So one of my favorite TV shows of the moment is Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. It’s a snarky, highly self-aware food/travel show that eschews touristy conceits in favor of telling local stories. Good stuff.
Well the other day I happened to catch an episode on Laos. Now I doubt the typical American traveler is planning a vacation to Laos anytime soon. Most of us know nothing about Laos (as the episode bluntly pointed out). But the purpose of this particular episode was not to sell US viewers on exotic destinations, but to instead say “see how stupid and uninformed we Americans are of the ways we have screwed up the world.”
I know about as much as the average American about Laos – that is next to nothing. I even majored in history and took an Asian history class (for which the prof decided to skip all of South East Asian history because it was just too complicated … but perhaps because it was just too controversial for a school like Wheaton). So like any “good” American I knew little about our illegal acts of war in Laos during the Vietnam war. Or how the country still is plagued by millions of unexploded bombs scattering the countryside – waiting to be uncovered by farmers, builders, or children.
In the episode Anthony Bourdain follows a team that is uncovering these death traps lurking in the fields of Laos. And he sits down to a simple meal with a family where the young father had his arm and leg blown off when he accidentally uncovered a bomb. Families paying high prices for their country being a pawn in the game of nations before they were born.
What struck me as I watched the episode was the unapologetic attempt to show Americans our dirty laundry that doesn’t make it into textbooks or AP exams. It’s hard to ignore current conflicts, although the media does a great job of hiding the brutal reality of Iraq. And it is easy to justify violent engagement in WW2 (as Godwin’s Law repeatedly demonstrates…). This is even a country where some people still think it’s wrong (even sinful) to question US involvement in Vietnam (”but of course colonialism is a good thing…”). But the less than pretty and often completely illegal military missions our country has engaged in are generally unknown to the average American.
I was well into college before I even learned about US military manipulations of dictatorships and coups in Central America. But I didn’t learn such things in my classes. A very social justice oriented friend who also happened to be Hispanic did her best to educate people on how the US has controlled and harmed other countries. Of course the response from other students generally was to deny her stories and to call her biased and unreliable. Few ever took the time to ferret out the truth – choosing to place blind faith in the absolute goodness of the USA instead.
War is often seen as only a glorious endeavor and these covert operations to protect our own interests are swept aside and hidden away. Maybe it’s too hard to chant “USA! USA! We’re #1″ when the battle isn’t spun as “protecting our freedom” but is in reality the rape and slaughter of peasants because they occupied land full of mahogany forests we coveted (Haiti 1915). So we just stay confused and accuse the rest of the world of being jealous of our freedom when they speak words against us. Maybe if we would just get over ourselves we would realize that the Lao man whose limbs were blown off just wants to provide for his family again. They aren’t jealous of us, perhaps they just want to reclaim all that we have stolen from them.