WESTERN PROPAGANDA ON THE LAOTIAN EVENTS by James Wilcox
The reporting of the recent events in Laos has completely failed to present an accurate picture of what has happened. To begin with the Laotian “neutralists" have been taken more or less at face value. An interview in Fortune, this month, the house journal of U.S. big business, provides a franker picture of Kong Le, the so-called "neutralist" military chief, as they describe him, He is quoted as saying: "In Korea you Americans finally learned a lesson. It is that Communist force must be met with American force, More recently you seem to have forgotten thet lesson." About Vietnam he says: "It is reasonable and logical that you should extend the war to North Vietnam." It is in fact the nakedly pro-American and anti-Communist attitude of the “neutralist" milite ary leader which explains the recent events in the Plain of Jars area held by Kong Le. Many members of his 7,000 strong army became bitterly disilluioned by his shifts to the right and especially by his recent collaboration with the leaders of the rightist coup in the capital Vientiane.
It was these disillusioned elements who initiated his expulsion from the whole Xieng Khoung area. This explains why 225 square miles of territory, including several highly fortified positions, were overrun in barely 24 hours. It also explains why Kong Le has lost the bulk of his army, has lost all his artillery and has lost six out of his seventeen Soviet built tanks. Western reports have feebly tried to suggest that the Pathet Lao liberation forces employed “North Vietnamese artillery we didn't think they has." The truth is that Kong Le's artillery turned against him and made possible the rapid liquidation of his position.
Last week's victory now places thé Pathet Lao in a strategic position to liberate further areas from the control of the rightist military group.