Word: lao
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Heavy Cost. The main argument for this costly effort, as Symington pointed out last week, is that it "will buy more time for Vietnamization" by pinning down North Vietnamese troops in Laos. Without this effort, the North Vietnamese would have unrestricted use of Laotian supply lines to support their effort in South Viet Nam. "But what about Laos?" asked Symington. "The United States is using the people of Laos for its own purposes, at a startlingly heavy increased cost to our taxpayers in money, and to the Lao people in terms of destroyed hopes, destroyed territory, and destroyed lives...
...horror of the war-if something so one-sided can be called war-is made increasingly tragic by the utter simplicity of the Lao people...
...afternoon in Luang Prabang I sat drinking the juice of a coconut on the banks of the Mekong. I had just begun a second coconut when a Lao in an air force uniform sat down beside me and told me I should not drink so much coconut juice. I told him that people in India believe coconut juice makes you strong...
...LAST night in Luang Prabang I ate dinner in the bamboo shack of a Lao translator I had met in the U.S. Information Service office. We ate a typical meal of tasteless "sticky rice." coated vegetables and soup. We talked about the war, the Americans and the Pathet Lao. "Do you know what Pathet Lao means?" he asked...
When I said I didn't he told me, "It means Lao People and that is what they are. Just Lao People." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper money used by the Pathet Lao. I had never seen one before. On it was a scene of the Plain of Jars: Lao gunners were shooting bazcokas at American planes flying overhead. The remains of several shot down planes were strewn across the background...