The Legacy Of Carpet Bombing

In total the U.S. dropped more than 270 million cluster bomblets, or “bombies,” on Laos as well as four million big bombs. Possibly 80 million of the bombies didn’t explode on impact and are still considered live. Up to 10 percent of all the big bombs also failed to explode.

During the bombing the mountain minorities of Laos suffered horribly. In the end it no longer mattered what side you took. The bombs didn’t distinguish between communists and anticommunists any more than they distinguished between soldiers and children. Many places remain so littered with (un)exploded ordnance (UXO) that it’s impossible to farm there. Every year Laotians are killed or maimed as they try to salvage the UXO’s for scrap metal or remove them in order to farm the land.

In Laos when the temperature goes below about 70 degrees, people start pulling on their coats and hats and lighting fires, which ignites the season of death. One New Year’s Eve three friends in Xiangkhouang Province went camping. It got cold that night, so they started a fire. One was killed when a UXO buried under their campsite exploded. Another was terribly maimed.

Every bomb was made in America and put there by Americans. How could seemingly rational people, Americans like you and me, imagine they could win the war in Vietnam by subjecting Laos to such indiscriminate destruction?

Ted Cruz’s program for stopping ISIS is “Carpet Bombing” them into oblivion. He has no comprehension of ordinance or even history. The same program did not bring an end to the war in Vietnam, nor will it do so in the Middle East. If elected president Cruz will leave a legacy of continual death and destruction to those who remain after the Carpet Bombing ceases; just as it continues for the people in Laos.

Cruz professes to be a Bible believer, but like so many he has no concept of what the Scriptures teach us. Plain and simple: Jesus don’t like killin’ no matter what the reasons for.

You can stop ISIS without firing a shot.