Between 1965 and 1973, more than two million tons of bombs rained down upon the people of Laos,37 considerably mote than the US had dropped on both Germany and Japan during the Second World War, albeit for a shorter period. For the first few years, the bombing was directed primarily at the provinces controlled by the Pathet Lao. Of the bombing, Fred Branfman, a former American community worker in Laos, wrote: village after village was leveled, countless people buried alive by high explosives, or burnt alive by napalm and white phosphorous, or riddled by antipersonnel bomb pellets 38 ... The United States has undertaken, said a Senate report, ... a large-scale ait war over Laos to destroy the physical and social infrastructure of Pathet Lao held areas and to interdict North Vietnamese infiltration ... throughout ail this there has been a policy of subterfuge and secrecy ... through such things as saturation bombing and the forced evacuation of population from enemy held or threatened areas-we have helped to create untold agony for hundreds of thousands of villagers. 39

The American military, however, kept proper records. AID could report to Congress that wounds suffered by civilian war casualties were as follows:

1. Type: Soft tissue, 39 percent. Compound fracture, 30 percent. Amputation, 12 percent. Intra-abdominai, 10 percent. Intra-thoracic, 3 percent. Intra-cranial, 1 percent.

2. Location: Lower extremities, 60 percent. Upper extremities, 15 percent. Trunk, 18 percent. Head, 7 percent.40

There was no happy way out for the Laotian people. In October 1971, one could read in The Guardian of London ...

although US officials deny it vehemently, ample evidence exists to confirm charges that the Meo villages that do try to find their own way out of the war-even if it is simply by staying neutral and refusing to send their 13-year-olds to fight in the CIA army-are immediately denied American rice and transport, and ultimately bombed by the US Air Force.41

The fledgling society that the United States was trying to make extinct-the CIA dropped millions of dollars in forged Pathet Lao currency as well, in an attempt to wreck the economy42-was one which Fred Branfman described thus:

The Pathet Lao rule over the Plain of Jars begun in May 1964 brought its people into a post-colonial era. For the first time they were taught pride in their country and people, instead of admiration for a foreign culture; schooling and massive adult literacy campaigns were conducted in Laotian instead of French; and mild but thorough social revolution-ranging from land reform to greater equality for women-was instituted.43

Following on the heels of events in Vietnam, a ceasefire was arrived at in Laos in 1973, and yet another attempt at coalition government was undertaken. (This one lasted until 1975 when, after renewed fighting, the Pathet Lao took over full control of the country.) Laos had become a land of nomads, without villages, without farms; a generation of refugees; hundreds of thousands dead, many more maimed. When the US Air Force closed down its radio station, it signed off with the message: Good-by and

see you next war.

Thus it was that the worst of Washingtons fears had come to pass: All of Indochina- Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos-had fallen to the Communists. During the

initial period of US involvement in Indochina in the 1950s, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower and other American officials regularly issued doomsday pronouncements of the type known as the Domino Theory , warning that if Indochina should fall, other nations in Asia would topple over as well. In one instance, President Eisenhower listed no less than Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia amongst the anticipated falling dominos .45

Such warnings were repeated periodically over the next decade by succeeding administrations and other supporters of US policy in Indochina as a key argument in defense of such policy. The fact that these ominous predictions turned out to have no basis in reality did not deter Washington officialdom from promulgating the same dogma up until the 1990s about almost each new world trouble-spot , testimony to their unshakable faith in the existence and inter-workings of the International Communist Conspiracy.

22. Haiti 1959-1963

The Marines land, again

Duvalier has performed an economic miracle, remarked a Haitian of his countrys dictator. He has taught us to live without money ... to eat without food ... to live without life. 1

And when Francois Papa Doc Duvaliers voodoo magic wore thin, he could always count on the US Marines to continue his peoples education.

During the night of 12-13 August 1959, a boat landed on the northern coast of Haiti with a reported 30 men, Haitians and Cubans and perhaps others aboard. The men had set sail from Cuba some 50 miles away. Their purpose was to overthrow the tyrannical Haitian government, a regime whose secret police, it was said, outnumbered its army.

In short order, the raiding party, equipped with heavy weapons, captured a small army post and began to recruit and arm villagers for the cause.2 The government reported that about 200 persons had joined them.3 Haitian exiles in Venezuela, in an apparently coordinated effort, broadcast appeals to their countrymen to aid the invaders. They set at 120 the number of men who had landed in Haiti, although this appears to be an exaggeration.4

The initial reaction of the Duvalier government was one of panic, and the police began rounding up opposition sympathizers.5 It was at this point that the US military mission, in Haiti to train Duvaliers forces, stepped in. The Americans instituted an air and sea reconnaissance to locate the rebels. Haitian soldiers, accompanied by US Marines, were airlifted to the area and went into the field to do battle with them.6 Two other US Navy planes and

a helicopter arrived from Puerto Rico.7

According to their commander, Col- Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., the American Marines took part in the fighting, which lasted until 22 August.8 The outcome was a complete rout of the rebel forces.

Information about the men who came from Cuba derives almost exclusively from the Haitian government and the American military mission. These sources claim that the raiding party was composed of about 30 men and that, with the exception of one or two

Haitians who led them, they were all Cubans. Another report, referred to in the New York Times, stated that there were ten Haitians and two Venezuelans amongst the 30 invaders.9 The latter ratio is probably closer to the truth, for there was a considerable number of Haitian exiles living in Cuba, many of whom had gained military experience during the recent Cuban revolution; for obvious reasons of international politics and fighting incentive, such men were the most likely candidates to be part of an invasion of their homeland.

The Castro government readily admitted that the raiding party had come from Cuba but denied that the government had known or approved of it. This claim would seem rather suspect were it not for the fact that the Cuban coast guard had thwarted a similar undertaking in April.10

The first members of the American military mission had arrived in Haiti in January, largely in response to another invasion attempt the previous July (originating probably in the Dominican Republic). Regardless of all the horror stories about the Haitian regime- such as the one Col. Heinl tells of his 12-year-old son being arrested when he was overheard expressing sympathy for a group of hungry peasants he saw- Duvalier was Washingtons man. After all was said and done, he could be counted upon to keep his Black nation, which was usually accorded the honor of being Latin Americas poorest, from turning Red. Heinl has recounted the instructions he received from a State Department Under Secretary in January:

Colonel, the most important way you can support our objectives in Haiti is to help keep Duvalier in power so he can serve out his full term in office, and maybe a little longer than that if everything works out.

The Kennedy administration, which came to power in January 1961, had little use for Papa Doc, and supported his overthrow as well as his possible assassination. According to the later testimony of CIA official Walter Elder before a Senate investigating committee, the Agency furnished arms to Haitian dissidents seeking to topple the dictator. Elder added that while the assassination of Duvalier was not contemplated, the arms were provided to help [the dissidents] take what measures were deemed necessary to replace the government, and it was realized, he said, that Duvalier might be killed in the course of the overthrow.12

But as Cuba increasingly became the United States bete noire, the CIAs great obsession, Washingtons policy changed. Haitis cooperation was needed for the success of US efforts to have Cuba expelled from the Organization of American States in 1963. From that point on, Duvalier enjoyed the full diplomatic and economic support of the US. When the Haitian leader died on 12 April 1971, the American Ambassador Clinton Knox was the only diplomat present at the midnight swearing-in of 19-year-old Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier as the new President for Life, who was to receive the same economic, political and military support as had Papa Doc , with only the occasional hiccup of a protest from Washington when the level of repression became difficult to ignore.13

23. Guatemala 1960

One good coup deserves another

In November 1960, as John F. Kennedy was preparing to succeed Dwight Eisenhower, the obsessive priority of American foreign policy-to invade Cuba-