Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. ![]() Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. INSKEEP: Boto Thao-Urabe is a Hmong community organizer and activist. INSKEEP: Meaning that people like your family were left to your own devices to get to safety, ultimately in the United States. signed peace agreements to leave, they pretty much left the Hmong to themselves - right? Even if they recognized that the Hmong were going to be sought out for persecution, that that was not something that Kissinger played a big role in terms of post the Americans leaving. And then afterwards, really, when the U.S. THAO-URABE: Yeah, well, I think considering what I hear from many Hmong elders about their understanding of that agreement to serve the - to serve America and then Kissinger really playing such a big role in supporting that and implementing that covert operation. ![]() Looking back on it now, what do you make of this particular part of Henry Kissinger's legacy? Kissinger, among many other American officials, supported this effort to interdict that, which seems never to have worked. North Vietnam was sending supplies through the landscape and through the roads of Laos into South Vietnam. INSKEEP: And you're pointing out there was, from the U.S. He was what they called a secret guerrilla soldier for the U.S. INSKEEP: Your father was a veteran of that war, you're saying. And my father, along with thousands of Hmong soldiers, fought in that war. And their missions were pretty simple - to destroy supplies, the supply line, but also to rescue downed American pilots. CIA went in and recruited the Hmong, along with other ethnic Lao soldiers, to fight on the ground. But because it was - you know, some parts of it was used by the Communists to move supply lines. And Laos was supposed to be a neutral country at that time. THAO-URABE: The Hmong had been - yeah, the Hmong had been - I think the theory the Americans had was that no American soldier would be killed there. Obviously, it was not secret to you or to your family, right? INSKEEP: The idea of a secret war is hard to get your brain around in the 21st century - the idea that it took the first 6 or 7 years before the United States had to disclose it was even doing this. And I think that's the experience of many Hmong Americans who are here now. And, you know, I think as a child, I just remember seeing the sky lit up almost every minute, you know, when you look up. And so for nine years, every eight minutes, a bomb was dropped on Laos. And it became the most bombed country of any war. ![]() dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs that contained more than 270 million cluster bombs inside them on Laos. And so that was probably the period where the heaviest bombing happened. As you mentioned, I was born, really, at the height of that secret war in Laos. What are your family memories and family stories of that time? These were years when the war was going on. INSKEEP: So you were there until the age of 6, until 1973. Bo Thao-Urabe lived through that bombing as a child in Laos and now lives in Minneapolis, from which he joins us. Now, Kissinger did not start the bombing of Laos, but as national security advisor and secretary of state, he was deeply involved for years. Over the course of a decade during the Vietnam War, the United States attacked Laos, a neighboring country. ![]() INSKEEP: OK, let's hear from someone from the Global South. And his record in what we would call the Global South is much poorer because those are relationships that mattered less to him. JEREMI SURI: So if you look at his record, he's much better at achieving things that serve the interests of, shall we say, first-world countries and the leaders of those first-world countries. The writer Jeremi Suri told us this week he admired Kissinger's ability to get things done but that Kissinger also had a way of, quote, "kissing up to power." We are considering the legacy of Henry Kissinger, former national security advisor and secretary of state, who has died at age 100.
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