Shooting at the Moon (book)

Infobox Book
name = Shooting at the Moon


image_caption =
author = Roger Warner
country =
subject =
publisher = Steerforth Press
pub_date = 1996

"Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos" was writtten by Southeast Asian war historian, Roger Warner. It is about the Central Intelligence Agency's and US military's involvement in Laos from in the early 1961 throug 1973, and this war's influence on the later Vietnam War conflict (1960 -1975)."Warner" R., Warner, 1996. "Shooting at the Moon" Steerforth Press. South Royalton, Vermont.] "Steerforth" http://www.steerforth.com/books/display.pperl?isbn=9781883642365] Published by Steerforth Press in 1996, it is a winner of the Cornelius Ryan Award for 1995's Best Book on Foreign Affairs by the Overseas Press Club. It was published earlier in a slightly different version by Simon & Schuster under the title "Backfire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in Vietnam. ""Shooting at the Moon" explores how this "perfect" covert war ballooned into a sorrowful and disturbing ending. (The book's title, incidentally, refers to the Laotian practice of firing weapons during a lunar eclipse in order to scare off the giant frog in the heavens, which, in Laotian mythology, is swallowing the moon. http://www.times.com/books/97/03/16/reviews/970316.16issacst.html] )

----

Plot

The plot set in the jungles of Laos in the early 1960's. Communists are taking over the land of many peoples, including those of a tribe named the Hmong, more often referred to as the Meo to Americans (and Warner sticks to that secondhand name throughtout the book). Afraid Communism would take over the southeast Asian country, the CIA began a vigorous campain to arm themany tribes as guerrilla units, capable of harassing the Vietnamese and Laotian Communists in the sparsely populated mountains that lay between Communist North Vietnam and the Mekong lowlands along the Thai border.

----

Conflict

The aspects of the secret warin Laos were too big to be hidden form the world, but just enough secrecy shadd the operations, known as "Operation Momentum." The CIA was dropping just enough arms to stop the advancement of communism's troops. An American Intlligence officer, Texan Bill Lair, was the man who conceived the clandestine actions. Lair elected anambitious Hmong officer named Vang Pao to lead the small army, and for a while, the army actually succeeded in their war.

After meeting with Vang Pao, Warner relates, Lair told his C.I.A. superiors that arming the Hmong looked like a good deal for the Americans: a low-cost, low-profile operation that would put pressure on the North Vietnamese. But Mr. Lair also warned that in the end the Hmong would prove to be too weak to prevail against the Vietnamese. By Warner's account, Mr. Lair suggested in that very first discussion with his bosses that the plan should provide for a sanctuary somewhere west of the Mekong, where the Hmong could retreat if the war turned against them.

----

Climax

Mr. Lair was right about the Hmong's eventual defeat. But neither he nor any other American ever followed through on the sanctuary plan. Instead, Vang Pao was left to fight on for more than a decade while his army slowly bled to death on nameless trails and remote hilltop bases. The rest of the Hmong, who were no longer able to farm or hunt in their traditional lands, either fled or remained in their villages to endure the bombs that "fell like rain," as one refugee said, wherever an area was abandoned to Communist control.

Thousands died of wounds, hunger or exhaustion during mass evacuations, while boys of 14 and 15 were pressed into service to replenish Vang Pao's depleted army, turning his force of "splendid fighting men," as one enthusiastic American official had called them, into a pathetic army of terrified children sent to the slaughter like so many unwanted puppies in a sack. Through it all, the United States continued to prod Vang Pao to keep fighting, not because any better outcome could be achieved for the Hmong but simply because the war in Laos was considered helpful for the larger American effort in Vietnam.

Warner's careful, well-written account lets these tragic events speak for themselves, for the most part. His few harsh judgments -- and even these are expressed obliquely -- are directed not at those who started the operation and ran it in the field, but at higher-ups who came later and who explicitly regarded the Hmong as expendable, men like Theodore Shackley, the C.I.A. station chief in Laos after 1966, and William Colby,who became the Director of Central Intelligence in the 1970's.

----

Reviews

On the back cover, there is a list of reviews from journalism rather than the usual critic. Thisis what one review, written by the Los Angeles Times, had to say:

"...A terrific book. Much of it reads like a wild, imaginative adventure novel. That the story is true and only now coming to light makes it all that much amazing. It can only add to our understanding how strong men and their convictions and their daring so often lead to calamity, especially for those who believe and follow them"

A rating in terms of stars was not found.

References