We were not in Laos

[Ninurta]

What Ninurta said about neutrality.

So let's pull apart this particular aspect of the Vietnam War Narrative, as gifted to the world by the American Left.

Neither Laos nor Cambodia were "neutral" countries in the sense of a country like Switzerland.  Both countries served as highways, depots, and staging areas for North Vietnamese forces, as well as their Chinese and Soviet advisors.

From the start, the U.S. government should have made this clear and told the American people and the rest of the world, those countries will be legitimate areas for U.S. / South Viet / etc. military operations.

Instead, they chose the "Switzerland myth" such that the *-wipes in American media were shocked and outraged when the U.S. "invaded" Cambodia.  Cambodia had already been invaded for many years, by Ho Chi Minh's forces.

It should not have been special ops or CIA or whatever in Laos, it should have been conventional forces pushing north and ultimately "turning right" and driving on Hanoi while amphibious landings seized Haiphong.  And then tell the Soviets and Chinese they could go to nuclear strike Hell if they didn't want to accept that.  The worst that would have happened is another Chinese intervention in the war like they did in North Korea.

Instead, all of former French Indochina was gifted to the communists while the American Left became insane with their success in mobilizing public opinion against the war and forcing Nixon to leave the presidency.

Not to mention they were both embroiled in their own little communist insurgencies - Laos with the Pathet Lao, and Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge... and both of those were on friendly terms with the VC and NVA because of shared ideologies. I believe the video mentioned that the attack was carried out by Pathet Lao guerrillas, so they apparently controlled that area anyhow, and ought, by rights, to have been wiped out with everything the Air Force could throw at them, rather than merely cutting, running, and torching our own base.

When the Pathet Lao took over Laos, we resettled a bunch of Laotian refugees in the small mountain town I lived in. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge gave us the horror show in Cambodia - they should have had more to worry about than just taking over a country... something like living to see the next sunrise.

Later on, the Lutherans and the Special Forces at Fort Bragg teamed up to resettle a bunch of Montagnards from Vietnam to just down the street from where I was living on the east side Greensboro, NC at the time. That got exciting upon occasion, as they brought along Montagnard traditions, and didn't take kindly to American culture until the next generation came up. One 'Yard I recall got arrested for dragging his wife behind his car "to teach her a lesson" - they were just as rough and ready here as they were in Vietnam.

I can recall standing guard at a bank on South Elm-Eugene Street in Greensboro, and this 'Yard family would come in and do their banking there. The Old Grandfather of the family never went inside the bank - he would sit out on the sidewalk with me, squatting there and smiling and nodding at me. He didn't have a word of English, and I had no Rhade or Hmong, so we couldn't communicate beyond smiling and nodding. One day his daughter came out of the bank, and I asked her why he would just squat there in his black pajamas and grin at me. She asked him, and he told her he was thanking me. I asked for what, and she said it was my uniform - he was recognizing the uniform, and recalling the help they were given in Vietnam by the SF, and the help they were given getting out of Vietnam.

At the time, my uniform consisted of black BDU's and a gun belt / gadget belt around my waist. Not really all that different from his own black pajamas - just more pockets and more doo-dads on the Bat Belt.

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