The US dropped more bombs on Laos while fighting the viet cong than the sum of all bombs dropped during WWII. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and wasn't directly involved. People are still walking through fields and getting blown up and we don't help them de-mine.
EDIT: I see some upvotes/interest so I want to state a feeling that I have: that we would have never done this if we respected Laotian people or thought of them as our equals. Only by thinking of them as simple poor brown hill folk could something like this happen. If Norway invaded Sweden via Denmark, we would never have treated Denmark the way we treated Laos.
> From 1964 to 1973, as part of the Secret War operation conducted during the Vietnam War, the US military dropped 260 million cluster bombs – about 2.5 million tons of munitions – on Laos over the course of 580,000 bombing missions. This is equivalent to a planeload of bombs being unloaded every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years – nearly seven bombs for every man, woman and child living in Laos.
> Nearly half of Laos is now contaminated with unexploded ordnances (UXOs), explosive weapons such as bombs, grenades and land mines. Cluster bombs, explosive weapons that work by ejecting hundreds of smaller submunitions over a wide area, make up the majority of UXOs that plague the country. Cluster munitions pose an especially grave danger to civilians, according to specializing in the field of disability, because they are “highly imprecise and indiscriminate” weapons designed to “scatter explosives over swaths of land often hundreds of yards wide.”
> Of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped by the United States, up to 30 percent of them failed to detonate. These bombs were released on targets in a large shell or casing. Each of the casings contained roughly 600 to 700 small bomblets, or “bombies,” as they are often called in Laos.
> There are now close to 78 million unexploded bomblets littering rice fields, villages, school grounds, roads and other populated areas in Laos, hindering development and poverty reduction. More than 34,000 people have been killed or injured by cluster munitions since the bombing ceased in 1973, with close to 300 new casualties in Laos every year. About 40 percent of the accidents result in death and 60 percent of the victims are children. At this time, less than 1 percent of the UXOs have been cleared.
http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a...
EDIT: I see some upvotes/interest so I want to state a feeling that I have: that we would have never done this if we respected Laotian people or thought of them as our equals. Only by thinking of them as simple poor brown hill folk could something like this happen. If Norway invaded Sweden via Denmark, we would never have treated Denmark the way we treated Laos.
> From 1964 to 1973, as part of the Secret War operation conducted during the Vietnam War, the US military dropped 260 million cluster bombs – about 2.5 million tons of munitions – on Laos over the course of 580,000 bombing missions. This is equivalent to a planeload of bombs being unloaded every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years – nearly seven bombs for every man, woman and child living in Laos.
> Nearly half of Laos is now contaminated with unexploded ordnances (UXOs), explosive weapons such as bombs, grenades and land mines. Cluster bombs, explosive weapons that work by ejecting hundreds of smaller submunitions over a wide area, make up the majority of UXOs that plague the country. Cluster munitions pose an especially grave danger to civilians, according to specializing in the field of disability, because they are “highly imprecise and indiscriminate” weapons designed to “scatter explosives over swaths of land often hundreds of yards wide.”
> Of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped by the United States, up to 30 percent of them failed to detonate. These bombs were released on targets in a large shell or casing. Each of the casings contained roughly 600 to 700 small bomblets, or “bombies,” as they are often called in Laos.
> There are now close to 78 million unexploded bomblets littering rice fields, villages, school grounds, roads and other populated areas in Laos, hindering development and poverty reduction. More than 34,000 people have been killed or injured by cluster munitions since the bombing ceased in 1973, with close to 300 new casualties in Laos every year. About 40 percent of the accidents result in death and 60 percent of the victims are children. At this time, less than 1 percent of the UXOs have been cleared.
http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a...