Vang Pao Under Arrest
It's hard to recall more stirring words from an American president in recent decades than those spoken by President Bush yesterday at Prague, where a conference — convened by Vaclav Havel, Jose Maria Aznar, and Natan Sharansky — is underway in respect of security and democracy. The idea that the one is linked to the other is one of the principles of the Bush Doctrine, and Mr. Bush has spoken of the inspiration he has taken from the work of Mr. Sharansky. Excerpts from Mr. Bush's remarks appear in the adjacent columns.
In the opening paragraphs of his remarks, Mr. Bush spoke of how fitting it was that the conference was being held in the Czech Republic, a nation that, he noted, has been at the heart of the struggle for freedom in Europe. He spoke of the importance of the battle of ideas, announced he was ordering American diplomats in unfree countries to seek out and meet with dissidents, as he himself has been doing, and spoke about the courage of those who are prepared, as he put it, risk everything for their ideas.
We do not wish to — nor could we — take anything away from the president, but as we read his remarks we had laying next to the text a printout of the Associated Press dispatch with the news of the arrest — by American authorities — of one of the great leaders in the struggle for freedom in Southeast Asia. Vang Pao is the general who in the 1970s was backed by our Central Intelligence Agency and led the Hmong tribesmen in a heroic resistance against the Soviet-backed communist tyranny descending on his country. He was among nine alleged plotters who were, on Monday in California, arrested by American authorities.
We could barely believe our eyes. Vang Pao and the others arrested, according to the AP, were picked up during a sweep by more than 200 federal, state, and local agents. The news wire quoted a criminal complaint as saying the authorities acted because weapons shipments were set to begin this month to areas in Thailand along the Laotian border. The AP quoted Hmong leaders in Thailand as saying they found the charges unbelievable. "I don't believe Gen. Vang Pao planned to cause trouble in Laos. I think the charges are meant by rival Hmong in the United States to smear him," the AP quoted Ming Wui, a Hmong Christian minister in Thailand's Phetchabun province, as saying.
Federal prosecutors are quoted by the AP as saying, "We're looking at conspiracy to murder thousands and thousands of people at one time." Our instinct is that Mr. Bush will want to take a break between the Prague Conference and the G-8 summit and order up some adult supervision of whatever his justice department is doing in California. Or just exercise his unfettered pardon authority to nip this case in the bud. The only faction who have conspired to mass murder in Laos in our time are the communists, against whom Vang Pao has been our most reliable and inspiring ally. He is a freedom fighter who will tower over any courtroom into which he is brought.
