Vang Pao Essay

The book, The Latehomecomer, is a fascinating story about a Hmong family and their struggle to get out of Laos and come to America as refugees. The Hmong people are a very proud people and they do not want to forget their culture. One can clearly see that the Hmong people hold close their identity and do not want to conform to the Vietnamese way. They take pride in their culture, their society, and the way they view how government should run. Hmong people did not agree with the Vietnamese communist government and were willing to join forces and help the United States as much as possible so that they could fight for what they believed in. Even though most of the young men and boys that fought in the war died in battle or were

We discovered the topic of General Vang Pao and Bill Lairs in a documentary. First, we started from the Act of refugee 1980 from the website gethelpchoosetopic.com and then changed to Indochina. As we continued the researching we then discovered an intriguing topic which had the CIA involvement. We then changed it to General Vang Pao and Bill Lairs for as a more specific topic. We decided to make it into a website.

For forty years, the world still turns a blind eye. The majority of the world don’t know who the Hmong people are. In history textbooks, the Vietnam War isn’t really emphasized as much as the other wars. It’s usually a brief explanation of how America went to Vietnam to fight a war against communism, but they never mention or consider the “Hmong”in their history. The Hmong fought along side with the Americans against the war on communism, who was trained by CIA. They are also known as “America’s forgotten ally”. As the war goes on, America slowly loses and decides to make a truce with Vietnam in 1975. Labeling the Hmong people as “Insurgents”.

As the Vietnam War progressed, People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) generals led by General Giap reassessed and adapted their strategy to fit the circumstances. This enabled the VC revolutionaries, supported by North Vietnamese regular forces, to achieve success without ever defeating US forces on the battlefield. For instance, the Tet Offensive in 1968 represented an operational failure in Stage Three of the Dau Tranh strategy but was considered a success for the North since it weakened American public support for the war. As a result the defeat on the battlefield, Giap adapted Dau Tranh to avoid concentration of forces and the effects of superior US firepower by transitioning back to Stage Two. The return to guerilla operations ensured sustained US casualties and the continued erosion of public support between 1968 and 1971. At the same time, main force units that were decimated during Tet could withdrawal and reconstitute. (Pike, 229)

On April 9th, 1968, as he peered over the city of Khe Sanh, he immediately fell into dismay. A once prominent city of Vietnam was now engulfed in an inferno of flames, the deafening shrieks of the locals broke his heart and the bodies of fellow American GIs filled him with anger and hatred toward the Vietcong. He put on his helmet and proceeded toward the chopper- “I began to question the war and life itself that day, for what could posses a member of my own race to commit such acts of evil, killing innocent women and children, torturing captured P.O.W.s and robbing their own citizens of their wealth.”

“I lost 17,000 men, almost 10 percent of the total Hmong population," General Vang Pao said. "The Hmong sacrificed the most in the war and were the ones who suffered the most” (Vietnam War 'secret Army' Chief Vang Pao Dies in US). The C.I.A. recruited the Hmong as their allies when the communist Pathet Lao joined the Laotian government because the U.S. feared that the neighboring countries would fall into communism too. During the Vietnam War, negotiators from different countries agreed that Laos would remain neutral under the Geneva (Thompson). But because the United States feared the spread of communism, the C.I.A. directed a covert operation in Laos known as the Secret War. The Hmong people were abandoned, forgotten and treated poorly after

The Hmong are an ethnic group of people who live in the mountains of Laos. They were seen as uncivilized barbarians by Laotians, Thai and Vietnamese people. The CIA hired them to become soldiers in the Secret War, due to their strength, fighting spirit, and expert knowledge of the terrain. As the war intensified, the US sent fighter-bombers to assist Hmong ground forces against the Pathet Lao (Lao Communist soldiers). According to Kurlantzick, by 1973 the US had conducted more than 580,000 bombing runs over Laos. “In 1969 alone,” writes Kurlantzick, “the United States dropped more bombs on Laos than it did on Japan during all of World War II.” Yet, due to lax congressional oversight and media ignorance the American people knew very little about any of this.

Do, Minh Hong T. Tieng Viet: Introduction to Vietnamese Language and Culture. 3rd ed. Sacramento: Cosumnes River College, 2004. Print.

The year was 1955, when the war of Vietnam had started. Only it had begun in early November, the days were cold and crisp. Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader in North Vietnam. Ho’s main goal was to engender all of Vietnam into a single state; which inaugurates the Vietnam War. The New World Encyclopedia explains, “U.S. deployed large numbers of military personnel to south Vietnam. U.S. military advisers first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces.” Unfortunately the number of casualties is unknown, but the New World Encyclopedia states that “U.S. military fatalities, including missing in action, 57,690; South Vietnamese military, 243,748; Australia and New Zealand military, 469; The Vietnamese Peoples ' Army and NLF, 666,000; South Vietnamese civilians, 300,000; North Vietnamese civilians, 65,000.” The outcome of the Vietnam War was both north and south Vietnam was unified into one state. The country also became a socialist republic, but that did not last long due to the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer rouge eventually cut ties with their allies, which upset Chinese. With all of that it turned the in the Chinese invasion to North Vietnam.

The vietnam war, was a courageous war that was fought between South and North Vietnam. The Hmong people lived in North Vietnam and were under the rule of the Communists.

A look at the photo and video images from the Vietnam War reveals a confusing picture. On the one hand, there are South Vietnamese soldiers, members of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), cheerfully working with American troops and often commanded by American ‘advisors.’ In contrast, other South Vietnamese men and women attacked any Americans that they found vulnerable; these were the Vietcong, the freedom army that fought in alliance with North Vietnam for ‘liberation’ of the South from ‘imperialism.’ So, the War in South Vietnam was politically a complex one, with many opposing factors and interests. In consequence, the relationship between the South Vietnamese people and the American population in the country was a complex

“To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.” Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, once said this truly horrifying statement (Cambodian Genocide 1). It is no wonder that he went on to orchestrate the killings of more than two million innocent Cambodians. At the time of the mass killings in Cambodia, the Vietnam War was raging on. It is possible that the Vietnam War masked the true horrors of what was happening in Cambodia. The terrible events left emotional scars and traumatized countless people.

The General Norman Schwarzkopf had been hired in the US army since the time of the Vietnam war and he

In “Mang Minno”, a short story within ‘Where The Elephants Dance’ by Tess U Holthe , a young boy named Roman encounters a man named Mang Minno, who is believed by the island people to be Jonah from the Bible. When Roman meets him, he wishes to learn how to catch fish, so that he can show them to his father. He thinks that all he is getting himself involved in is a method with which to gain large amounts of fish, very quickly. However, he soon finds that he is getting involved in something far more sinister. As the story progresses, it becomes clear the Mang Minno is some sort of evil entity. However, without looking for clues as to who and what Mang Minno is, this story cannot be fully

These liaisons were supposed to make sure the transitions of democracy worked smoothly in these nations holding radical communism. Once again, this failed leading to the insertion of troops privately in Laos and Cambodia, and publicly after Johnson took presidency in 1963 within Vietnam. In the private war within Laos and Cambodia, between CIA forces and Communist sympathizers. Unspeakable actions were committed under CIA supervision in Laos within an effort to suppress the usage of the Ho Chi Minh trail and the spread of communism in those countries. Search and destroy units were in control under the CIA, soldiers compelled to burning villages, killing anything that moves before moving to the next village.These actions were in a sense glorious to the work of the US’s effort to stop the spread of communism. The end result was particularly horrifying, the US went to war officially in the mid 60’s with the communist forces of Vietnam and technically lost in 1975 when their suppression was withdrawn earlier in the