More Bombs than People
March 27, 2008
Bomb Harvest Laos looks at the secret US airwar in Laos a country that was bombed extensively to cut off Vietcong supply lines. The film follows a bomb disposal expert training a team to clear “big bombs” their name for 250 – 1000 pound munitions. One villager who survived the war describes how, with a popualtion of three million, there were more bombs than people. I’d call this the attempted extermination of a people and I can’t help but be reminded of South Lebanon. In the last few days of the 2006 July War, when peace was being negotiated, the Israeli’s cynically dropped 4 million cluster bombs (UN estimate) on the South of Lebanon. The total population of Lebanon is 4 million so for the South this is probably two bombs per man, woman and child. When will Israel and the States pay for their crimes? Where is the outcry? Where is the justice?
If the people of these countries really believe in Democracy – and we have to presume they do since they never stop drivelling on about it – then they’ll understand they are fully responsible for this and they are by association murderous criminals.
That was the number killed by unexploded ordnance in Laos in 2005. Almost all of the ordnance in Laos is American, left over from the secret air war of the late ’60s and ’70s. The US dropped almost 2 million tonnes of bombs in nine years, trying to stop the flow of troops and munitions from North to South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”
