The United States, Southeast Asia, and Historical Memory

This book sheds crucial new light on the epochal US interventions in Southeast Asia after World War II. Antiwar activist Fred Branfman describes the tragic lives of Laotian peasants under US bombing. Cambodia scholar Ben Kiernan and colleague Owen Taylor illuminate the course of Cambodia history after unprecedented US bombing. The book also includes classic works by Noam Chomsky, Nick Turse, and Edward Herman.

Mark Pavlick is an independent editor. He was active in the US movement against the Indochina wars in volunteer work with the Indochina Mobile Education Project and the Indochina Resource Center in Washington, DC.



CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Richard Falk

1. War Crimes in Indochina and Our Troubled National Soul 5

Fred Branfman

2. Excerpts from Voices from the Plain of Jars 19

Collected by Fred Branfman

3. Legacies of War: Cluster Bombs in Laos 23

Channapha Khamvongsa and Elaine Russell

4. Agent Orange in Vietnam 53

Tuan V. Nguyen

5. Iraq, Another Vietnam? Consider Cambodia 75

Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen

6. My Lai and the American Way of War Crimes 85

Gareth Porter

7. The Indonesian Domino 101

Clinton Fernandes

8. "So Many People Died" The American System of Suffering, 1965-2014 119

Nick Turse

9. Bloodbaths in Indochina: Constructive, Nefarious, and Mythical (1979) 125

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman

10. From Mad Jack to Mad Henry: The United States in Vietnam (1975) 173

Noam Chomsky

11. After "Mad Henry" US Policy Toward Indochina Since 1975 201

Ng V ınh Long

12. My Experiences with Laos and the Indochina Wars 221

Interview with Fred Branfman

13. Interview with Noam Chomsky 251

Glossary of Selected Terms 261

Further Action 267

Recommended Reading 273

Acknowledgments 281

Permissions 283

Notes 285

Index 333

Contributors 351