In Monday's blog post, I briefly touched on the consequences of US operations in Iraq, namely, creating fertile soil in which groups like ISIS can take root and thrive. I then came across this article in the New York Times. The subject is a Lao-American woman named Channapha Khamvongsa, who has become a singular and formidable force in the effort to remove unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the Laotian countryside.
In brief, from 1964 to 1973, the United States carried about secret bombing missions in Laos, which when it was over amounted to one ton of bombs dropped per person in Laos. However, almost a third of the cluster-munitions—which split in midair, deploying hundreds of anti-personnel bomblets—did not explode. Tens of millions of these submunitions now litter Laos. From the end of what was codenamed Operation Barrel Roll to the present, these bomblets have killed around 8,000 people and wounded another 12,000.
Considering the two articles side by side—the one on ISIS, the one on Laos—invites consideration of the consequences of war. In both instances we see clearly the results of the United States spending a decade and trillions of dollars carrying out "counterinsurgency" in a given country. And it bears repetition that when these experiences are presented to Americans in movie theaters, the received image is, to quote late film critic Roger Ebert, "a misrepresentation so blatant that it functions as a lie."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/world/asia/laos-campaign-to-clear-millions-of-unexploded-bombs.html
[See also Dec. 4, 2012, blog post]
