Aaron Sussman: The destructive legacy of Agent Orange
[Aaron Sussman is the co-founder and Executive Editor of Incite Magazine; he can be contacted at Aaron@InciteMagazine.org. For more of Sussman's work, visit www.ACrowdedFire.com. ]
"This is the crime of which I accuse my country . . . and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it . . . But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."
-- James Baldwin, Letter to my Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation
War is Hell, but, for many, so is the aftermath, the ensuing "peace" that emerges out of war's dust and ashes. Long after the last bullet tears through the flesh of the last soldier, the Hell of pain, suffering, and trauma remains. Though military operations in the Vietnam War have been over for decades, the war continues to rage each day in the form of children born with severe deformities, desiccated land that was once rich and arable, and veterans on both sides of the conflict who frequently develop new symptoms and are constantly plagued by old ones. The devastating effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant used to thin out the Vietnam jungle and destroy enemy crops, are a blemish on the US national record and a glaring reminder of American foreign policy that has little respect for life and law. Decades later, the lethal effects linger, but there has been no justice.
In late 1961, despite strident objections from the State Department over the potential effects on civilians, the use of "burn down" herbicides in Vietnam was authorized by President Kennedy as part of "Operation Hades," which would soon become "Operation Ranch Hand." These defoliation and crop destruction efforts continued at a moderate pace until the war escalated in the mid-1960s. By early 1965, a new herbicide called "Agent Orange" was introduced.
Agent Orange is a combination of two chemicals that undergo a chlorinated chemical process, creating the by-product 2,3,7,8-TCDD, "the most toxic member of the family of chemicals known as dioxin." This form of dioxin, in fact, has been described as "perhaps the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man." Peter Schuck writes in Agent Orange on Trial, "As early as 1952, Army officials had been informed by the Monsanto Chemical Company . . . that 2,4,5-T was contaminated by a toxic substance."
As American casualties in Vietnam mounted, it became increasingly clear that superior fire power had little consequence in a dense, guerilla-friendly jungle and that open-field combat would be to the Americans' advantage. For this reason, the US military scorched up to "25 percent of the country's forests with the deadly chemicals Agent Orange, and also Agent White, Blue, Pink and Purple," totaling approximately 20 million gallons of herbicides. In April of 1970, the military ceased all operations involving Agent Orange. The lasting damage, though, would be devastating and irreversible.
A generation born after the last US jet returned from Vietnam would become the most affected victims, as up to 150,000 "deformed children have been born to parents who were directly sprayed with Agent Orange or exposed through contaminated food and water."
In Vietnam, BBC News journalist Tom Fawthrop met what the "local villagers refer to as an Agent Orange baby" in the town of Cu Chi. As Fawthrop testifies, Tran Anh Kiet is 21 years old; "his feet, hands and limbs are twisted and deformed. He writhes in evident frustration, and his attempts at speech are confined to plaintive and pitiful grunts . . . He is an adult stuck inside the stunted body of a 15-year-old, with a mental age around six." Many journalists who visit Vietnam have similar encounters. Jill Schensul of New Jersey's The Record reports on her meeting with Nguyen Thi Lan and her five year old son, Minh. Nguyen lifts up Minh's T-shirt to show the American journalist the effects of US foreign policy: "Instead of the chubby belly of childhood, this torso is twisted, the skin taut over a gnarled rib cage that juts grotesquely from the right side of the chest . . . He cannot see, hear, or speak." Others write about children who are not allowed in school because their appearance frightens the other students, or babies whose life span only reaches a few hours, or adults who were children during the war and still randomly bleed from the ears and nose. There are countless horror stories like these in Vietnam, with new ones constantly emerging. ...
Read entire article at Dissident Voice
"This is the crime of which I accuse my country . . . and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it . . . But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."
-- James Baldwin, Letter to my Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation
War is Hell, but, for many, so is the aftermath, the ensuing "peace" that emerges out of war's dust and ashes. Long after the last bullet tears through the flesh of the last soldier, the Hell of pain, suffering, and trauma remains. Though military operations in the Vietnam War have been over for decades, the war continues to rage each day in the form of children born with severe deformities, desiccated land that was once rich and arable, and veterans on both sides of the conflict who frequently develop new symptoms and are constantly plagued by old ones. The devastating effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant used to thin out the Vietnam jungle and destroy enemy crops, are a blemish on the US national record and a glaring reminder of American foreign policy that has little respect for life and law. Decades later, the lethal effects linger, but there has been no justice.
In late 1961, despite strident objections from the State Department over the potential effects on civilians, the use of "burn down" herbicides in Vietnam was authorized by President Kennedy as part of "Operation Hades," which would soon become "Operation Ranch Hand." These defoliation and crop destruction efforts continued at a moderate pace until the war escalated in the mid-1960s. By early 1965, a new herbicide called "Agent Orange" was introduced.
Agent Orange is a combination of two chemicals that undergo a chlorinated chemical process, creating the by-product 2,3,7,8-TCDD, "the most toxic member of the family of chemicals known as dioxin." This form of dioxin, in fact, has been described as "perhaps the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man." Peter Schuck writes in Agent Orange on Trial, "As early as 1952, Army officials had been informed by the Monsanto Chemical Company . . . that 2,4,5-T was contaminated by a toxic substance."
As American casualties in Vietnam mounted, it became increasingly clear that superior fire power had little consequence in a dense, guerilla-friendly jungle and that open-field combat would be to the Americans' advantage. For this reason, the US military scorched up to "25 percent of the country's forests with the deadly chemicals Agent Orange, and also Agent White, Blue, Pink and Purple," totaling approximately 20 million gallons of herbicides. In April of 1970, the military ceased all operations involving Agent Orange. The lasting damage, though, would be devastating and irreversible.
A generation born after the last US jet returned from Vietnam would become the most affected victims, as up to 150,000 "deformed children have been born to parents who were directly sprayed with Agent Orange or exposed through contaminated food and water."
In Vietnam, BBC News journalist Tom Fawthrop met what the "local villagers refer to as an Agent Orange baby" in the town of Cu Chi. As Fawthrop testifies, Tran Anh Kiet is 21 years old; "his feet, hands and limbs are twisted and deformed. He writhes in evident frustration, and his attempts at speech are confined to plaintive and pitiful grunts . . . He is an adult stuck inside the stunted body of a 15-year-old, with a mental age around six." Many journalists who visit Vietnam have similar encounters. Jill Schensul of New Jersey's The Record reports on her meeting with Nguyen Thi Lan and her five year old son, Minh. Nguyen lifts up Minh's T-shirt to show the American journalist the effects of US foreign policy: "Instead of the chubby belly of childhood, this torso is twisted, the skin taut over a gnarled rib cage that juts grotesquely from the right side of the chest . . . He cannot see, hear, or speak." Others write about children who are not allowed in school because their appearance frightens the other students, or babies whose life span only reaches a few hours, or adults who were children during the war and still randomly bleed from the ears and nose. There are countless horror stories like these in Vietnam, with new ones constantly emerging. ...