean
he
stopped short of actually giving an apology for the actions of the United
States.
SCHEER:Yeah, I don’t know. Obama’s on a charm offensive. I think CNN called
him the goodwill ambassador now. He’s going everywhere in the world. Which
is fine. I’m all for recognizing the humanity of the Laotian people, the
Cambodian people, the Vietnamese. That’s all great stuff. But if you don’t
take ownership for your own atrocities, you first of all have no authority
to condemn atrocities anywhere in the world and you don’t learn the lessons
of history.
We are capable of enormous barbarism. You just have to look to dropping the
Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in daylight to maximize the
casualties
among kids, children going to school. That was done by the University of
California Berkley, figured out the plans and everything. Look at the
documentary Fog of War about Robert McNamara. Look at the carpet bombing of
Japan during WWII.
We aren’t this great city on the hill. We’re capable of being horrible
barbaric killers and the lesson of Laos is we visited terrorism on a
primitive peasantry that had no idea what was being inflicted on them or
why. They had had a king. Now they had other people [inaud.] that were
against the king and doing land reform. It had nothing to do with a threat
to the United States or anything else.
NOOR:So the United States is now providing 90 million dollars to help clean
up bombs that continue to kill and maim people. Does this constitute any
sort of level or real accountability? Do you see the lack of accountability
for the bombing in Laos as having real consequences now for US foreign
policy?
SCHEER:You know when any Jewish person who cares or anybody who cared about
the Holocaust against Jews, gypsies, and others in Germany would be deeply
offended if many years after the fact the president of the richest and most
powerful country in the world and if Germany had won would then would offer
a pittance, chump change. Yes, it’s better than nothing. But it’s
propaganda. It’s a feel good thing. It’s a way of disowning your
responsibility.
We say adult behavior. We tell children, adult behavior begins with taking
ownership for your actions. We have never taken ownership for our horrible
actions in the name of foreign policy. We never do. We think that whatever,
we’re virtuous. Obama said in his statement, we can argue about our
motives.
No. That’s what we have to analyze.
What really were your motives? How could you be destroying people so far
from our country and you could keep that news from the American people? Or
that when they heard about it they didn’t respond as human beings should.
That’s the real lesson here. How are you able to engage in one of the great
atrocities of human history and the destruction?
I mean Robert McNamara, one of the people who ran this whole thing when he
was secretary of defense in that movie Fog of War says, three and a half
million Indochinese people died. Three and a half million because of these
bombings. That’s not kidding around you know. In Laos it’s not just the
danger inflicted after the fact, it’s what you did then and then you didn’t
even have the good sense for 60 years to say hey we’ll help you clean up
this mess.
NOOR:And we could also point out that the US has still not signed onto the
UN treaty banning the use of cluster bombs and up until the end of this
year
it was sending them over to the Saudi’s in their war against Yemen. So this
continues to show its effects.
SCHEER:I think that’s a really important point you just made. Because I
read
the same stories about what was happening in Yemen and it reminded me of my
days being in Laos and Cambodia. And also by the way I went to North
Vietnam
during one of the lulls in the bombing and was able to see the terrible
damage done to the country we were supposed to be trying to save. When I
looked at those weapons and read the military reports that were released on
what the Saudis are using in Yemen, they’re exactly those weapons that we
pioneered.
The US pioneered our arms, our military industrial complex developed them.
They were developed with great precision to maximize human death. That was
it. That’s why they scattered in such a wide area so that the pellets would
penetrate and kill people. That’s what it was aimed at. It was a weapon of
terror.
We use this word terror. Terror means anything. It means war on civilians.
It means war on innocent people. That’s what we call terrorism. You blow up
a bus, there are civilians in it, that’s an act of terrorism. That’s what
we
did throughout the Laotian countryside, the Vietnamese countryside, and the
Cambodian countryside. We inflicted massive terror on a basically
unsuspected unknowing, civilian population that barely could, in the case
of
Laos, had found the United States on a map if they could have found a map
in
their village.
NOOR:Bob Scheer is the editor and chief of Truthdig. Bob thank you so much
for joining us today and we hope to talk to you again soon. And thank you
for joining us on the Real News Network.
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