From the Arlington Experience

PHOTO - http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/laosmem.htm

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞Interesting Twist: A Secret Army∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Remembering Persons Who Fought a "Secret War"

Something I Had Not Known

The U.S., as a major world military power in the 20th century, has often conducted "secret" missions and "secret", or"proxy", wars in faraway places. Some efforts were successful but had bad consequences for innocents (the local populations), as in the case of Chile in 1973, when the U.S. government interfered with the rightful sovereignty and democratic processes of the socialist but freely-elected Salvador Allende government, making the way for August Pinochet and his right wing thugs. (To get a moral whiff of the political rot and societal repression resulting from the extremely active Nixon-Kissinger supported Allende overthrow, see the excellent film called "MISSING" with Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, and John Shea).

In terms of regionally, indigenously political strife and perhaps on a more brave-sacrifice scale, however, is a story of secret fighting against communist North Vietnamese forces in Laos over a dozen years, by the Hmong and Lao groups of combat soldiers, - supported by JFK, LBJ, and finally Nixon - starting in 1961 and lasting to at least 1973. (Thousands of Lao people have since made their homes in the U.S.) It remains in some ways, a story still untold to the American public, but the INFO is out there. It is likely a story filled with courage on all sides. (Real history will tell us that adversaries have their own true heroes, too). That said, of course, everyone knows by now that the overall U.S. policy in Southeast Asia from the late 50s to the late 70s was still a great big flop.

The fighting effort by Hmong and Lao forces against communist North Vietnamese forces is officially acknowledged by a memorial stone formally placed in Arlington by the U.S. government in 1997 and its plaque reads - in part:
"In Memory of the Hmong and Lao Combat Veterans and Their American Advisors Who Served Freedom's Cause..."

Go to the Following Web Address for More Interesting Details about the SECRET ARMY that is Memorialized at ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY:

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/laosmem.htm

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