History

It's a glorious day. Henry Kissinger, former thief of oxygen and current polluter of soil, is dead. Unfortunately, death won't stop him from claiming more victims.

During the Vietnam war, Laos was officially neutral and engaged in its own civil war between the monarchic Royal Lao Government and the communist Pathet Lao forces. Its territory also hosted parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a crucial supply route for the North Vietnamese army. The US, in order to both combat the spread of communism and stop the flow of weapons into South Vietnam, started the so-called "Secret War": a years-long bombing campaign in which they dropped more ordnance by weight than in the entirety of the second world war. A planeload of bombs was dropped on Laos every eight minutes for nearly a decade. It's called the "Secret War" because it was largely kept secret from the US public. While Kissinger didn't himself start the Secret War, he vastly expanded its scope, to the point of personally picking or approving targets for bombing runs.

If the title of "World's Most Bombed Country" wasn't enough of a burden to bear, the sheer amount of ordnance dropped means that to this day, half a century later, the Lao PDR still has a massive problem with UXO. People still die today from bombs dropped by US planes 50 years ago. A large portion of the bombs dropped were cluster munitions, each of which could contain hundreds of bomblets (called "bombies" here in the Lao PDR). Between 10 and 30% of bombies used in those years failed to detonate on impact even in ideal conditions. They are the size of a tennis ball, if children find them they will often pick them up and play with them. Thousands of kids have died or been maimed this way since the war. Once again, to drive the point home: Kissinger is responsible for these deaths.

If you feel like celebrating the old bastard kicking the bucket by doing a good thing, there are organizations you can donate to that are working to undo the damage done by him in Laos. UXO Lao and MAG International are running projects to either directly clear the land from UXO, or support affected communities.