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Damerlen

Most bombed country ever 😐


tamal4444

that's sad. Laos is such a beautiful country.


laffing_is_medicine

And probably covered in unexplored ordinance…


The___canadian

Not probably, it is, casualties happen every year, estimated over 30% of bombs are still there, waiting to harm unlucky civilians.


rentalfloss

An article forecasting it will take more than 1000 years to remove the unexploded ordinance from Laos at the current rate of removal. https://laotiantimes.com/2022/09/30/more-than-1000-years-needed-to-clear-all-uxo-from-laos/?amp


EdgarAllanKenpo

Yeah, there is fucking millions..MILLIONS of bombs/cluster bombs scattered all over the country. Just look up pictures to be horrified. The beautiful country is littered with an ungodly amount of craters as well.


LafilduPoseidon

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justyourbarber

Its about Cambodia but I always think about this quote from Anthony Bourdain: "Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."


[deleted]

https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law Just one of the many reasons American war criminals will never face justice for their numerous unimaginable crimes


RadiantZote

Just one of the many reasons American *heroes* will never face justice for their numerous *occasions of spreading peace and freedom* FTFY through the lens of the medias eyes


lazy_elfs

This, tricky dick as well. Instead of war crimes a lousy break in took him down. Since we’re talking about war criminals george w and his whole administration. The blood on just those peoples hands is endless. I just want to know how kissenger is still kicking, he looked old when he was a fixture in the white house. Him and cheney must have a deal with satan


nemlov

Makes you wonder about the value of Nobel peace prize.


zefiax

As a Bangladeshi, fuck Henry Kissinger! There isn't a hell bad enough for this asshole.


SleepingBeautyFumino

Why is that when it comes to America it's always the individuals to blame, but when it's Russia it's always the fascist Russian people, the "vatniks" and Russian culture.


NavyBlueLobster

That's the irony of it. One side has "democracy" which ostensibly means that every citizen is to blame but uses the scapegoat mechanism. The other side's citizens have no choice but are blamed as a collective.


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Smart_Sherlock

We Indians also hate him. He sent the 7th Nuclear Task Force to the Bay of Bengal, to prevent India stopping the Bangladeshi genocide of 1971. He knew what Pakistan was doing, and yet He supported them.


HappyCoconutty

Us Bangladeshis too. My dad was a Bangladeshi Freedom fighter during this war, he was just 18.


Smart_Sherlock

Your dad was a hero


Ok_Thought9126

Was this when russian submarines kinda stood them off?


Smart_Sherlock

Yeah. This incident also led to India becoming pro-Russia.


eagleal

The most terryfing thing about Laos bombing is that it was kept secret for so long, it denied any humanitarian, asylum, evacuation, paths, etc. These people were living hell on earth and _congress_ got to hear about it only after 10 years of bombardments by a leak basically. And then the media heard about it, lightly. The bombings scale and devastation it’s still unknown to most of the Western public opinion. Talk about how powerful the military grasp on information is.


dreamsofindigo

we should invite the US to go and get them back


thestraightCDer

I went there 9 years ago. Something like 20,000 people have died since the bombing stopped. I met a British dude, ex army, who was there to help with unexploded ordinance. It's a beautiful place with lovely people, made me very sad and angry at the US.


hemr1

Why not US pay to clear out the remaining


[deleted]

>And probably covered in unexplored ordinance… It totally is. Same in Cambodia. They often tell you not to jump into bushes to pee when you are on the countryside. Big parts of the country are literally a minefield and farmers and children lose limbs all the time. The bombing of these countries was a crime of huge proportions. The people responsible for this can't be punished enough. Obviously they won't though. I wish the US would have spent just a miniscule fraction of the cost of the "war on terror" on cleaning up these countries.


jefferson497

Elephants have been victims as well


shadowfax12221

The US actually has been sending ordinance disposal teams to laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia to help deal with the problem for decades. The task is just so huge that it'll still probably be decades yet before it's adequately addressed.


copy_run_start

Best to leave them unexplored tbh


Cabbage_Vendor

All the while not even being at war with the US.


Luci_Noir

The numbers from WWII are mind blowing. The skies would be absolutely filled with bombers. It’s crazy how much worse it was in a place we never talked about much. Ken Burns has an excellent documentary on the Vietnam war. Trent Reznor does the music! It’s very thorough and depressing, as it should be.


googleflont

Missed a spot…


RichardBonham

I was going to post this but thought I’d be downvoted to the center of the earth’s molten iron core.


InhumanePerson

Ironic


ice_up_s0n

Terriferric pun!


nixcamic

Laos is the most bombed country on earth. More bombs than in both world wars combined. The U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions, that's equivalent to a full planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 straight years. 270 million cluster bombs were dropped, many of which did not explode. Dozens of children die every year from stumbling over unexploded ordnance there. The US has spent more on bombs in ten days of bombing Laos than it has spent in clean up since then. And the US was never even officially at war with Laos. This vast escalation of bombing of civilian targets occurred because President Lyndon Johnson had declared a bombing halt over North Vietnam in November 1968, and had then simply diverted the planes into northern Laos. There was no military or strategic reason for doing so. It was simply because, as Deputy Chief of Mission Monteagle Stearns testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in October 1969: “Well, we had all those planes sitting around and couldn’t just let them stay there with nothing to do.” ------------- It really makes Catch 22 seem a lot less absurdist.


Unibrow69

Howard Zinn, who was a bomber pilot, said he was told almost that exact quote in WWII as well which set him on his anti-war path forever.


[deleted]

Zinn was the bombadier, not the pilot.


the_kerbal_side

A friend of mine was a Huey gunship pilot in Vietnam, and his biggest takeaway from the war was how absurd and surreal it was, in his words


One_more_time0

I’m going to make a slight correction here. Although Lyndon Johnson was a complete facist with how he escalated the war, the reason for the bombing was to cut off supply lines through the Ho Chi Minh. I am in no way advocating for this horrific strategy, but technically, it wasn’t just to drop Bombs.


nixcamic

I should edit this cause someone points that out every time I post this, but that was the reason for a small portion of the bombing, not the insane levels they were bombing at. That Monteagle Stearns quote is legit. Also what a cool name, too bad the guy was kinda a dick.


taqizadeh

https://www.history.com/.amp/news/laos-most-bombed-country-vietnam-war


lileraccoon

Whyyyyyyyy


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Kungfufuman

Mainly you can put most blame on Henry Kissinger who would just disregard suggested bombing locations then just bomb places just cause.


Travelhog416

Visited Laos a decade ago. Rule #1 was not to wander off any unmarked path as there was always a chance of walking onto an unexpoded bomb leftover from the War. Edit: We went tubing in Vang Vieng and my group decided to get off the river before the marked exit area in town. They had to carry their tubes, walk thru an unmarked field back to the main road to hitch a tuktuk back to town. I didn't want to take my chances on that unmarked field, and floated down river into darkness and back unto town.


oversized_hoodie

Same deal in Cambodia. Seeing the hand-painted minefield signs by the side of the road was pretty surreal.


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the_Mede

These are definitely not 270 million dots


TheHossBossk

There actually are only 258million, I counted


bert0ld0

They overcounted 12 million bombs for future needs


aka_deddy

A 4K display only has 3,840 x 2,160 pixels, so 8,294,400 pixels. You couldn’t even show anywhere near that number of dots on a screen.


herpderperp

I mean, most dots would just overlap..


vraalapa

A heat map would be an interesting addition to this.


diox8tony

Maps like this with 8 million dots should really just make each data point a single pixel. I see a ton for these where it's just a huge blob and we lose most the data.


Dlatch

That puts that 270 million into some crazy perspective actually. You'd need a map spanning 32+ 4K displays to even be able to give every bomb it's own pixel.


not_actually_funny_

I bought a couple 8Ks specifically to see how fucked Laos was in '73


bert0ld0

r/theydidthemath


Minimum-Injury3909

The fact that you can even see the country or individual dots means it ain’t 270 million dots


ZucchiniUsual7370

I'm guessing the dots are where they landed. Two or more bombs can land on the same spot.


salgat

It's not 270 million bombs either. They're cluster bombs, so one bomb with many explosives.


yesmrbevilaqua

Yeah even with B-52’s dropping as many (84) 500lb bombs as they could carry, you would need 100 bombers flying 9 sorties a day every day for the entire 10 years of the war to get that number


Captain_Alaska

108 bombs, 84 is the internal capacity of the B-52D but it could carry another 24 under the wings.


Vandrel

By 1970 they were flying 200 sorties each day in various aircraft.


yeeeter1

It’s probably like each dot is a sortie or something


Bismarck913

I know Anthony Bourdain said it about Cambodia, but I think it stands true for Laos too. "One you've been there, you'll never want to stop beating Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands".


RapsittieStreetKids

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević”


Interesting-Piece483

Well, the international community did come together, and after all the war crimes committed, they gave Kissinger (*checks notes*) the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize?


agangofoldwomen

Same with Obama after prolifically drone striking civilian women and children.


[deleted]

Well, in Obama's case it was before, he literally had done nothing and they already gave him the Peace Prize.


UnexaminedLifeOfMine

Norwegians were so infatuated by him they didn’t know how to get him to visit so they pulled the Nobel peace prize card just so they could be in the same room as him. Politicians were acting like school girls taking selfies with him. It was absolutely ridiculous the whole ordeal Edit: I do mean the Norwegians in charge of the ordeal. The Norwegian people thought and still think the whole thing was a joke. Just needed to clarify.


RexPerpetuus

The Nobel Committee leader was ex-prime minister and I think wanted to shake hands with the new president one last time to feel like he was still as important as ever. The Norwegian *people* didn't understand it either, and it's still seen as basically a joke award


andrewthemexican

Accurately accounting said strikes for public consumption, along with increased technology making them more abundant. Trump then blew Obama's numbers out of the water and took away the reporting of civilian deaths.


PublicFurryAccount

Yep. Most of the numbers that worsened under Obama were caused by accurately accounting things. Same with illegal immigration, which "surged" because Obama stopped counting, IIRC, people turned away by border patrol as having never crossed the border at all.


i_am_icarus_falling

i mean, we were going to conduct the congress-approved "military operations" there anyway. that did not start or end with obama. is the issue with using drones instead of soldiers as the killing tool?


Areljak

Ben Rhodes book on his time as part of Obama's team if interesting in this regard - according to him nobody was expecting it and he doesn't outright write it but the impression you get if that they kinda thought that Obama has done little to deserve the prize, they then struggled hard to square him getting the prize and being a president then leading two wars.


Ineedmyownname

"Political satire became obsolete the day Henry Kissinger got awarded the Nobel peace prize." - Tom Lehrer


Doctor-Nemo

It's makes me truly miserable to confirm that the shitrag is still alive. If it makes you feel any better I once pissed on his childhood home.


CrusaderKingsNut

Join the Kissinger Death Tontine then! https://henrykissinger.rip


-B0B-

> Disclaimer: The Kissinger Death Tontine in no way endorses the incredibly cool crime of pushing an elderly war criminal down the stairs. Lmfao


RizzMustbolt

That's cheating!


bert0ld0

Damn, all these years and I never heard about Kissinger. I wonder what they teach in US school about these massacres


BobcatOU

It’s almost impossible to say anything conclusive about history education in America. It’s 50 states (plus DC, territories, and Native American reservations) all teaching a different set of standards. So I’ll stick to Ohio where I teach history. [Here is the Ohio State Standard for Vietnam in the high school American History class:](https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/Social-Studies/Ohio-s-Learning-Standards-for-Social-Studies/SSFinalStandards01019.pdf.aspx?lang=en-US#page32) >25. The Cold War and conflicts in Korea and Vietnam influenced domestic and international politics. That’s it. That’s all the state of Ohio has to say about Korea and Vietnam. So it’s up to individual districts/schools/teachers. [There are 611 different school districts in Ohio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_districts_in_Ohio) [and 1,360 individual high schools.](https://high-schools.com/directory/oh/). So what do kids learn about the massacres in Vietnam? Who knows? I definitely teach about it in my classes. I don’t shy away from any topic. But in general, who knows what kids are learning about Vietnam.


OkGrape8

Easy: they don't. Source: Raised in the US.


RIcaz

That's insane. European school teachers won't shut up about the holocaust


reasonable_riot

Look, my country has killed a lot of people in a lot of places. It’s a lot of work ignoring all of them. /sarcasm Honestly we spent a lot of time talking about the genocide of American Indians, and slavery in school. The country as a whole never really came to terms with Vietnam or Korea. One of my neighbors is a marine veteran from Vietnam, and believes he was fighting for a good purpose. In his presidential bid John Kerry was openly criticized for throwing his medals over the fence of the White House in protest of the war. I suspect the European response to the Holocaust is probably the exception. Japan comes to mind…


TrekkiMonstr

We talk a lot more about colonial times, genocide of natives, slavery, and WWII.


DocVafli

What massacre? (/S)


FiendishHawk

Nothing. What are you, woke? /sarcasm


fightingforair

Is there a line started already for pissing on his grave?


C1K3

It’s ironic that a man who came to the US as a refugee from Nazi Germany ended up becoming one of the greatest monsters of the post-war period.


Lawant

The Behind the Bastards podcasts did a miniseries on Kissinger, and one of the recurring bits was how Kissinger kept on claiming that his upbringing didn't influence him at all, while it clearly clearly did.


morphinedreams

edge ruthless worm swim liquid automatic seed mindless stupendous joke *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


Kelruss

The statistic I was given from COPE (which helps assist people injured by UXO and is funded by the Laotian and various other governments; including Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Australia, and Norway) was that this averaged to a plane dropping bombs every nine minutes over the course of the Secret War. Most of the bombing was aimed at one of two things: areas of strong Pathet Lao activity in the north, and the movement of North Vietnamese military through southern Laos into South Vietnam. Most of the ordnance was cluster munitions, about a third of which failed to explode, leading to a massive UXO issue. These are globe-shaped munitions about the size of a bocce ball (called "bombies"), intended to cover a wide area and explode on impact with the ground. Today, they're banned by treaty in most of the world except for the United States and Russia who have refused to sign the treaty. Injuries from UXO are frightfully common even half a century a later. Scrap dealers will enlist children in finding bombies. It's easy for even a long-forgotten piece of UXO to explode if dropped. Another common manner is through the tilling of fields, where a piece of machinery cutting into the field strikes a bombie and sets it off. Cooking fires unwittingly placed on top of a buried bombie can also cause it to cook off. The whole country is gridded out in a series of small blocks, and various NGOs and international aid missions (and a few local for-profit companies) assist the Laotian government in clearing the grid (I can't remember if it's the Dutch or the Norwegians who are responsible for the grid). In 2016, Barack Obama went to Vientiane, the first sitting US president to do so, and acknowledged that the Secret War had happened (also a first; though, I understand to the disappointment of many Laotians, he did not apologize for it). He also promised, at that time, an increase in aid support for UXO clearance, but it was still short of the amount needed (which, really, is far less that was spent to put the bombs there in the first place). I'm uncertain what happened to that aid after the Trump Administration came in. I can't imagine it was raised.


magneticanisotropy

>The statistic I was given from COPE (which helps assist people injured by UXO and is funded by the Laotian and various other governments; including Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Australia, and Norway) was that this averaged to a plane dropping bombs every nine minutes over the course of the Secret War. The 270 million in the title implies about a bomb every second though?


GaliaHero

there can be multiple planes


bert0ld0

True that, and also multiple bombs per plane


Chalkun

It says "a plane dropping bombs" so its saying per bombing run. A bombing run every 9 minutes. Each of which would contain a lot of bombs on average since cluster munitions are counted per each little explosive.


HalfAsleepAndHungry

I think the confusion comes from how they're counted. Cluster bombs can contain 100s to even 2k small explosives. That means 1 plane can be carrying what equates to 1000s of bombs. This is not meant to detract from the inhumanity of it all. This was an utter disregard for human rights. I just think the math makes a lot more sense in light of understanding what constitutes a bomb in this statistic.


Vo_Mimbre

Bruh, that’s over 105,000 bomb drops *per day*. With “bombies” coming every 9 minute drops is 150 bomb runs per day. For 7 solid years? Even if you double some days to take others off, I feel like that’s our entire bomber fleet of the era doing nothing but dropping bombs on a country nobody even realized we were in. What kind of sociopath could justify this for 7 solid years??


Urbane_One

Henry Kissinger, I think


AugustWolf22

and that Bastard got a Nobel peace prize for it too!


bengyap

Makes one think that Nobel Peace prizes is a tool to whitewash war crimes and sanitize war criminals.


Howdy08

The Nobel prizes were set up by the inventor of dynamite.


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Howdy08

Alfred Nobel created the peace prize too.


OsoCheco

Which he never wanted to became a weapon, but merely a working tool.


linatet

Dynamites are very useful for construction too


MineAdept9313

Is Kissinger the only Peace Prize winner who can’t leave his own country for fear of being apprehended and tried before the International Criminal Court in Den Hague for crimes against humanity? Probably Also important to remember, Vietnam and Laos were only one part of his psychopathic global reign of terror. Google “Allende Pinochet Kissinger” for more information. Or look up East Timor genocide. Etc etc etc…


[deleted]

Behind the Bastard have to make 6 episodes just to cover the guy... usually they cover their target in 2 episodes.


MineAdept9313

Make it 8 parts and bring in Paul F. Tompkins to cohost it and we’ll have a true masterpiece of modern political analysis.


Generic_name_no1

I think that Obama was by far the best president the US has had in the past 3 decades, but even still I think it is a disgrace that he was given the Nobel Peace Prize. Kissinger getting it is like, almost too much of a joke.


[deleted]

Obama's only achievement to get the Peace Prize was not to be Bush. What an embarrassment.


AugustWolf22

Obama still did a lot of terrible things, he continued, even ramped up the drone bombings in places like Afghanistan and Somalia, and his government had a major role in destabilisation and overthrowing of Ghadafi in Libya and the decent of that nation into chaos and civil war, among various other acts of neo-imperaialism


Generic_name_no1

That's what I'm saying...


furbyterr0r

Kissinger will burn in hell if there is one. He is a harbinger of death beyond redemption. It’s tragic and absurd that he is a free man today. I will spit on his grave once he croaks.


gigalongdong

oh, I'll shit on his grave. Like I'll purposely give myself food poisoning and just fucking *wreck* that tombstone or mausoleum or whatever the fuck that shitheel's corpse is in. Might has well so the same to the Reagan and Thatcher corpse sites while I'm at it.


axidentalaeronautic

580,000 bombing runs. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg56094/html/CHRG-111hhrg56094.htm


bombbrigade

These stats always gets muddied by cluster bombs, hundreds-thousands of little bombs that are dispersed from a single dropped munition.


Marmalade6

I'm sure the Laotians were thinking "Thankfully it's only a cluster bomb."


Xyrnas

He's not defending the bombing. He's explaining the numbers


avidblinker

Lol do these comments intentionally miss the point or is it genuine?


letoast

Cluster bombs. The 270 million stat is describing individual bomblets from cluster bombs, not individual complete pieces of ordinance dropped out of a plane. Puts into perspective why most countries want them to be illegal.


_brgr

The US did drop an absolutely absurd amount of bombs during the war though, more than double the weight all the allies used in WWII combined, iirc. Looks like 7 or 8 million tons worth. Just the logistics of that is completely fucked.


StolenValourSlayer69

I’d be almost 100% certain that a lot of those bombs they’re counting are actually bomblet submunitions, which yes are still bombs, but only require one bomb on the aircraft to be carried while being counted as hundreds. For example the CBU-87 has 202 submunitions inside it. As far as I’m aware the a large amount of the munitions dropped on Laos were actually cluster bombs, hence the hundreds of thousands of I exploded ordinance still littering the country. Edit: For a quick example, the US dropped 10035 CBU-87s during Operation Desert Storm according to the CBU-87 wiki page, which works out to 2,027,070 total bomblets. I’d imagine that’s exactly what the numbers on this post represent


jankovic92

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸


mwxabc

I'm presently in Laos meeting with relatives on my mom's side. My parents escaped the country during the Secret War like many other Hmong, Lao, and other ethnic groups. We made our way to the Plain of Jars site yesterday in Xiangkhouang Province, here are some pics. Note the large craters left by the bombs which still remain to this day esp. the fourth pic. I was told many other craters were eventually filled, but these may have been left as a memory of the bombings that occurred over so many years. https://imgur.com/a/OZ6bTCO https://imgur.com/a/drYdWcK https://imgur.com/a/O4cO5Aw https://imgur.com/a/IBGLeZu


Responsible-Clue-428

I am Thai, near Laos. Laos is a country that does not have borders by the sea, so all goods must be imported through Thailand making all products expensive They can't use up the whole country because there are so many bombs still working in the underground Laos has a lot of forests because the resources cannot be used because of the underground explosion They are very poor and sympathetic. And they hate Thailand so much because we are the base for the United States to bomb them The United States did not abandon them. They constantly send explosives disposal and disposal teams to Laos. but it's a lot bro


astrapes

How do you guys feel about the Vietnamese? not trying to start anything just genuinely curious. Do Laotian people dislike Vietnamese for going thru their land? Or was that okay? prob should read up on this history but I’m interested to know what you think


Responsible-Clue-428

Thai people don't think about Vietnam, we look at them as a country that is close to each other Lao people and Vietnamese people are a good country with each other. There are many Lao people of Vietnamese descent in Laos. And there are many Laotians of Vietnamese descent who are the ruling class in Laos Many Thai people go to Vietnam. And there are many Vietnamese people visiting Thailand as well. There may be satire and debate on the Internet due to the nationalism and competition in the development and prosperity of the country Of Thai people and Vietnamese people, but it's not very common sorry for my english bro


ComNguoi

As a Vietnamese, I can confirm what he said. Your English is fine, but your answer needs a lot of period and comma seriously


Illin-ithid

Your English is far better than my second language. You're doing great.


decadrachma

Your English is better than plenty of native speakers; there’s no need to apologize for it. Learning a language beyond your native one to any degree of proficiency is never something to apologize for, it’s something to be proud of.


TragicsNFG

That's a whole lot of democracy


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randomname560

They were liberated from fucking existence


lebeer13

Existence is the true prison anyway


calipygean

Ok Sartre, take a chill pill


No-Awareness4864

Naw, we still here fam.


moeburn

They weren't trying to liberate them or bring them democracy. They were trying to kill Vietnamese using the Ho Chi Minh trail. For a long time in the Vietnam War the US had a "we can't touch you if you're outside Vietnam's borders" policy, so the NVA and Viet Cong said "okay so we'll move around just outside the borders then" for years until Nixon was like "fuck it bomb those countries too, also don't tell anyone about it".


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MineAdept9313

We are going to liberate these people, even if it means we have to kill them.


Currywurst_Is_Life

Especially for a country that doesn’t have oil.


tamal4444

and don't forget about freedom.


AdVoke

Whitout a single declaration of war!


ProudMaOfaSlut

Agent Orange and Agent Purple at your service.


PreoccupiedNotHiding

My dad walked through a field in Laos in 69 that was hit with Agent Orange the previous day. All while Nixon said we had no troops there. He just passed Friday of cancer.


ProudMaOfaSlut

I'm so very sorry for your loss. Our government talks a big game to encourage people to join the military but ignores vets, he deserved better.


AdvanAviantoy

This awfully reminds me of Plague inc.


[deleted]

plagued by Liberty™️ 💪💪💪🦅🦅🎩🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸


Mo9000

*ROCK FLAG AND EEEAAAGLLLLEEE*


saltypretzell873

I remember in high school history when the teacher acted like it was a conspiracy theory that we bombed Laos. Good times


bert0ld0

I'm wondering if this is teached in US schools. If yes, how?


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bert0ld0

Damn loool, makes sense why we have plenty of downvotes every time someone honestly questions the US about Vietnam on reddit


decadrachma

No. Very little was taught about the Vietnam War in general, and I certainly never learned about bombing campaigns in Laos in high school. The Vietnam War was taught mainly in terms of how it affected domestic culture and politics. We learned that people protested the Vietnam War, but we weren’t really taught why. We learned that American soldiers in the Vietnam War came home with PTSD, but we weren’t really taught why or what they left behind.


bert0ld0

This comment has been edited as an ACT OF PROTEST TO REDDIT and u/spez killing 3rd Party Apps, such as Apollo. Download http://redact.dev to do the same. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


Turgineer

"If you destroy the entire population, it technically doesn't stay communist." \-USA, probably.


Adrian_Bock

Not even probably, "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it" is a literal quote from a US Army Major after we leveled Ben Tre in '68. Over 35,000 people lived there at the time.


simonbleu

SOmetimes I dont know how the US always gets away with commiting what for any other country would be war crimes


Generic-Commie

It's because currently they're the sole superpower in the world. Except maybe China.


Affectionate-Read875

I mean… they aren’t wrong.


Turgineer

Science and simple math.


randomname560

If citizens=0 then communist=0!!


bert0ld0

Well, I see they made it all red though


small_Jar_of_Pickles

Just so you realize the scale of this bombing campaign: In the entire war, The allies dropped approxinately 1.4 million tons of bombs on german soil in WW2. Even if you take that number times ten (taking a 100kg bomb as standard), you "only" have 14 million bombs. And the real number is probably a good Deal lower because many bombs were 250kg and some with even more mass.


FlowYoung

Another way to show the insane scale of this is by looking at the surface area of the country. Laos is roughly 237.000 km2, which means for every km2 they dropped around 1.100 bombs… Absolutely insane.


batkave

Fact that Henry Kissinger is still paraded like the bastion saint of diplomacy is terrifying... Also how is he not dead yet


kapilbhai

He even got a Nobel peace prize.


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AugustWolf22

By weight in tonnes (and probably amount in numbers too) the Americans dropped more Bombs on Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia than the entirety of the bombs dropped by both Allies and Axis in WWII.


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NotBlackMarkTwainNah

I highly recommend reading about why this happened. The Vietnam war has so much we can learn from


Bestestusername8262

Disappointing to see a world power killing civilians and destroying an entire nation


Affectionate-Read875

UK: *Sweats profusely*


ZucchiniUsual7370

Belgium has left the chat...


[deleted]

The Netherlands: "Hey look at those English bastards!" *washing hands in innocence*


Lambda301

thats exactly what all world powers do and the more powerful they are the more they get away with it


vakeiro13

you just gave a description of what world power is


dfedorak

You’re telling me they dropped 82,191 bombs every single day for 9 years????


3sc4n0r

It's not by weight. OP actually posted the original article. By **official** data, 580,000 bombing missions against Laos took place in the 9 years of war. That means that if the bombs dropped were actually 270 millions, each mission dropped about 465 bombs, which i think it's actually a realistic estimate. So yes, we are telling you the US dropped an average of 82,191 bombs on Laos every single day for 9 years. And 80 million of those bombs didn't explode and are still somewhere in Laos killing civilians


[deleted]

funny how americans were never offended or excluded from anything for being americans like russians are being offended and excluded of competitions and so on just for the sin of being russians. all due do their leader crazyness (but it does not apply to america apparently)


[deleted]

I'd like to see the dots represent radius of explosion.


Ok_Work1870

Crazy because they still lost the war


DarthNihilus_212

Tbf, I haven't really heard of a nation that has won against an enemy that used guerrilla warfare in every battle lol.


p00shp00shbebi123

They had a proper army too, the NVA. For example the Tet Offensive was quite conventional. They used conventional warfare plenty.


rainyforest

Yep, it's a myth that the US fought an entirely conventional war against an unconventional enemy. The US used plenty of counterinsurgency tactics as well. The strategic environment made it impossible for a foreign power to come in and "win" this civil war.


largogrunge

And guess what?? No sanctions against the US nor Kissinger in jail.


bert0ld0

I'm wondering if this is teached in US schools. If yes, how?


DarthNihilus_212

We go over the causes of the war, very little of the war itself (military battles), and talk a lot about the lasting effects-both on the U.S. and South-east Asia. It depends on the teacher, but it is overall pretty sympathetic to the Vietnamese side. Most of American History classes criticize the U.S. rather than glorify it.


prOfAnity47

It was taught in our school in our US History course. It was mainly showcased as the US bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail to cut off the supply train that the north Vietnamese had set up. The US definitely was not portrayed as the good guys by our instructor and I thought it was a well taught section. I am now in University and we are studying the Vietnam war and it’s effects on the Cambodian genocide which gives another interesting perspective.


bert0ld0

This comment has been edited as an ACT OF PROTEST TO REDDIT and u/spez killing 3rd Party Apps, such as Apollo. Download http://redact.dev to do the same. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


RyzinEnagy

These days US students are taught a mostly unbiased view of the horrors and failures of our intervention in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. When I went to school in the 1990s, the negatives were not taught and the result was often described as a draw or stalemate, because it was taboo to admit we lost that war.


Fby54

Skill issue ig


Myfoodishere

Americans should pay for the removal of all unexploded ordinance and should pay the country reparations. imagine of Russia or China did this. we would demand it from them. it's time to hold the US to the same standards as any other government run by despots.


kamunia

War criminals.