Another Quiet American

by Brett Dakin

  In this section of Souksan’s brochure, to my surprise, the English was absolutely perfect. “Xieng Khouang province,” it read, “offers the beauty of high, green mountains combined with rugged karst limestone formations. The original capital of Xieng Khouang, Muang Khoun, was almost totally obliterated by US bombing in the 1970s, and its inhabitants consequently moved to nearby Phonsavanh.” Whoever had written this paragraph certainly hadn’t minced words. The phrase “almost totally obliterated” was dead on. But was it appropriate for a brochure intended to appeal to Western tourists, potentially Americans?

  Just as I considered rewriting the text to soften the blow, Souksan pumped up the volume on the computer’s speakers. Certainly the most useful feature of any computer at the NTA was the CD player, which provided endless entertainment for the entire staff. The next song was “Heal the World,” by Michael Jackson.

  “Ha! This is American song, no?” asked Souksan. “Very good.”

  Perhaps Souksan thought nothing of it, but for me the irony inherent in this situation was overwhelming. It captured in a single moment the contradictions I often felt living as an American in Laos. What did the Lao I knew really think of me? Were we bitter, historical enemies or natural friends? When he listened to Michael Jackson, did Souksan think at all about America’s role in his country’s history? Was America really “very good,” all unimaginable wealth, pop music, and designer clothes, or did he silently despise the US for the problems it had caused. I’d had nothing to do with the war in Laos. But I was an American, after all, and I had benefited from that fact. Wasn’t I partly responsible for the past as well? And wasn’t I just another quiet American, a direct descendent of Graham Greene’s fresh-faced Harvard man, convinced that I knew what was right? It wasn’t guilt, exactly, that I felt as I heard Michael Jackson sing, but a nagging discomfort about my role at the NTA and in Laos in general.

  I decided to leave the text untouched.

  ___

  Despite our deep involvement in the domestic affairs of Laos in the past, and our government’s unabashed interference in the course of its history, Americans know little about the landlocked Southeast Asian nation. When the Indochina War ended in 1975, 564 American soldiers were reported missing in action in Laos; of these, only 122 have been accounted for, while 442 remain “missing.” Not a few families across America spend at least a part of each day wondering if their sons, brothers, or nephews are still alive in the remote hills of Southeast Asia. Even more, more than 200,000 Lao and Hmong now call the US home. Yet, most Americans have no idea where Laos is. “Lagos? Isn’t that somewhere in Africa?” my classmates and neighbors had asked me before I left. When a friend attempted to send a letter to “Vientiane, Laos” through the US Postal Service, she was told that no such place existed. She addressed the letter to Vietnam instead, and it somehow arrived. In some ways, the “secret war” remains as secret in America today as it was when the White House orchestrated the bombing campaign in Xieng Khouang.

  One afternoon, scouring the shelves at the Centre de Langue Française, I came across one of a handful of English texts in the library: the transcript of a confidential October 1969 US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on America’s security agreements and commitments in Laos. In October 1969, the American public had no idea that the US military was conducting operations in Laos. Officially, of course, it wasn’t: even as it poured millions of dollars of military aid into the Royal Lao Army and supported bombing raids over the Plain of Jars, the US—just like the North Vietnamese—maintained publicly that it was upholding the neutrality of Laos. As a result of this Senate hearing, legislators on the committee were now aware that this was essentially a lie. Some were not impressed. One heated exchange between Senator William Fulbright and William Sullivan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific at the time, was particularly telling. After Sullivan had admitted the deep, yet secret involvement of the US in Laos, Senator Fulbright asked, “Doesn’t this ever strike you as sort of an absurdity? They [the North Vietnamese] are pretending they are not there, and we are pretending we are not there.”

  What Fulbright regarded as “absurd” provided the basis for just about the only American film about Laos ever made. Air America is an action comedy based on Christopher Robbins’ quite serious book of the same name. It is partly fictional, but for pure comedy it cannot compete with the truth of the history of American involvement in Laos. Starring Hollywood hunks Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr., it takes a decidedly light-hearted approach to the American military effort in Laos. The film opens with shots of USAID rice donations crashing through the roofs of rural bamboo huts spliced with actual footage of President Nixon denying any American presence in Laos. A pig falls from the sky into a hilltribe village, squealing as it tumbles to the earth.

  “There is no war in Laos,” an army recruiter assures Downey in Los Angeles before he is shipped off to Long Chieng, US military HQ in Laos and a town that isn’t even on the map. Later, a CIA man tells him that, “A secret war is the way to go. . . . We can’t lose.” The hopelessly corrupt General Song, the film’s fictitious Royal Lao Army leader, dreams of operating his own Holiday Inn in California once the war is over, although he need not worry—his share of the profits from the illegal opium trade in Northern Laos will ensure him a comfortable retirement. As they finish up their daily flights over the Plain of Jars, the Air America pilots call ahead to an Italian restaurant in Vientiane. Mel Gibson makes a 9:30 reservation and orders the lobster special before finding himself suddenly under fire from the communists. The words he chooses to describe his own situation aptly sum up the United States’ situation at the time: “I’m VSF.”

  Very Severely Fucked.

  ___

  The morning after my encounter with Souksan and Michael Jackson, I paid another visit to my friend Joe. That week, two old acquaintances of his happened to be visiting from the States. Jack had been in Laos during the war as an officer with USAID, working on water and electricity projects in villages throughout the country. Gary had worked for the CIA and had been stationed in remote military posts in the northern provinces. I was excited by the chance to talk to these two men about their experiences during the war. Their very presence made a period in history that I had only read about in books so tangible, so real.

  Over scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, we talked about the legacy of the Indochina War. Jack and Gary were friendly and open, happy to be back in a country and surrounded by a people they clearly loved. But discussing the war wasn’t easy, as we approached the topic from such different perspectives. We couldn’t escape the vast generation gap that separated guys like them from Americans my age. Even though they had lived through Vietnam, and had experienced first-hand the flagrantly misguided activities in which our government had engaged, they seemed far less cynical about it all than I was. Perhaps our failure to see eye to eye had to do purely with age. While my classmates and I had grown up in the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle, these guys had been raised in the years after the glory of World War II, when America had been perceived around the globe as invincible.

  While I sensed that a part of Jack and Gary remained convinced that the US could do no wrong, many young Americans assume it rarely does anything right. They cannot understand how any American could have believed in what our military was trying to accomplish in Laos and Vietnam. With the benefit of hindsight, my generation is quick to dismiss the conflict out of hand as having been a waste of time, money, effort, and lives. The disastrous consequences of the Vietnam War, both abroad and at home, have been seared into our collective memory. We are not even surprised when our government is accused of having engaged in shockingly illegal activities in the past.

  In the weeks before I had left for Laos, the so-called “Tailwind” controversy had erupted in the media establishment. CNN produced an incendiary story, narrated by celebrity journalist Peter Arnett, which accused the US of using nerve gas against its own troops
in Laos. The piece claimed that the military had targeted American soldiers attempting to defect, and that the US government had worked assiduously to cover up its actions in the decades since. Under a deluge of criticism from the military and from some in the media, the network eventually pulled the story and issued an apology. The main reporter was fired and Arnett distanced himself from the report, even though he had narrated the whole thing. The truth remained in question.

  I had first heard about the CNN story in my brother’s apartment in Boston while we sat in his kitchen and listened to a daily talk show on the local National Public Radio station. As I digested the information, I found myself believing the accusations; they did not seem entirely out of the question. After hearing both sides, my brother turned to me and asked, “What’s the big deal? Of course they did it.”

  His comments had been slightly tongue in cheek, of course, but they pointed to the ease with which Americans of my generation are able to condemn our government.

  That makes folks like Jack and Gary angry.

  “So you think the Tailwind story isn’t true?” I asked.

  “Look, I know it’s not true,” said Gary. “I was there, and there’s just no way it could have happened.”

  Jack questioned the motives of the veterans who had allegedly contributed to the story. “You know, during Vietnam, only a quarter of all US troops stationed in Indochina ever saw any action.” Most of them remained in the cities, behind the secure walls of American compounds, surrounded by swimming pools, “entertainment” facilities, and supermarkets stocked with imported American goods. Very few indeed were out in the jungle under attack from Vietcong guerrillas, or attempting to defect from the military.

  According to Jack and Gary, during the Indochina War, Vientiane was a particularly rowdy place to be. Between 1962 and 1972, the US spent more than 500 million dollars to prop up the Royal Lao Government in Vientiane. The capital was crawling with American advisors and their dependents; at the height of US involvement in Lao affairs, the international school was educating nearly 700 students. Vientiane boomed as the economy expanded with wartime aid. Western hippies and CIA operatives alike drank the nights away in the city’s new bars and nightclubs, and Lao officials built ostentatious villas on the outskirts of town. The streets were jammed with imported Fords, Chevrolets, and Mercedes.

  And the movie theaters! While today there isn’t one cinema in all of Laos, during the war there were four in Vientiane alone, two down in Savannakhet, and even one way up north in Houei Xai, a mere wisp of a town on the border with Thailand. A surplus of American aid meant that the seedier side of life in Vientiane also flourished. Jack and Gary confirmed travel writer Paul Theroux’s assessment of the city during his brief wartime visit: “The brothels are cleaner than the hotels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco, and opium easier to find than a cold glass of beer.”

  Back in Washington, Senator Fulbright and other representatives who were privy to confidential information about Laos wanted to make their colleagues and the American public aware of the situation. During the same 1969 Senate hearing on Laos, Fulbright said as much: “If I could get up on the floor and say—which I may do one of these days—what you have told us of how ridiculous this is, a lot of my colleagues would say, for goodness sakes, this is nonsense, throwing [millions] a year pretty nearly down a rat hole.” But he remained silent, and the war dragged on.

  The Americans ran Vientiane back then—but they ran it into the ground. Eventually, the party came to an end with the communist victory in December 1975. The US had decisively lost the battle.

  But that’s not to say we didn’t win the war.

  ___

  Just down the street from my house, there lived a family I got to know pretty well over the time I lived in Laos. I’d say Bing was about 35. She lived in a simple one-room house along with her four children, who ranged in age from four to 14, and her younger sister. Her husband had passed away long ago, and her sister had never married. Now, Bing was the head of the family. During the day, they converted the house into a small clothing factory, and the family worked to produce an array of colorful shirts and skirts. The small black-and-white television in the corner of the room was usually on. The children were kept busy measuring cloth, cutting material, and sewing the fabric together. None seemed to go to school on a regular basis. Once a week, Bing would take the finished clothing to the Morning Market to sell as much as she could.

  For a while, I dropped by Bing’s house almost every day, either before work or just after I had come home. I would sit on her floor and happily accept a glass of cool water from one of the kids. If I was really lucky, an iced coffee. Iced coffee in Laos is a heavenly experience. Strong coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk, unsweetened condensed milk, and sugar is poured over ice and served in a plastic bag with a straw. The result blows away anything you might buy at Starbucks, and of course costs only a fraction of the price. In Vientiane, it became an addiction.

  “How’s business?” I would ask. In response, Bing invariably launched into her latest story about the trials of life in Vientiane. She was very vocal, and liked to criticize everything about her country: the roads, the people, even the government. Whenever she wanted to criticize the Party, Bing would make a discreet reference to the current leadership by waving her hand in the direction of the Presidential Palace on Lan Xang Avenue. Bing was as forceful physically as she was with her words, and often, after telling a particularly bawdy joke, she would give me a slap on the knee that left me in pain for the rest of my visit. Her kids usually kept quiet, but would occasionally giggle at something Bing would say about me (this was particularly funny for them if I failed to understand what she was talking about). I don’t think they ever quite got used to the idea of a falang sitting in their home.

  She was always upbeat, but she had much more on her mind than clothes: she was trying to obtain a visa to visit her brother in the United States. He lived in Wichita, Kansas. When the US had pulled out after the war, hundreds of thousands of Lao—ultimately more than ten percent of the population—fearing the new regime, fled the country. Families were separated, marriages disrupted. And most of the refugees, like Bing’s brother, ended up in the States.

  “But why Kansas?” Bing wondered aloud as I was thinking the same thing. “Why not California? That sounds like a nice place to me. It’s warm. Or how about Hawaii? I saw it on TV once.”

  In the twenty years or so since he had left, Bing had received only two letters from her brother. She had no idea what he did, what it was like where he lived, or if his children were healthy. For Bing, he was “missing in action,” a casualty of the war, and she just wanted to see him again. But in order for a simple visit to the US, she needed to submit a flurry of documents to the American Embassy: a request for permission to enter the country. Her brother’s W-2 tax forms. Letters from her brother and his employer stating that he is in good standing. The bank statements of everyone involved.

  Bing couldn’t speak a word of English, and during my visits I tried to help her understand the visa application process by translating these documents loosely into Lao. As I leafed through the papers, I learned that her brother worked as a security guard at a plastics factory in Arkansas City, Kansas. He had 400 dollars in the bank, which he used to support his six children in Kansas. Two had been born in Laos, another two in Thailand, and a final pair in America.

  “Why do they make this so difficult?” Bing often asked.

  I would explain that the embassy suspected she might never come back to Laos.

  It wasn’t much in the US, but 400 dollars was probably more money than Bing had ever seen at one time.

  She assured me that she would never want to live in America. “It’s too cold over there, and it snows! I can’t deal with snow!”

  Bing was a victim of a war that continues to wound. Her situation made me angry. The US effort had led to the split in her family. I wanted to help her, to march into the consul’s
office and convince him to take her. But I knew that that would do more harm than good. I also knew that the embassy’s fear of surreptitious immigration was hardly unwarranted. The desire for family reunification and the hope for a better life in America fueled an insatiable demand for visas—each time I went past the embassy, a line of applicants stretched out onto the street—and only a handful were granted every year.

  All things considered, Bing’s chances didn’t look great.

  Luckily, communication between Lao families and their relatives in the US had become much easier in recent years. The government no longer interfered with international financial contributions, and many families in Vientiane depended for their survival on the checks they received from relatives overseas. Former “traitors” were even allowed to come back and visit, and Bing hoped her brother would one day be able to make the long trip across the Pacific instead. Given her situation, it was the best hope she had of seeing him before it was too late.