VIENTIANE, Laos—Acknowledging the scars of a secret war, President Barack Obama on Tuesday said the United States has a “moral obligation” to help this isolated Southeast Asian nation heal and vowed to reinvigorate relations with a country with rising strategic importance to the U.S.
Making the first visit for a sitting U.S. president, Obama said too few Americans know of the United States’ covert bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War. He offered no apologies, calling the campaign and its aftermath reminders that “whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a terrible toll.”
“Given our history here, I believe that the United States has a moral obligation to help Laos heal,” Obama said, as he addressed an audience of more than 1,000 students, business people and officials.
For nine years, the U.S. conducted a punishing, covert bombing campaign on landlocked Laos in an effort to cut off communist forces in neighboring Vietnam. The bombardment dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on the small nation, more than “we dropped on Germany and Japan, combined, in all of World War II,” Obama said.
