Word: laotians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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RELENTLESSLY, almost at will, Communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops advanced last week against Laotian government forces. As they swept forward, concern mounted among U.S. officials. On Capitol Hill, critics of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia protested that Washington seemed to be plunging deeper into Laos just as it was pulling back from Viet Nam-though of course the U.S. commitment in Viet Nam is incomparably larger. The Administration denied the charges, but the evidence appeared to confirm them (see box following page...
...American OSS veteran named James Thompson paid a call on the governor of Thailand's Nong Khai province. "Come upstairs," said the governor. "I have a Lao prince you might like to meet." The governor's guest was Prince Souphanouvong, then a leader of the embryo Laotian independence movement and now titular head of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao. Souphanouvong asked Thompson for pledges of U.S. support against the French colonialists who were then re-establishing their control over Laos. Their talk was, almost certainly, the first contact between American officials and independence-minded Laotians...
After 1955, the Pathet Lao (with heavy North Vietnamese support) tightened their hold on northeast Laos. The Royal Laotian Army-trained by U.S. advisers along conventional lines-proved incapable of fighting a counterinsurgency war. By 1959, a mysterious mission known as the Programs Evaluation Office (PEO) was functioning in Vientiane. Ostensibly an arm of the U.S. aid mission, its actual function was to oversee training of the Laotian army, and it had almost total control of all U.S. aid to Laos. The money, however, failed to shore up the Vientiane government. A new Geneva accord signed in 1962 called...
...Souvanna, American backing has proved to be no great blessing. Despite total U.S. air supremacy, the Communist forces seem to be able to seize and hold pretty much what they need. The regular Laotian army is famed for its ineffectiveness. The CIA-supported Meos, a guerrilla army of mountain tribesmen, are far superior but are not capable of standing up to North Vietnamese regulars in pitched battle. The U.S. presence, however, is substantial, and the program goes far beyond simply supporting military operations. Aid now runs at more than $250 million a year in a country of only 3 million...
...these installations alone commit the U. S. to a policy of unilateral military response in much of the world. Such unilateral action would even cover, as Mr. Nixon showed last week, the right to authorize aerial bombings on the Plaine des Jarres or massive strategic assistance to the Royal Laotian Army. SR 85 merely compels the President to choose tactics which will command Congressional support or create Congressional hostility...