W ar defines generations of people. My generation was defined, one way or another, by the Vietnam war. And now, forty some odd years later, there are still articles in the paper about the whole deplorable baggage we all still carry.
Everybody on earth is going to die at some point. That we haven't figured out that we don't have to hasten the inevitable and that we could work to make everyone's brief time a little better will, apparently, always be a mystery to me.
6
I flew with the Ranch Hands once in 1967 as a correspondent for CBS News and it had some excitement to it, flying a hundred feet or so above the DMZ with the back bay open spilling out the powder and me sitting back in a metal box with camera filming the ground flying by.
We took a little ground fire and the crew saved a piece of the plane flooring with a hole in it as a memento for me. The room boy at the Caravelle Hotel apparently saw it as trash and threw it away.
Before we took off the genial pilot talked about the risks and how there's usually ground fire but he smiled and said a common soldier's saying, "Well, if it's got your name on it. . . but if it doesn't, well then." And off to the flight with the purple Ranch Hand scarf tossed Errol Flynn like over the shoulder.
This was our state of mind delivering mindlessly and ignorantly the ghastly ruination of fellow human beings we wouldn't know. We know some now, only a few, and we have known long since. They are the mementos thrown away. And in the safety of our lives here we are still sealed in the distances between us. And still mindless to the consequences of our actions. And still care less about reaching out a hand. We are not who we may have once thought we were. And not who we say we are.
20
Agent Orange --no, this is not about Trump and Russia. Rather it is a timely, moral and well remembered rebuke of the US's callous war making in Vietnam.
In this age of monuments debates there is one missing on the nation's mall. Namely a Vietnam Memorial dedicated to the innocents who were killed and maimed wantonly by US's use of napalm and Agent Orange and indiscriminate bombings and massacres --an estimated 2 million civilians died on both sides. And this needs to be accompanied by a military-industrial-American values reconciliation perhaps buiilding upon Ken Burns's timely, epic contribution.
In a war where body bags/wounded Americans and kill counts were respectively hidden from view and exalted we need such a reckoning. So that we don't repeat Vietnamese mistakes in Afghanistan and the Middle East where civilian deaths are spiking. And in the next wars we stumble into owing to some ill-informed domino theory.
8
For Vietnam this war was about a foreign country, massive in seize and weapons, fighting a very small country for the main reason of proving its global superiority. Ho Chi Minh though, all the way in little Hanoi, was so deeply loved and admired by his followers that many gave their live to ensure the freedom from imperialism as he defined. He died 1969 after having shown superiority in fighting that war. Around 1995, as an American Engineering company, we submitted a technical proposal for the entire country to help out in water management and agricultural/environmental issues. The first page of that proposal, in both local and English language, included a 1950 statement by HCM then still the Secretary of Agriculture with the words "Government Workers, the Farmers have always served Us, Day and Night, and now the time has come that We serve the Farmers." When, a few weeks later, we were asked to return to Hanoi and negotiate that proposal every single employee in that department had a hard copy of that first page on his/her desk. That country deeply loved him, even 25 years after his death because he set them free. No Einstein needed here.
8
Not "forgotten". Ignored.
How many years did it take for the US government to take responsibility for Agent Orange's effects on its own troops. And for how long was that response mediocre, at best?
USN 1967 - 71
Viet Nam 1968
10
The Trump Admistration propose to reduce US assistance to Vietnam:
“The FY 2018 Congressional Budget Justification released by the Trump administration calls for a 26 per cent reduction in total aid to Vietnam next year, from US$111.5 million in 2016 to US$82 million, with the budget for “non-proliferation, antiterrorism, de-mining and related programmes” cut by a third, from US$10.5 million to US$7 million.”
http://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2017/08/trump-administration-budgets-les...
Is the same happening to US assistance for removing land mines and unexploded ordnance in Laos and Cambodia?
We will protest these cuts on the steps of the Pentagon on October 20th as part of our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the march that led to 600 arrests and took the peace movement from protest to resistance.
http://www.vietnampeace.org/oct-21-event
John McAuliff
Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
14
Agent Orange is but one of several horrors the United States has inflicted upon smaller, weaker peoples. We have also detonated nuclear bombs on civilians, carried out many state-level assassinations, and imposed violent regime changes. All done for raw American gain and conquest.
And yet we sell this continuing enterprise of empire as our wish to export our enlightened ways of freedom and democracy -- all at the barrel of a gun.
The French called their imperial ravages "mission civilizatrice", civilizing mission. And their sacred mission included lessons on morality.
After the Vietnam War we correctly memorialized our 58,000 fallen soldiers. But over in Asia, we killed between two and three million of them. Clearly they don't matter to us nearly as much because we're the exceptional and indispensable nation, morally superior to all others. Or so we like to think.
We've learned to live in cognitive dissonance, putting off our reckoning. But the cost of this avoidance is we're becoming less truthful and increasingly violent in our self-affirmations and justifications.
oz.
13
Dioxin in just a few parts per billion can do chromosomal damage. Guess what has been and still is spewing out of the smokestacks of all those coal-fired power plants so beloved by Trump, McConnell,and their fellow shills for the coal industry. We won't even safeguard our own people if it gets in the way of profit. It is ironic that when the spray planes flew over we were told they were spraying for mosquitoes.
8
An easy way to avoid acceptance of moral or financial responsibility for our behaviors is to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any "direct connection." Think of corporations, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, etc. refusing to acknowledge any direct connection between war and the damage we do to people, between CO2 and planetary warming, between chemical pollution of our foods and the environment with health problems, between sales of opiates and addiction, between flooding the market with guns and the murder and suicide rates, and on and on.
6
In 1967- 68, I was a USMC officer living in Dong Ha VN - a base just south of the DMZ. In 1966 I was at The Basic School in Quantico, Va. That is the Corps
junior officers school. All junior officers had to give a speech of persuasion to the class on a topic of choice. I chose a difficult question: Why we are in VN.
All of the rationalizations were included...the Domino Theory, the spread of communism, the need to bring Jeffersonian democracy to a struggling nation, et al.. I didn't convince myself much less my brother Marines. Our political leaders - from both sides of the spectrum - determined that truth is not sacred in war. Truth -
like openness - would undermine our efforts. They were right: had Johnson, McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger been truthful, most of us would have concluded that it was an immoral war - a war that even with high testosterone and extreme patriotism would have caused us to quit.
Dong Ha and much of the land around was defoliated. And I have incurred the effects of Agent Orange and my life has suffered greatly. Sometimes I think of it as my punishment for my participation in our country's great fraud. And we have learned nothing.
21
DOW and other manufacturers profited greatly on Agent Orange, why can't they now pay for some of the pain and suffering it has caused? It would be a very small price to pay for a big return in positive public relations.
14
And then there are the cluster bombs in Laos--still killing people, mostly children, and still making fields not safe to farm. Many countries in the world have helped in the clean up. But the US, who dropped them, has never done a thing.
I live in South East Asia. Now in Cambodia--I've tried to change my profile many times, but the link doesn't work.
I am not proud to be an American.
25
We did terrible things in every war -- Gallipoli and the bombing of Dresden comes to mind -- but we acknowledged the risk. With the nuclear age, it was no longer war, but terror, that we visited upon our enemies.
The terror of Hiroshima made it easier for us to do horrifying things in Vietnam -- carpet bombing, napalm, agent orange. It now permits Donald Trump to contemplate the idle use of strategic nuclear weapons.
With each step, we become less worthy.
14
I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City several years ago and have never stopped thinking about the small band of musicians who played inside the entryway, a museum donation jar situated nearby.
Every member of the five-piece outfit had severe physical handicaps and deformities. The keyboardist was not just blind, he had no eyes and no opening on his smooth face for eyes. The band all sat on the floor, except for one musician who slouched in a wheelchair. It was explained all these people were victims of Agent Orange and other chemicals dumped on Vietnam by U.S. forces. A surprisingly large part of the museum, in fact, is reserved for images of people, born and unborn, affected by our defoliation campaign.
While the museum is an unapologetic propaganda shrine for the Communist Party, the band and its musicians offer devastating evidence against the U.S. and its conduct both during and after the war. Their everyday humanity in playing music together is too evident and their suffering too manifest to ignore. Our failure to pay for these horrors can, as the authors argue, only be explained by ignorance. Or malice.
More people here should know what the worst of the victims there -- child noncombatants -- must endure and abide. And we should cut a very large check.
Thanks for this essay.
57
I went back to Vietnam about 40 years after my tour back in '68/69 in the Central Highlands. Among the places visited to was the site of a Special Forces camp near the Cambodian border where I spent some time. Back in the sixties we saturated the countryside with Agent Orange, especially the Cambodian mountains where a North VIetnamese artillery unit was dug in. I had taken photos of the countryside back then and took more on my return trip. It wasn't until I got back home that I compared the two sets and noticed the defoliated mountains are still denuded of overgrowth. That poison lasted decades. I was told by my translators about the high rate of birth defects in Agent Orange areas. A few years after that I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. I got a disability rating from the VA and am getting treatments. They got nothing. We owe these people more than decimal dust money.
23
We need more articles like this. We Americans can only acknowledge "wins." When there is a "loss", it is too much too handle, unacceptable and not the so-called "American way." My heart aches for these individuals in Viet Nam. We are accountable and responsible for their lives just as we are for our veterans who risked life and limb so many decades ago (and even now in the Middle East).
Back in the early '80's, I witnessed first hand the lethal effects of Agent Orange. Two soldiers in the small town of Fair Oaks outside Sacramento, having children in a small grammar school, died young from the cancer caused by Agent Orange. One can't help but grieve over the many spread across the US, and particularly in Viet Nam, who had the same fate. We are less than human, with little moral compasses, if we and our government continue to turn our backs on innocent individuals who want or wanted nothing more than normal, healthy lives.
13
Tell me about it. When my daughter was born, she never crawled. My wife and I noticed a number of developmental problems and fought with our primary care physician to authorize testing at the University of Kansas Medical Center. After a week of testing, we met the leader of the medical team evaluating my daughter. They asked me whether I was in Vietnam and whether I was exposed to Agent Orange. They told us she has no math acuity and comprehension of numbers - adding, subtracting, multiplication, any complex formulas are out of the question - as well as physical coordination such as tying one's shoes becomes more troubling. When my daughter walks, she walks as if she's 70 years older than her actual age. Help from the VA or the government? Are you kidding, they deny any complicity in my daughter's disability. Who is going to help when my sive and I are gone? I worry about that 24/7.
48
A most important article, depicting American 'gusto' in causing havoc in Vietnam, a country they decided to wage war with no rationale at hand. The french before them could have told them so, so to not repeat the catastrophic loss in life and treasure and, since, crippled lives orphaned of needed help for the criminal intent and action in using prohibited chemical warfare, a moral outrage to say the least. Why is it that we humans, with so much potential for progress and creativity and even occasional goodness, may behave as brutish and cruel savages when our 'tribe mentality' comes calling? No shame, no humility, and no regrets? Not even assisting those affected, living hell, not of their own fault?
12
Greed.
4
The last country where the U.S. helped people we had maimed and killed, was Japan.
5
1 Lawyers opinion and her mendacious hus hand, acting Secretary of the VA, called gun fire support Navy sailors, Blue Water Sailors in 2002, Stealing presumptive rights to Agent Orange compensation for agent Orange diseases. Sailors, had to have a feet on the ground to be compensated.
I suffer in pain daily from, neuropathy, type II diabetes, Ischemic Heart Disease, Prostate Cancer and Chorlacne. The acne is never compensated - it just means I was poisoned to Parts per Million level - that on my insides Agent Orange works daily to kill me.
My county called 175,000 US Navy vets, Blue Water Sailors to avoid paying we sick sailors compensation, To This Day.
I'm ashamed that the US Navy allowed we vets to be Thrown Under the Bus by the VA. All of Congress is aware of our plight and Never Allows pending correcting legislation to have a vote. I will never stop fighting to right this mendacious grave wrongdoing of NAVY vets.
14
Marine in 3rd Mar Div. in Vietnam 1967-68. Agent Orange was an environmental and human betrayal of Americans and Vietnamese by our government. Shame.
14
35 million for ten years. Someone give them the money! Not a lot.
9
Met a Nam vet who would always wear a hat in 2003. After getting to know him, he explained that agent orange had taken his hair at 19. Such a shame.
7
A war crime.
Comitted in the name of the 'free world'. Shame.
13
My memory is that dioxin was widely used in the 1970s to 'clear land' for cattle here at home. In Arkansas, brochures were distributed to landowners that showed 'before and after' pictures of dense woods converted to clear pasture land with cattle grazing, as if by magic. I suppose they just skipped the part about the acres and acres of dead brush and trees. Friends of mine living there at the time had a favorite spot in the Ozarks where they hiked every year to gather huckleberries. One year the berries seemed to be off, and had a funny taste. They ate them anyway, and some got sick. When they returned to the berry patch later, all the vegetation around was withered and brown. I don't know how wide-spread this was, or who was responsible. The belief was that local agriculture agencies were complicit. The herbicide was 2,4-D which contained dioxin. Enough was known at the time about the effects of these toxins, but apparently there was money to be made. Enough said.
13
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
9
We use this chemical that killed and maimed millions, and are happy to deride Assad and others for doing the same.
27
I volunteered for a bit with an organization in Hanoi that helped people with disabilities get access to legal services (through advocacy, lobbying, awareness events, etc). It was run entirely by women with disabilities. It struck me that most of the disabilities were not similar to those we see in the States, but more deformities such as those described here. And it's still incredibly pervasive. It's devastating to see the effects of agent orange so clearly still affecting the population. It was horrible for the U.S. soldiers who were there and for their children, but in Vietnam, the effects continue for an entire population whose water and land was contaminated with poison. There are quite a number of similar organizations in VN, addressing the repercussions. It's heartening that there are a few former U.S. soldiers who have gone back and set up their own initiatives to deal with the consequences of agent orange. I just hope that American citizens are aware of the consequences of something their country did, the effects that are continuing to be felt, and that there are things you can do to help (and hopefully avoid this type of action in the future).
14
We won't do anything because Vietnamese can't vote here. It's that simple.
Actually, it's amazing that we've spent anything at all. The sad truth is, all wars have terrific amounts of collateral damage.
4
To the astonishment of Vietnamese Americans in California, the state assembly recently passed a bill to roll back laws which preclude communists from state service. It was the quick reaction by those allies and veterans who fought against communist oppression in SE Asia which stopped the process in its tracks.
This was a war of American invasion and aggression. It was not a war of defense, we were not threatened in any way by the Vietnamese. There was no moral justification then or now. It was not even a war among equals because the US doesnt fight equals, militarily or economically.
5
Absolutely astonished that, Totally apart from Causation or Morality , Posters do not have the slightest understanding that millions of Vietnamese were our ALLIES. It was a Civil war. THEY WERE ON OUR SIDE
17
Do we really have to ask? We recently prosecuted a 'war of choice' based at least in part, of fabrications, causing death and misery to hundreds of thousands and hardly a word (including our mass media is ever spoken, or written about those people.
11
America has a long, sad history of covering up its war 'misdeeds' which many consider war crimes. An example is the video C. Manning exposed with her Wikileaks post. We railed against the Germans and Japanese war crimes, but did not talk about rapes in Italy and Germany by our troops, or how we brought in almost no POWs in the pacific islands. Napalm, cluster bombs, nukes, and drone strikes - oops- often kill civilians.
Agent Orange, though, is a somewhat different case, as I know from having worked with research samples in '69 thru '75. My company made it. At the time we knew it caused chloracne, a blistering skin condition, and my team helped identify dioxins as the suspected cause before I worked there.
We had yet to learn about the long-term effects of human exposure, and thought that by producing less dioxins at the 0.1% level we could reduce the chance of rashes.
Leaders in DC with clearance might know about the radiation hazard of nukes, but most of the army did not. Likewise Agent Orange. We deployed weapons later found to be dangerous for reasons not understood by those in command. This is a case where we can accept responsibility for the Unintended(!) consequences of using a weapons of without the usual level of moral censure that goes with weapons like poison gas. Agent Orange was not known to be lethal, teratrogenic, or a carcinogen when used in 'Nam.
7
No it was only known by millions of us who were out in the streets to be obscenely brutal and barbaric used against civilians in a war of aggression. Somehow the good folks at Dow and the Pentagon were in the dark about that.
4
Has Vietnam ever acknowledged the deaths, birth defects and lives they destroyed by addicting thousands of young American GIs to heroin? It was an effective tactic the effects of which we are living with today.
4
Did the Vietnamese have a choice to have Agent Oranges dumped on the villages, contaminated their waters and lands. American GI had that choice and they did to their own accord. That's the difference.
14
My point is that all sides in a war have a lot fo regret and make up for. But one might argue that the Agent Orange was irresponsibly aimed at foliage while the heroin was directly aimed with accuracy and brutal results at an entire generation of vulnerable, young Americans many of whom were there because they were drafted.
A pox Americana.
11
I think we have that now
4
A Republican caucus which failed by only one vote to strip 26,000,000 Americans of their health insurance is unlikely to vote any amount of money for Vietnamese health care. Reparations for a war that ended almost 45 years ago is a dead issue.
10
Every single member of Congress needs to visit the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.
It used, rightly, to be called the Museum of American Atrocities.
17
No, it just isn't proclaimed audibly or is exercised as an exclusive domain like many other words among various disgruntled subsets.
at age 19, sent to Vietnam, spent the year with the 145th Combat Aviation Batallion, at Bien Hoa, we were sprayed daily as the surrounding area was the large Air base which most of the flights originated for the spraying in Vietnam and on the return many times the remain Orange was dumped on the local area. On my return I married had a beautiful daughter who had terrible birth defects and suffered and died before her 2nd birthday. I blamed myself for this until in 2011 I went to town meeting about Agent Orange and found that what she suffered from was the leading birth defect caused by agent orange. So I ask you, I was deprived a family, my on children, the price I had to pay for freedom has been, 51 years of pain and depression, the price is to high. We American soldiers were poisoned the Vietnamese were poisoned and our childen too.
117
Being TAD to Da Nang in the early 70's, this is one more lovely thing to encroach upon my sleep.
1
The use of Agent Orange is an unimaginable tragedy for everyone, the GIs, who were either directly sprayed or those who endured long-term effects from secondary exposure, not only for themselves, but also their children both Americans and Vietnamese. The government and the chemical companies, all refuse to address the problem because of the financial requirements. This tragedy is only amplified in Vietnam. Before anything can be done there must be an official recognition of the horrific consequences of dioxin exposures rather than the most limited long-term consequences. A while back, the VA did a nationwide program of screening for dioxin exposure. The most serious shortcoming was that there is no diagnostic test that allows researchers to find dioxin in the bodies of veterans or Vietnamese nationals who were exposed fifty years earlier. Instead of expanding the illnesses and physical and mental disabilities associated with Agent Orange, researchers claim one was not exposed since no dioxins were found in the samples provided. Fear of compensation should not be at the top of the list that dtermines the consequences of Agent Orange. This is the tragedy we refuse to acknowledge.
11
I've lost friends to Agent Orange, so I'm negatively biased. The article does not highlight that the US government stalled for well over a decade, despite knowing about dioxin's consequences. In the mean time, thousands of servicemen died without compensation. 'Delay, deny, let them die.' That's the motto. Saves money.
19
The conscriptees and all enlisted personnel are simply chits, pawns whose value and suffering have nothing to do with the sick souls of those who plan and prosecute wars. All are inevitable and inconsequential collateral damage to the masters of war whose only god is power and money.
3
This editorial is implicitly an indictment of the great weakness of our government, its fundamental complicity with the philosophy of "take the money and run". Monsanto, Dow and other chemical purveyors of Agent Orange paved the way to profitable sales of their lethal product with liberal contributions to lawmakers (even generals? who knows?).
By the time the irreparable effects of any malfeasance become public knowledge, all the CEO's and governmental deciders have retired, or else the statute of limitations prevents effective prosecution.
So the fundamental question remains, how can real moral responsibility for one's actions be extended beyond term limits?
6
I visited Vietnam in 2016 and both the people that I encountered on the street and the photographs I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life. None of the other Americans in my tour group entered the museum. Enough said. Personally, I feel that war crimes were committed through the use of Agent Orange but know that as a country the US will never acknowledge this. Another war in which the only winners were the Military Industrial Complex.
20
Thank you for this article raising awareness about the horrific consequences of Agent Orange, consequences that people are still living with to this day. It is an embarrassment to the US that we refuse to acknowledge and assist those we have so gravely harmed.
5
While American politicians and news media speak out about Assad and chemical weapons in Syria, our use of chemical weapons was done on a much larger scale with longer devastating results. If Assad is a criminal, then so too are the corporations, politicians and generals who produced, sanctioned and used Agent Orange. The hypocrisy is sickening, and our refusal to confront such crimes allows the US to continue it's self-delusion about how we are a "shining and humanitarian" example for the world.
14
Starting tomorrow evening Sunday, 9/17 Ken Burns series, THE VIET NAM WAR begins on PBS television This documentary doesn't take positions on the war but tells the story we all need to experience. Agent Orange will surely be featured as much of the series features the stories of Vietnamese soldiers, both North and South as well as civilians touched by the war.
2
My Dad is gone. This is why. Money means nothing. Truth will prevail. My heart goes out to the millions of lives across SE Asia and US who have felt the consequences of such incomprehensible decisions. And now we talk of war with another country, in another decade...with nuclear implications. When will we apply what we have learned to our current situation? Military might gets us nowhere, except to breed jealousy and distrust in fellow humans. Humans.
6
We can do no wrong. We've tried to save many countries through bombing and invasion and we'll do it again if the mood strikes us. but we don't acknowledge culpability - ever. And we certainly don't pay war reparations because we're the good guys.
5
The base of Agent Orange has been applied in many places. In Africa, 2.4.5. T regularly used to kill trees. I do not know if the drug contained Dixone. The released soil was used for reintroduction or other crops. My boss came in 1973 with the story that during his visit to USA he was told that the drug was injurious to women. We then tied up the use. We were in bush and knew it in 1973.
3
One of the reasons we know about the toxic effects of Agent Orange is that they affected both the American servicemen and the indigenous Vietnamese population.
In contrast, with regard to Gulf War Syndrome which many people have also claimed was due to the effects of toxic chemicals, as far as any one has ever shown it only affected the American service men and women and not the indigenous population in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait where the Americans were serving.
Christopher Hitchens and photographer James Natchway in a Vanity Fair Contribution piece in 2006 have been the one and only other time I have seen this addressed anywhere in the mainstream media. I suppose the American Governments since Nixon just chalk these cases up to collateral damage. And to think people have made fortunes out of selling this stuff. Sickening doesn't even begin to cover it.
11
The whole world is fair game and all beings just inconsequential collateral damage to the masters of war. Their god is power and money and their fanaticism in pursuit of both is stronger than ever, with ever more horrific implications for people and planet.
1
"It is about human decency."
As I have said many times in this space, American policy makers have no human decency and therefore no morality when it comes to the means to achieve their goals. The world lets out a collective yawn when American politicians such as Obama or Trump talks about American values like human rights and condemns dictators like Kim and Assad because the US has long ago sold its values for whatever its leaders defined as national interests.
The suffering of the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange will forever remain a black stain and shame on the US as a country and people as long as the US refuses to acknowledge its responsibility and justly compensate the victims.
37
It's about money but it's also about precedents. If the US admits to wrongdoing and repartions for this war crime it will be asked to account for all the other damage its many wars, covert and over military interventions and diverse dangerous meddling has resulted in the in the past 40 or more years. For a hegmonic power that intends to remain so whose clearly stated strategic approach to the world requires it to use force around the world to ensure its required dominance that's a non starter.
44
The article isn't a prosecutor's brief. It merely calls on the government to do the right thing. Donating humanitarian aid to the victims of a horrible disease is hardly an admission of "war crimes."
1
Nice.
In response to Belasco, it is not often noted that many people and businesses gain much wealth from the business of war.
1
Scientific American ran an article in 2015 parroting the government line: there is no proof that Agent Orange is causing birth defects, scientists (!) are not certain about the causes and think the high rate in Vietnam may be due to current pesticide use. This is a defense of war crimes hiding behind the scientific method.
24
No. It is evidence that scientific fact does not depend on popular opinion. It is ironic how those who fun away from the real science regarding agent orange rush to embrace science when is supports a cause in which they believe (e.g., the overwhelming science supporting global warming despite the hysteria of the alt.right). Here, despite the hysteria of those who decry the use of Agent Orange, there simply exists little valid science to support the proposition that exposure to Agent Orange caused various diseases.
The simple fact is that birth defects exist for a number of reasons just as people develop a variety of cancers and other medical conditions as they age. To date, the science has shown no statistically significant difference between similar populations of those who served in the armed forces during the Vietnam War who never even went to Vietnam and those who did go and were sprayed in terms of developing diseases listed on the VA compensation list or the incidence of birth defects in the general population from the population in Vietnam. No amount of an emotional world-view can change that scientific fact.
By "acknowledge" the writers mean "send lots of money". Well, first, we already sent the Vietnamese a sizable percentage of the jobs that thousands of Americans depended on for survival. (The Vietnamese are using the income from those now Vietnam based jobs to contribute the extinction of probably hundreds of animal species, but that's a different story - on the NYT somehow never covers.) Not only that, I;m not sure any Vietnamese person has EVER sent money to the loved ones of ANY service person killed by Vietnamese forces or sympathizers. The larger issue is that the US is no longer a rich country. Where would the money come from to subsidize Vietnam? How can the US have single payer health insurance, for example, if it continues to be world sugar daddy and world cop? Answer- it can't, and American citizens would be my personal priority. I would rather see people in TX and FL housed, fed, and able to put gas in their cars than see even MORE trillions or billions flooding abroad.
8
It's appalling that we essentially waged a chemical war on a developing country. Whether or not we send money, it's important to admit what we did. You give to your charities, I'll give to mine.
1
the author this post somehow thinks that the Vietnamese somehow came over here instead of us going over there and raining death and destruction on that country. no country with Compassion or integrity can sit by while innocent people suffer because of what we did. with regards to the money, it's not a lot and could be easily raised with a very very very small tax on the ultra-wealthy in this country who have become so rich over the past 20 years
5
The US is the richest country in the world. The money is just being hoarded by the wealthy, many of whom make their fortunes off war.
When we cause such devastation, we have a responsibility to help it improve.
The war in Vietnam was an utterly immoral action. It's time for us to acknowledge that.
1
President Obama outraged by Syria's use of chemical weapons against citizens felt compelled to "draw a line" and President Trump sent bombers to Syria as a message of disgust for another known incidence this past year. Where is our leaders' outrage against the US Army's reckless use of Agent Orange ? We claim to always stand for morality, virtue and justice and unwavering support of veterans yet we have a blind eye to Agent Orange victims in Viet Nam and here in the homeland. Some veterans deserve more than, "Thank you for your service " and some Vietnamese are due reparation for their misery. Dare I say the use of Agent Orange in villages of Viet Nam would be labelled terrorism today ?
123
We are only our brother's and sister's keepers if they are our brothers and sisters.
We are" an island" only "if the bell" is not tolling for me.
We can be brave, honorable and patriotic Americans by singing the National Anthem at sporting events.
3
Perhaps America isn't quite the Saint it says it is? I'm shocked. Perhaps a halo-lift would help. Superficial appearances are everything in this world, in fact.
1
Volunteers and draftees from these wars, I would argue, deserve no thanks for what you call their service. Perhaps one day we will acknowledge that those who enable crimes against humanity... no matter their excuse, are not moral or virtuous. They are just criminals.
In order to end this carnage, we must all stop pretending it is noble or even necessary.
2
Why don't we go with the available science? In the Agent Orange Act of 1991. Congress directed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) to request the Institute of Medicine to perform a comprehensive evaluation of scientific and medical information regarding the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam to be followed by biennial updates.
This appears to be the latest update. Institute of Medicine. 2012. Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2010. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13166.
On reproductive effects:
There is inadequate or insufficient evidence to determine whether there is an association between exposure to 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, TCDD, picloram, or cacodylic acid and endometriosis; semen quality; infertility; spontaneous abortion; stillbirth; late fetal, neonatal, or infant death; low birth weight or preterm delivery; birth defects other than spina bifida; childhood cancers; or diseases in more mature offspring or later generations.
There is limited or suggestive evidence of an association between exposure to the chemicals of interest and spina bifida. There is some evidence of altered hormone concentrations, but the degree to which testosterone concentration may be modified is not great enough for clinical consequences to be expected.
There is limited or suggestive evidence of no association between paternal exposure to TCDD and spontaneous abortion.
https://www.nap.edu/read/13166/chapter/10#597
3
The Agent Orange factory that was across the river from Newark, NJ illegally dumped its waste right here into the Passaic River. The result was cancerous dioxin and a dead river. The Vietnam War, the gift that keeps on giving.
37
This article makes mention of something I've wondered about for 48 years. I spent 14 months in Vietnam as a child soldier. I've always wondered what happened to the spent 55 gallon drums that Agent Orange was transported in. Spent 55 gallon drums were used all over Vietnam, by both soldiers and civilians. Used for anything from revetments, to yes, showers. To anyone in the Agent Orange dispersal companies.
How were the Agent Orange drums disposed of?
16
I wonder why we ignore this instance of chemical warfare when lecturing the Syrian government. Illegitimate wars against tiny nations is our specialty.
15
"We never apologize for America," said President George H.W. Bush.
There you have it: arrogant, hubristic, brutal neo-imperialism: live off the blood of others and never, ever admit it. Smash, grab, and move on.
That's the USA today.
And it doesn't seem to matter much, whether Dem or GOP. American brutality is bipartisan. The fix is in so deeply.
50
Supporting the survival of a variation on democracy in this world is a constant existential problem.
My nephew was born with a birth defect. His father has several health problems that might be related to his service in Vietnam. I have always wondered whether the lives of these two people were ruined by that stupid war and the stupid people who planned it.
13
The tragedy of the Vietnam War will never end. The op-ed articles in this series ought to be required reading in every high school American history class.
17
I was assigned as an artillery scout for a Marine Infantry company in late '66 to mid-'67 and I remember the Air Force aircraft spraying over us and further westward. All of us who survived the war got aggressive prostate cancer, every single one of us.
I have always wondered what effects the poor Vietnamese must have suffered with that horrific stuff in their ground and their water sources.
What kind of thought processes did our leadership go through to come up with such a horrible product and who was it supposed to help? Those of us on the ground didn't need defoliants. I've long since understood that those great decision makers never cared about us but I am not surprised that they didn't care about the Vietnamese we were risking our lives to protect.
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Money.
That is all it is. That is all its about. That is all that matters.
Money.
If we acknowledge our duplicity and lack of morality, then it opens the flood gates to more retributions for our misdeeds and adventures.
Imagine having to stop building cluster bombs that have been outlawed by most enlightened countries. Worse yet, having to pay for the continued casualties inflicted upon children and civilians around the world from past and present and even future bomblets our MIC drops upon the world. The cost would be astronomical.
Will never happen.
Money.
That is all that matters.
Collateral damage is sad. Too bad.
Oohhh lookie, a drone.
RUN!
36
Agent Orange was chemical warfare, with effects that last generations.
59
And the US wonders why it has enemies?
82
If the whole world hates us, why do they unfailingly accept the evil, tainted financial aid we're constantly throwing their way? When are the noble, enlightened Europeans going to repay us for Marshall Aid, or maybe compensate the descendants of the men buried in Normandy?
1
The Marshall Plan, of course, had two goals: to create European consumers for American products and to prevent the appeal of communism in a devastated Europe. We were following the Lord's desire to help ourselves.
5
No one has said that the whole world hates us.
2
This is just another illustration of how the U.S. government is constitutionally incapable of admitting wrongdoings, regardless of how glaring they are. Perhaps one day we will have an enlightened President who takes full responsibility for our country's transgressions. Obama was close, but not close enough. And, unfortunately, Trump basically has the conscience of a toad.
58
Toads are not without conscience.....inappropriate to insult them (or any innocent animal) in such a comparison. This mindset perpetuates a hubris you likely did not intend.
1
I have 100% disabilty for my time in Viet Nam and Agent Orange and it took 30 plus years to get it. It is a great shame on America that used it on not only the Vietnamese, but their own soldiers. But then again, the people that came up with it were "the best and brightest", weren't they?
71
One of many reasons to not stand for the National Anthem. Most people have no idea of the despicable, immoral, and illegal actions our country has perpetrated onto other innocent human beings over the course of our history. Ignorance truly is bliss.
48
The failure of Washington to apologize and atone in every possible way for the spraying of Agent Orange on Vietnam nullifies the validity of any moral lectures it wishes to give to the rest of the world. This appalling crime is one of the worst of the 20th century -- and yet Washington, instead of getting on its knees for its crime, chooses to stand on its hind legs preaching superior morality to other nations.
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Yes, the usual greed, greed, greed—hallmark of our American way—precluded the chemical companies from making a slightly less lucrative but safer product.
A physician MD
38
When the victims die, the liability disappears.
23
But history remembers.
12
My father died of Agent Orange-related cancer back in 1981. I had no idea this was happening and now it seems so obvious and terrible. Can you post a reliable charity to donate to in order to help?
Also, please, Congress, send some money to help! We did this!
34
If we didn't acknowledge the effects of agent orange on US forces and their children for decades, how can we be naive enough to think we will do so for the other Asian victims? Why did the VA take decades to prove causation then only allow a short window for applying for compensation?
We have a strong sociopathic strain in our culture, as evidenced by this as one of many debacles that ruin lives and families.
24
"Chemical companies opted for maximum return despite...a safer product for a slight reduction in profits".
Why not say the word: Monsanto.
Monsanto was denying the evidence of dioxin's dangers even in 2004 (wiki).
In all the $trillions burned on lost-cause wars to benefit military-industrialists, all they can find for the vets they forced to handle this stuff was $13.3 bn, & 1/10th of that for Vietnam after the US destroyed a vast portion of forests, crops, causing famine & decades of death, cancer & deformities.
No I'm Not 'Proud to be an American'.
Pay your reparations, USA & walk back all your criminal wars & weaponry.
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This article, while very good, only touches on the subject. The fact that Phan Thanh Duc is only 20, born nearly four decades after the U.S. stopped using Agent Orange, is an indication that the Vietmanese claims that it has gotten into the country's DNA are totally plausable. So it will be with them forever. The country's efforts for compensation from the U.S. are, as the article indicates, almost useless. The U.S. has told them to go after the manufacturers of the chemicals - I suspect the NYT lawyers told them not to name names, so I won't but it's easy to look up.
39
Monsanto.
10
Monsanto and Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. He knew the dangers, he ordered AO use anyway, and it killed his son and genetically affected his grandson. Part of his, and the American legacy in Vietnam that keeps on giving.
Monsanto is the name of the company that developed and sold Agent Orange to our armed forces. It is also the company that has foisted GMOs and RoundUp on the world.
6
Recognizing that we poisoned and murdered Vietnamese and other Indochinese by the millions (people who never attacked the U.S.) would conflict with our self-image. Aren't we lovers of freedom and justice? Aren't we the exceptional, indispensable nation?
Once we start admitting this, we might as well start doing something to make up for our treatment of the Native and African Americans. Ain't gonna happen.
21
A horrid and shameful act of cruelty perpetuated by the American govt. against a people who did us no harm. The sick, demented Cold War ideology escalated this unnecessary war. My heart continues to ache for the Vietnamese victims of our genocidal war. My apologies, on behalf of my country, could never be adequate. I hang my head in shame!
40
Agent Orange was used in the US. Check the VA website.
4
It was also used in South Korea along the DMZ.
1
The requisite human decency to take responsibility for this evil is clearly lacking in the collective American character. Nearly two generations away from that hell-war, current generations can't relate to its reality at all, much less to the idea that there is a debt we still owe, that as a people our culpability will not be erased by time. It is a national stain and a national shame. The national solution seems to be to keep half the population medicated on antidepressants, and nearly that many drug-addicted either by prescription or self-medicating away the existential pain that comes with the privilege of being born in this nation.
5
In the chaos of the Trump administration, I hope there's one decent person who could manage to get money to Vietnam to pay for yet more American sins. I am so often so ashamed of my citizenship.
http://www.thecriticalmom.blogspot.com
10
On September, 2010, the VA awarded me a modest compensation due to my exposure to Agent Orange. My specific type of heart disease was cited as one of the chronic illnesses linked to this herbicide. I served as a medical corpsman at the 12th USAF Hospital at Cam Ranh AFB. The herbicide was used to create free fire zones along the air strip. 150.000 other Vietnam veterans qualified for compensation of which around 68,000 were still alive at the time. This use of Agent Orange is obviously a war crime. And three million Vietnamese will never receive any substantial reparations of which 150,000 Vietnamese children were born with crippling and hideous birth defects. But JFK signed National Action Security Memorandum #111 on November 22, 1961. He authorized the use of Agent Orange and also the use of napalm. JFK, our fallen King of Camelot as the historical myth now goes, was a war criminal. And to be fair, though I never committed a war crime, being in the rear with the gear, I did serve in a criminal war. So I judge JFK as harshly as I judge myself. I can live with that. Why have we so callously disregarded the Vietnamese victims? I would venture that a corollary which follows from this proposition of America as the exceptional, indispensable nation is that only American victims count in the scheme of things when we wage war. But when I think about the Vietnamese victims, I still have fleeting but profound moments of shame.
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Hear, hear, hear, Mr. Hoffman! Emotional, honest, accurate and articulate.
Many of us share your guilt. You aren't alone. Our family is large, if often quieter than the family of the tough, the proud, the defiantly nationalist. But we're a strong family, regardless.
I grew up hiking in the forests of the NW. The Long Khanh Proivince jungle my unit operated in was as, and more, beautiful and full of exotic birds, monkeys, animals I'd never heard of, the infrequent tiger, elephant, and rare Asian rhino. I had no idea what, but I knew something was wrong in 1969 when we would pass silently through kilometers of denuded trees and dying vegetation.
Not until decades later did I learn what those Air Force tankers were doing above us.
When I visited Vietnam's museum of the war in Ho Chi Minh City in 2000 and saw the collection of damage, the photos, the studies and the testimony it served to deepen my guilt, one my nation needs to own. Religion used to teach that we need to own and confront our guilt and change and heal.
Funny, isn't it, in a black comedy way, that ours, the most defiantly "religious" of nationalist nations, with prayer groups in our Oval Office, defies our guilt and even condemns it?
Thanks George Hoffman. Thanks very much.
9
"But the legacy of Agent Orange is not about science or economics. It’s about human decency."
There is only one conclusion to be drawn. America and Americans have no idea what human decency means. And they have the temerity to lecture others on human rights! Shame on you Americans.
67
America leads the world in mass incarceration.
America invented and used nuclear weapons like atomic bombs and chemical weapons like Agent Orange, napalm and phosphorus and used them in war.
4
So? The US has responsibility to our soldiers, yes. The people on the other side of the war, i.e., those trying to kill our soldiers or supporting said opposition, are not our concern. Perhaps if they had laid down arms and collaborated instead of fighting, they would not be in this situation.
1
Chemical warfare is a war crime. Check the Geneva Convention if you doubt it. By using Agent Orange, the US committed a war crime. Ergo, a minimal gesture would be to provide full medical support for all victims of this crime, American and Vietnamese alike, without further delay.
4
Along with the carpet bombing that surpassed the number of bombs dropped in WWII, the US used a powerful chemical weapon that still horrifically poisons civilians in Vietnam fifty years later and will continue to cripple and deform innocent children into any foreseeable future. Today Washington, dominated by a war-clique, is engaged in unending elective wars (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, etc) that violate national territory, break international law and invade and destroy countries in the Middle East with millions of dead, wounded and displaced victims and result in laws diminishing our democracy by continuously reducing the individual rights on which this country was founded. Beyond that, we refuse to dialogue with and we make enemies of nuclear-armed nations that, like us, have the power to extinguish human life on this planet in order to maintain military dominance and hegemony. In which scenario does this end well?
13
Agent Orange was chemical warfare. The scientist who had a hand in developing Agent Orange during the second World War tried to have the substance banned from military use during the Vietnam era. The Army prevailed in over-ruling him. The United States should pay full restitution to Vietnamese victims who were subjected to these chemical attacks. One way this is already being done is through State Department grants for study in the United States, which could be increased.
A further tragedy here is that the victims were the very people we were in Vietnam to help, most of whom were peasant farmers, caught up in and subjected to terrorism eventually by both sides, in a war not of their making.
37
I do not accept the authors' proposition that we have a moral obligation to compensate enemy nationals, including military personnel, for injuries caused by combat operations. Our responsibility to our own personnel is entirely different.
2
So civilians, mostly peasant farmers, in their own country are now "enemy nationals", and we had the right, in the "combat" we brought to them, to dump on them millions of gallons of mutagenic chemicals weapons known even at the time to cause grave human harm, in addition to their intended ravages?
What a wonderful exceptional nation we are.
22
The use of Agent Orange was chemical warfare that affected millions of Vietnamese civilians. They were not enemy nationals, but civilians. That makes it a war crime. Please get your facts straight. The US had no business invading Vietnam in the first place.
22
As someone who's not set foot in the USA, but has an in-built, indelible colonial imprint - the USA and it's hegemony of culture was always a welcome thing. I've admired the values. That anybody can be anybody in America helps offset the "only European philosophy is worthwhile" thinking that's one of many colonial byproducts that billions of people like me share.
But to read a story like this reminds me, we're all human, and we're all far from perfect. And that, for the most part, government really isn't accountable to the people after all. It's pretty depressing to be honest.
9
As Americans we don't do very well with acknowledging or reconciling any of the consequences of our many follies abroad. 200,000 to over a million estimated civilian casualties in Iraq? The now 16 year conflict in Afghanistan? The Vietnam war saw as many as 2 million Vietnamese killed. We just don't do well with recognizing such negatives that do not sit well with our image of America as the exceptional nation. Yes, we should be paying reparations to the Vietnamese and do whatever we can to help these victims of what was essentially chemical warfare. Don't hold your breath.
32
I see zero chance that this president and this Congress ever doing a decent thing regarding this matter.
13
My husband was a paramedic in Vietnam. He slowly began to suffer the effects of Agent Orange when he approached his late forties. He died at age 62.
I have read about the birth defects that the Vietnamese have suffered as a result of Agent Orange. Why were we so cruel? Were these chemicals foisted on our military by the military contract profiteers? Did it ever occur to our military that our own people were there too? These birth defects last generation after generation.
14
Right on. The same question applies to leftover landmines and un-exploded ordinance that continues to maim the innocent. During the tenure of the current presidential administration in the US there will be no compassion from the government. Any progress on these issues will require the leadership of NGOs.
6
Having been subjected to extensive exposure to Agent Orange during my tour of duty in Vietnam, I gained an understanding of its effects on a conceptual and practical level. It was not until I returned to Vietnam a couple of years ago, however, that I fully understood the effects of AO as a moral issue. Seeing first hand what the Vietnamese people are dealing with convinces me that herbicides, not just AO but also the newer versions containing glyphosphate, should be declared Weapons of Mass Destruction. They meet the WMD criteria: wide-scale and indiscriminate destruction, tortuous hardships inflicted on non-combatants, and long-lasting (multi-generational) effects. The manufacturers and purveyors of these particular WMD should fall under the scrutiny and sanctions outlined in the international Non=Proliferation Treaty. In a better world, they would be forced to clean up their mess and compensate the innocent victims of their toxins.
20
You're right.
Maybe if we had to pay $$ for the harm we do we wouldn't be so quick to cause such harm.
6
When two countries are at war, yes POWs are to be treated medically. Same thing for US troops. Each country is responsible for its own people after a war.
Yes, the US has more resources and money; The US didn't win the war. This is a no win situation.
Yes, I've thought about this situation myself, for many decades: American soldiers who were not the intended targets of the agent orange got huge sympathy and attention---while the Vietnamese people, who were obviously much more vulnerable because they were deliberately exposed, they were 100% forgotten. It amazed me how we could completely ignore these extremely unfortunate Vietnamese---such an attitude wasn't responsible, it wasn't merciful, it wasn't even rational. Yet all those years we ran around self-righteously calling ourselves "the bright city on a hill," and the "exceptional" country. Used to make me sick. Well, really it still does.
11
The US clearly has no interest in ever owning up to what really went down in Vietnam. In addition to the long list of atrocities, which certainly includes the use of Agent Orange, it's now clear that the entire basis for the invasion, the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident, was a fraud designed to trick Congress and the American people into supporting the war. Just another dark chapter in the shameful history of the USA.
6
I came of age during the Vietnam era. Always reading, remember when I learned about the devastating effects of Agent Orange. At 12 years old, I was horrified to discover that the LIRR was going to use it to clear brush from their tracks to NYC. I forget exactly what happened, but it was stopped before much damage. It was hard for me to click on this post. I still cry about it.
39
A similar situation occurred in Humboldt county during the 70s.
Determined community organizing is the only thing that stopped it.
7
The money to help pay America's debt is nominal recognition when compared to the pain of the victims. And nominal when compared against shame we bear and will continue to bear if we don't respond as our moral duty requires to offset this great wrong.
86