Two Million Tons of Murder Leftover

IF YOU LET YOUR CHILD wander as they will, picking up sticks here or chasing after a ball, there, do you fear they will explode and vaporize before your loving eyes? What are the chances, in the US of A, that your dog, or your lover, or your friend, or that you—will brush up against unexploded ordinance today?

Pretty low, I’d bet.

Not so in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, which has the distinction of being, per capita, “the most heavily bombed nation in the world.”

From 1964 until 1973, over half a million bombing missions were carried out over the country, and as a result, over two million tonnes (2.2 million tons) of bombs were dropped.¹ Based on its experience over the last 10 years, UXO Lao estimates that up to 30 percent of all ordnance dropped failed to detonate on impact, leaving a lethal legacy that continues to kill, maim and impoverish over 30 years later.

The shirt above is for sale at my Cafepress store, you can see one version here. At best, I hope to sell some to spark dialogue and spread awareness. At the least, I hope only to bring awareness to a few people who did not have it before now, through this post.

The US dropped millions of bombs on these people. More than 2,000,000 tons of bombs. More than all the bombs dropped in WWII on Japan as well as Germany. And to this day, does nothing to own up to it or cleanup.

The UXO LAO is the project that attempts to return the land to a place where death planted decades ago doesn’t still wait for humans. To donate, see this page.

Some feel that the US legacy is stained now that revelations of torture are coming to light. Sadly, I think the only people who possess an image of a previously-untarnished US legacy are those who do not possess the facts or a sense of history. We can change this, but inertia, economic interests of the War Machine, and the ubiquitous sense of “American Exceptionalism” will be against us.

Peace.