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Name:
"Bomb Harvest"
Description:
In Laos, as in Vietnam, the US undertook to prevent a political settlement, as described frankly in congressional hearings by Ambassador Graham Parsons, who stated that "I struggled for 16 months to prevent a coalition." A US military mission was established under civilian cover, in violation of the Geneva Accords, headed by a general in civilian guise, and US aid flowed in an effort to establish US control.
A measure of its scale and purposes is given by the fact that Laos "was the only country in the world where the United States supports the military budget 100 percent." (Bernard Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis, p. 163, from congressional hearings)
Nevertheless, a coalition government was established in 1958, after the only elections worthy of the name in the history of Laos. Despite extensive US efforts, they were won handily by the left. The largest vote went to the leader of the Pathet Lao, Prince Souphanouvong. US pressures--including crucially, the withdrawal of aid--quickly led to the overthrow of the government in a coup by what the press called a "pro-western neutralist" who pledged his allegiance to "the free world" and declared his intention to disband the political party of the Pathet Lao (NLHS), scrapping the agreements that had successfully established the coalition. He was overthrown in turn by the CIA favorite, the ultra right wing General Phoumi Nosavan.
After US clients won the 1960 elections, rigged so crudely that even the most pro-US observers were appalled, civil war broke out, with the USSR and China backing a coalition extending over virtually the entire political spectrum apart from the extreme right, backed by the United States., The US government assessment was that "By the spring of 1961, the NLHS appeared to be in a position to take over the entire country" primarily because of its control of the countryside, where it had "diligently built up an organization covering most of the country's ten thousand villages," as noted ruefully by the bitterly anti-Communist Australian journalist Denis Warner.
The problem was the familiar one: The US and its clients were militarily strong but politically weak. Recognizing that its policies were in a shambles, the US agreed to take part in a new Geneva conference, which proposed a new settlement in 1962. This too quickly broke down, and the civil war resumed with a different line-up and with increasing intervention by the US and its allies and by North Vietnam in the context of the expanding war in Vietnam.
A staff study by a Kennedy subcommittee concluded that a main purpose of the US bombardment was "to destroy the physical and social infrastructure" in areas held by the Pathet Lao, a conclusion well supported by the factual record. As with Vietnam, the US was afraid that Laos would set a successful example of independent socioeconomic development that would be imitated in other areas of the subordinate and dependent 3rd world, where the US and corporations derive cheap labor and resources. Also, the US had a lot of bombers and nothing to do with them.
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Genre: Cold War / Vietnam / Korea ,
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View number: 455
Currently Rated: 5 over 1 Votes 
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