Lies built upon Mis-Information built upon Lies

NVRDC

The other day I came across an eye opening documentary by German director Marc Eberle, called “The Most Secret Place on Earth.”    The film covers the secret operation waged by the CIA throughout the sixties and early seventies against communist guerrillas in Laos, particularly in the city of Long Chen.  It’s currently available on YouTube for viewing:

A large number of readers of this blog most likely have watched the 1990 feature film “Air America,”  starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr., where young pilot finds himself recruited into a covert and corrupt CIA airlift organization operating in Vietnam War era Laos.  Most of us associated the film’s content with Vietnam.  This documentary speaks to the actual effects of the CIA’s secret war.

Marc Eberle talks to the protagonists of Laos civil war – on both sides. The film features interviews with State Department, CIA and Air America officials, as well as Hmong general Vang Pao and some of his critics – Fred Branfman and Professor Alfred McCoy.

Despite being the center of the covert operation and, at its peak, one of the world’s busiest airports with a population of 50,000 people, Long Chen’s location was never marked on any map.  Long Chen remains off limits to foreigners and most Lao due to clashes with remnants of the CIA’s Hmong army. Until recently it formed part of a special administrative zone under the direct control of the Lao army.

What I found most interesting is that the lies and misinformation promoted as fact didn’t just start with President Bush.  Lies and misinformation were used to wipe out an entire culture on the ‘Plain of Jars’ in Laos.  Lies and misinformation were promoted to escalate the Vietnam war.  Lies and misinformation were used to get us into the Iraq and Afghanistan war.  Who truly is behind all these lies and information?  We are not the policemen for the world.  We are not the world’s army. And – it is not our job to do nation-building to create democracies throughout the globe.

It’s time to bring our troops home and close some of our bases overseas.  Like other nations around the globe, we also need to stop funding and staffing the Department of (War) Defense as though we were still fighting some evil enemy.  Going forward, fighting terrorism is going to take a whole different type of defensive operation, not one with nuclear weapons, tanks, rockets, etc.  The Department of Defense currently consumes a major portion of our financial resources.  It’s time that we re-allocate those resources for the betterment of our nation’s citizens.  We need to keep up the pressure on President Obama to end the wars in the middle east as he promised he would during his campaign for President.