General Vang Pao Elementary

This story is almost comical.  The Madison School District had to come up with a new name for an elementary school.  41 names were submitted including Henry Aaron and Ronald Reagan.  In the end, Madison did what Madison does and decided to go with a more politically correct person to honor a particular minority community: General Vang Pao.

The Hmong community says it’s the first time their most prominent leader, General Vang Pao, has been honored with a public school in his name.

“It is a historic moment for the Hmong people,” said Madison school board member Shwaw Vang, a Hmong who persuaded the board to unanimously approve the name last week. An Asian ethnic group, the Hmong in the U.S. came mainly from Laos as refugees after the Vietnam war.

But now they are getting some blow back.  There seems to be pretty substantial evidence that Vang Pao engaged in war crimes.  Apparently, he summarily executed his fair share of POWs and civilians.  He was heavily involved in trafficking opium to fund the war.  And he even forcibly conscripted kids into battle.  Perhaps even worse, for the ever-sensitive Madison types, Vang Pao did all of this as part of a CIA-backed war. 

Ironically, the kids who will attend Vang Pao Elementary will be the same age as the kids that he allegedly conscripted and sent to their deaths.

Personally, I think that some of the evidence against Vang Pao on war crimes is a bit sketchy and seems to be colored by an anti-CIA, pro-Communist agenda.  His involvement in Opium trafficking seems to be pretty well established.  But guerrilla warfare is naturally a bloody business and I wouldn’t set anything outside the realm of possibility. 

This is why school districts should stick to naming schools after local icons and presidents.  It makes life a whole lot less complicated.