"Perhaps starting to clean up the mess the US had created, would be a good first step in that direction"
It's less starting, and more finishing. We have been paying money towards the goal of cleaning up Laos, a total of $74 million by 2014 - but 40 percent of that was all since 2010. Obviously it was not seen as much of a concern by lawmakers and politicians until more recently. (The Legacies of War group and other NGOs have done a lot to bring this cause to people's attention and light some fires under lawmakers asses.)
This additional $90 million that Obama is promising is a good start towards really tackling the problem on the scale required, but I don't know if even that is close to enough. (And of course there are larger geopolitical reasons why Washington is now more willing to address this, as opposed to all the decades they mostly ignored it. My hope is, regardless of the reason, smart people will push through what they can, while the iron is hot, and get the people in Laos that actual help they need cleaning up our mistakes.)
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Date: 14/9/16 15:10 (UTC)It's less starting, and more finishing. We have been paying money towards the goal of cleaning up Laos, a total of $74 million by 2014 - but 40 percent of that was all since 2010. Obviously it was not seen as much of a concern by lawmakers and politicians until more recently. (The Legacies of War group and other NGOs have done a lot to bring this cause to people's attention and light some fires under lawmakers asses.)
This additional $90 million that Obama is promising is a good start towards really tackling the problem on the scale required, but I don't know if even that is close to enough. (And of course there are larger geopolitical reasons why Washington is now more willing to address this, as opposed to all the decades they mostly ignored it. My hope is, regardless of the reason, smart people will push through what they can, while the iron is hot, and get the people in Laos that actual help they need cleaning up our mistakes.)