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Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror

 
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Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror

By Andre Vltchek
Global Research, October 05, 2015

Southeast Asian elites “forgot” about those tens of millions of Asian people murdered by Western imperialism at the end of and after the WWII. They “forgot” about what took place in the North – about the Tokyo and Osaka firebombing, about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, about the barbaric liquidation of Korean civilians by the US forces. But they also forgot about their own victims – about those hundreds of thousands, in fact about the millions, of those who were blown to pieces, burned by chemicals or directly liquidated – men, women and children of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.

All is forgiven and all is forgotten.

And once again the Empire is proudly “pivoting” into Asia; it is even bragging about it.

It goes without saying that the Empire has no shame and no decency left. It boasts about democracy and freedom, while it does not even bother to wash the blood of tens of millions off its hands.

All over Asia, the “privileged populaces” has chosen to not know, to not remember, or even to erase all terrible chapters of the history. Those who insist on remembering are being silenced, ridiculed, or made out to be irrelevant.

Such selective amnesia, such “generosity” will very soon backfire. Shortly, it will fly back like a boomerang. History repeats itself. It always does, the history of the Western terror and colonialism, especially. But the price will not be covered by the morally corrupt elites, by those lackeys of the Western imperialism. As always, it will be Asia’s poor who will be forced to pay.

***

After I descended from the largest cave in the vicinity of Tham Pha Thok, Laos, I decided to text my good Vietnamese friend in Hanoi. I wanted to compare the suffering of Laotian and Vietnamese people.

The cave used to be “home” to Pathet Lao. During the Second Indochina War it actually served as the headquarters. Now it looked thoroughly haunted, like a skull covered by moss and by tropical vegetation.

The US air force used to intensively bomb the entire area and there are still deep craters all around, obscured by the trees and bushes.

The US bombed the entirety of Laos, which has been given a bitter nickname: “The most bombed country on earth”.

It is really hard to imagine, in a sober state, what the US, Australia and their Thai allies did to the sparsely populated, rural, gentle Laos.

John Bacher, a historian and a Metro Toronto archivist once wrote about “The Secret War”: “More bombs were dropped on Laos between 1965 and 1973 than the U.S. dropped on Japan and Germany during WWII. More than 350,000 people were killed. The war in Laos was a secret only from the American people and Congress. It anticipated the sordid ties between drug trafficking and repressive regimes that have been seen later in the Noriega affair.”

In this biggest covert operation in the U.S. history, the main goal was to “prevent pro-Vietnamese forces from gaining control” over the area. The entire operation seemed more like a game that some overgrown, sadistic boys were allowed to play: Bombing an entire nation into the Stone Age for more than a decade. But essentially this “game” was nothing else than one of the most brutal genocides in the history of the 20th century.

Naturally, almost no one in the West or in Southeast Asia knows anything about this.

I texted my friend: “What I witnessed a few years ago working at the Plain of Jars was, of course, much more terrible than what I just saw around Tham Pha Thok, but even here, the horror of the US actions was crushing.” I also sent her a link to my earlier reports covering the Plain of Jars.

A few minutes later, she replied: “If you didn’t tell me… I would have never known about this secret war. As far as we knew, there was never a war in Laos. Pity for Lao people!”

I asked my other friends in Vietnam, and then in Indonesia. Nobody knew anything about the bombing of Laos.

The “Secret War” remains top-secret, even now, even right here, in the heart of the Asia Pacific region, or more precisely, especially here.

When Noam Chomsky and I were discussing the state of the world in what eventually became our book “On Western Terrorism – From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare”, Noam mentioned his visit to the war-torn Laos. He clearly remembered Air America pilots, as well as those hordes of Western journalists who were based in Vientiane but too busy to not see and to not ask any relevant questions.

***

“In the Philippines, the great majority of people is now convinced that the US actually ‘liberated’ our country from the Japanese”, my left-wing journalist friends once told me.

Dr. Teresa S. Encarnación Tadem, Professor of Political Science of University of the Philippines Diliman, explained to me last year, face to face, in Manila: “There is a saying here: “Philippines love Americans more than Americans love themselves.”

I asked: “How is it possible? The Philippines were colonized and occupied by the United States. Some terrible massacres took place… The country was never really free. How come that this ‘love’ towards the US is now prevalent?”

It is because of extremely intensive North American propaganda machine”, clarified Teresa’s husband, Dr. Eduardo Climaco Tadem, Professor of Asian Studies of University of the Philippines Diliman. “It has been depicting the US colonial period as some sort of benevolent colonialism, contrasting it with the previous Spanish colonialism, which was portrayed as ‘more brutal’. Atrocities during the American-Philippine War (1898 – 1902) are not discussed. These atrocities saw 1 million Philippine people killed. At that period it was almost 10% of our population… the genocide, torture… Philippines are known as “the first Vietnam”… all this has been conveniently forgotten by the media, absent in the history books. And then, of course, the images that are spread by Hollywood and by the American pop culture: heroic and benevolent US military saving battered countries and helping the poor…

Basically, entirely reversing the reality.

The education system is very important”, added Teresa Tadem. “The education system manufactures consensus, and that in turn creates support for the United States… even our university – University of the Philippines – was established by the Americans. You can see it reflected in the curriculum – for instance the political science courses… they all have roots in the Cold War and its mentality.”

Almost all children of the Asian “elites” get “educated” in the West, or at least in so-called “international schools” in their home countries, where the imperialist curriculum is implemented. Or in the private, most likely religious/Christian schools… Such “education” borrows heavily from the pro-Western and pro-business indoctrination concepts.

And once conditioned, children of the “elites” get busy brainwashing the rest of the citizens. The result is predictable: capitalism, Western imperialism, and even colonialism become untouchable, respected and admired. Nations and individuals who murdered millions are labeled as carriers of progress, democracy and freedom. It is “prestigious” to mingle with such people, as it is highly desirable to “follow their example”. The history dies. It gets replaced by some primitive, Hollywood and Disney-style fairytales.

Read more here:
[link to www.counterpunch.org]
Anonymous Coward
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10/06/2015 08:19 AM
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Re: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
Waahh. Waahh waaaaaaah!

whatever
Anonymous Coward
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10/06/2015 08:24 AM
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Re: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
Waahh. Waahh waaaaaaah!

whatever
 Quoting: Anonymous Coward 70494945


One of these days, we'll be bombing you.

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10/06/2015 08:27 AM
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Re: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
They will never forget, as long as there are liberal PTB guilters that try to make the average American responsible for the actions of the European socialist elite.
Anonymous Coward
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09/06/2016 05:10 AM
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Re: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
[link to www.ktvz.com]

Thank Obama
Anonymous Coward
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09/06/2016 05:16 AM
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Re: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
no, but they have apparently forgotten that it was commies that killed most of them anyway...I don't see china or Russia going on an apology tour handing out their taxpayers money generations after the fact in reparations
Anonymous Coward
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09/06/2016 05:53 AM
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Re: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines: Southeast Asia “Forgets” about US Sponsored Terror
Hey, go fuck yourself. The Japanese, during WW2, where among the most evil people in WW2. They deserved to be nuked off the face of the Earth, for what they did during the war.

Their soldiers practiced cannibalism, for sport. Would cut prisoners of war in half to test their swords, as well as Chinese and SE Asian individuals.

Also, many of those communist regimes, murdered untold millions of their own people.

America never colonized the Philippines, America occupied the Philippines, and modernized them. When the modernization projects where done, and the Philippines was turned into a somewhat respectable nation, America was preparing to pull out, when WW2 broke out.

We could of said screw it, and allow Japan to have the Philippines, but instead, America intentionally engaged in a course of action, to goad the Japanese into war.

The most brutal genocide in the 20th Century, was carried out by Chomsky's fellow Bolsheviks in the USSR, and fellow Communists in China.

Laos, was, horrible, but it was a horrible situation. Communism had to be contained at all costs. People don't understand that, due to leftist scumbag's lying through their teeth, about the horrors of Communism.





GLP