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Vietnam's Forgotten War Victims
When Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited Vietnam on Thursday she extolled the country's "unlimited potential" and strong trade relations with the US. But the words must have rung hollow for Ngyuen Ngoc Phuong, who has seen his potential destroyed by American chemical poisoning.
The Vietnam war ended 35 years ago, but children are still being born with birth defects from chemical poisoning allegedly caused by defoliants sprayed by the US military (GALLO/GETTY) Phuong, 19, was born long after the US cut and run from the Vietnam
war, evacuating its last remaining personnel by helicopter from the roof
of its Saigon embassy in 1975.
But the results of that war, which officially ended 35 years ago, affect every aspect of Phuong's life.
The young man has severe physical deformities, and like an estimated three million Vietnamese, he suffers from exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic chemical US forces sprayed during the war to defoliate the dense jungles Viet Cong rebels used for cover.
In its manufacture, the chemical was contaminated with TCDD, or dioxin, "the most toxic substance known to humans", according to an investigation in the journal Science.
Dangers known
In his book Agent Orange on Trial published by Harvard University Press, Peter Schuck reported that companies who manufactured the defoliant knew "as early as 1952" that deadly dioxin had contaminated the chemical.
Between 1962 and 1971, the US military sprayed an estimated 80 million litres of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam, the journal Nature reported in 2003.
"I met one family of victims with four blinded children, no eyes - period," Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, a Vietnamese researcher, said in a 2007 interview.
In a now declassified report for the US department of veterans affairs, Admiral ER Zumwalt Jr wrote that Dow Chemical and other manufacturers knew Agent Orange exposure could cause "general organ toxicity" and "other systematic problems" as early as 1964.
These and other studies show that the American military, and the chemical companies who serviced it, were well aware of the dangers posed by the chemicals on the general population.
On this front, Agent Orange elucidates an alarming trend in modern warfare, particularly counter-insurgency fighting: civilians and the environment tend to be main casualties.
Brutality clearly defined World War I and II and previous conflicts between standing armies, but soldiers usually made up the majority of the dead.
Poisoning civilians
From the jungles of Vietnam to the plains of Sudan, Iraq's cities to the Afghan mountains, civilians now bear the highest cost for wars not of their making.
"In Vietnam it was chemical [weapons] ... Agent Orange and napalm," Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam friendship society,told Al Jazeera.
"In Iraq, Kosovo, [and] Afghanistan the US, UK and Nato have used depleted uranium, cluster weapons ... and drones that are controlled from military bases in the US."
These conflicts tend to continue even after the wars officially end.
"We did a number of soil samples and followed [dioxin contamination from Agent Orange spraying] though the food chain into ponds, to fish, into ducks and then into humans. We found it in children who had been born long after the war ended," Dr Wayne Dwernychuck, who led the first team of western scientists to study the long-term affects of sprayingin Vietnam, said in an interview.
"We concluded the only way they could be contaminated is through food and nursing," he said, referencing his 1994 study.
Former US military bases including Bien Hoa, Phu Cat and the infamous Danang are the worst sites of present day contamination.
"We have been working with Vietnam for about nine years to try to remedy the effects of Agent Orange," Clinton said at a press conference in Hanoi.
Since 2007, the US congress has appropriated $9m to help Vietnam clean up contaminated areas and for related health activities, or an amount roughly equal to the cost of 12 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
'Wounds still remain'
In June, a joint panel of US and Vietnamese policymakers, citizens and scientists estimated the cost of a proper clean-up and rehabilitation for the sick at $300m.
"The war is over but the wounds from the war still remain in many areas of Vietnam," Nguyen Van Son, a member of Vietnam's National Assembly, said during the report's launch in Hanoi.
Vietnamese civilians are not the only ones suffering from exposure. Veterans in the US, Canada and beyond also have historieswith the chemicals.
In 1984, US veterans reached an out-of-court settlement for $180m with companies who produced the chemicals, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical.
Remarkably, Dow maintains that there is no evidence to link Agent Orange to illnesses from US veterans and Vietnamese civilians.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM),the pre-eminent scientific authority in the US when it comes to setting government policy, links exposure to a raft of conditions including cancers, diabetes and spina bifida.
Like their American counterparts, Vietnamese victims have tried to gain justice in US courts, but after a series of cases, the US supreme court refused to hear their case in 2009.
However, American conservatives were some of the first to recognise the moral quagmire around giving pensions and other benefits to US veterans and not Vietnamese civilians, even though both groups were poisoned by the American government and the companies who provided it with chemicals.
'Difficult to rationalise'
It is "difficult to rationalise why [American] Vietnam vets are compensated for Agent Orange exposure but Vietnamese civilians shouldn't be," Steve Milloy, a scholar at the Cato institute, wrote in a commentary for Fox News.
During her visit, Clinton criticised Vietnam for jailing rights activists and censoring the internet and urged the single party, nominally communist state to "strengthen its commitment to human rights".
However, in the broader schema of rights, Vietnam's transgressions against courageous lawyers and journalists seem positively minor compared to three million destroyed lives: children born missing eyes, grossly elongated heads or misshapen legs where their arms ought to be.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllUntil the average American realizes that as a nation, the USA uses chemical weapons and is the only nation to ever use a nuclear bomb, until that time, we will call any other person or nation that does the same "thugs", "terrorist" and "axis of evil", until the average American looks into a mirror and realizes that the USA is the most dangerous nation to peace and stability in the world, until........
...until there's a mass realization of the one world of humanity, that it's not a matter of a nation or corporation carrying out these horrid behaviors, but human beings of the human family creating these treacherous acts unto their husbands, wives, children, parents and grandparents. Targeting ones energy toward a label such as USA, Taliban, Terrorist, Corporation only depletes the energy focus and human recognition needed for solving human problems(period)
Also Agent Orange's defoiliation was meant to cause erosion and clog the irragation canals thus eliminating food for freedom fighters and farmers alike.
In Laos a person dies every two days from unexploded USA ordinance.
This $9 million is the first reparations I have read of.
Perhaps the USA should pay a greater penalty for causing the deaths of 4.5 million people in South East Asia?
And what of the Atrocities called Iraq and Afghanistan, how could any be proud of such a bloodthirsty nation?
No one is proud of such heinous hideous behavior. The flag wavers and people like Clinton, Bush, Obama, etc. are proud of being the Bigger Better Boy/Bigger Better Girl of the moment in which they're speaking and carrying on, the topic to which they're speaking has little to do with their pride, they take pride in being in the middle of the circle and carrying on with their bombastic meaningless(except for carrying on the Bigger Better syndrome) litanies; and the insanity of the situation includes the rest of society rewarding them greatly(mostly because the masochistic's are uncomfortable to be around the sadistic, so in America it's easiest, in the moment, to pay them and get out of there).
I grew up and was part and parcel of the f-16 flyover sporting culture mentioned elsewhere in this commentary. The people ooooing and aawwwing and having a shiver run up their spine during the flights have no conscious awareness of the implications of uranium toxicity, fire bombs, lingering land mines, etc. Go to a fly over event and you can palpate the enormous strength of the creative energy that is encapsulated in fantastical thought forms far removed from reality(at AOL the link to sports articles is "sports/fantasy").
The best way to approach these people for social change is with pictures like the one accompanying this article. At that moment of presentation, perhaps after a few showings, however, you will be confronted by the break down of the character structure. What will you do when: 1. The person revolts and entrenches themselves deeper into their sadistic mode, 2. Collapse into a catatonic state, as their fantasy world bubble bursts, or, 3. Start to take a small step out of the matrix and into reality?
Do you remember the little Vietnamese girl who was photographed in Life Magazine, running down a road half naked while holding her little brother's hand and screaming due to just being napalmed via a B-52?
I met her fifteen years later at a peace conference in the USSR. She had moved to Canada to become a film maker. She told us via an interpreter that her ability to speak foreign languages had been restricted due to the napalm.
What will be the long range effects of the depleted uranium that we have used against the people of IRAQ? How will the victims of that carnage get compensated for the crimes inflicted on them? Does anyone give a damn?
"Does anyone give a damn?"
Watch a NASCAR race. Watch how excited people get when an F-16 flies over the track after the National Anthem is sung. There is your answer.
Dave Clein, a former American soldier who fought in Vietnam and was featured in the documentary Sir! No Sir! and later became president of Veterans for Peace, eventually died because of the exposure that he had received from Agent Orange. As the article points out, an astounding three million Vietnamese have suffered the effects of this terrible defoliant. But despite the incredible suffering that the Vietnamese have gone through at the hands of the U.S. military, not one American president has ever apologized for the war crimes that the U.S. has committed against that underdeveloped nation. Barack Obama had even said a few years ago that he felt that the United States has nothing to apologize for in regards to foreign policy.
And still we see even more war crimes being committed in the Middle East while so many Americans demand that we support the troops. I think not.
Support The Troops: NO.
Protect The Troops: YES.
Uplift Human Dignity: YES.
Help End The 100 Year Oil War.
With an oil catastrophe here, and an oil catastrophe there...is the time not ripe?
A traveller to this region is forced to face what many USAns never have to trouble themselves with, or even become aware of. What we refer to as the Vietnam War was really a region-wide Southeast Asian war. Laos is the most bombed country in the history of human warfare-- this landlocked sleepy backwater, a third the size of Texas, with a sparse population of less than 3 million back in the day, which never invaded another country. The ordnance dropped here by the US during the years of the "Secret War" of 1965-1973 exceeded the bombs dropped in all of the countries of Europe by all the combatants during all of World War II. A visitor is at risk if he or she ventures off the road, or off the track in rural areas. A considerable number-- in the millions-- of cluster bombs were dropped. They're very small, hand-sized, and difficult to get rid of. They're also brightly-colored, so children have to be educated not to play with them when they are found.
Agent Orange was not the only defoliant used in South Vietnam. There were also Agents Pink, Purple, Green, White, and Blue, as well as other chemicals not receiving a color appellation. Needless to say, a visitor to central or southern Vietnam cannot help but wonder what he or she is being exposed to.
A thought: It would be a different world if USAns would travel more. Citizens of other countries do. The Germans and Australians are great travellers and make it their business to know about other languages and cultures. This helps them in doing business, of course, although one hopes that would not be our main motivation. The "gap year" is an institution in Great Britain and other European countries. This writer has seen groups of French people happily eating dinner and drinking local wine along the banks of the Mekong.
The threat of global warming makes air travel undesirable, it is true. But the isolation bubble that many in this country exist in may be an even greater danger, long-term, to the world. (In my mind, we are all bicycling madly to Central America to see how the real people of this world live.) Travel need not be expensive; we have a million excuses for not venturing out of our cocoon, some of which may be legitimate.
We cannot change the past. The Southeast Asian war was dirty and cruel (and blame for cruelties can be pointed in many directions). We should, however, clean up the mess we left behind which afflicts generations of people who should not be victimized by the location of their birth.
Depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq and Afghanistan are the Agent Orange of this century and for many centuries to come.
Attitude change requires recognition that these are not "under developed nations" they are ancient societies with wisdom enough NOT to take the greedy, extractive, ever-expanding- economy route.
The hubris and stupidity of believing that if a culture does not present a mirror it is "undeveloped" is not just sickening - it is deadly.
They have not always been "poor" they have been IMPOVERISHED by the western model and its deadly interference. Anyone who who tries to hand off the red herring of violence in their past history had best start to think twice. I'll leave others to pick up those pieces.
The chemical and war corporations are nothing short of pure unadulterated evil. Someday those with these evil consciousnesses shall not be allowed to incarnate here. Elevate your awareness of good, compassion, cooperation and kindness. Stop the evil insanity, eradicate one erroneous thought at a time.
Not only have we barely acknowledged the suffering we caused by weapons used in previous wars that continue to kill, maim, and deform innocents, but incredibly, we continue to do the same again with Iraq and Afganistan?! Our government spends BILLIONS to make war (to gain access to oil in a vain attempt to continue economic growth), instead of using the remaining wealth to clean up these messes. $300M to clean up Vietnam is NOTHING. We spend anywhere from $500-$700+ M PER DAY to wage war right now. This is insanity. Of course giving millions of dollars in bonuses to CEOs of companies that we taxpayers have bailed out is not exactly rational either.
WHY does our government do this? Because we DEMAND the 'American' lifestyle, and it takes a lot of oil to make it possible, AND some folks are making a "bundle" (kind of like calling Mount Everest an anthill) so they have every reason (and lots of money for media control) to keep us drugged on infotainment.
What can we do?
1. Dramatically reduce your use of energy. Like, 80%. Get out of your car.
2. Get your investments OUT of the stock market- cash them out and put them in your local credit union.
3. Refuse to buy something unless you really NEED it.
4. Learn how to grow food.
5. Support your LOCAL businesses, and LOCALLY manufactured goods (not a locally owned shop that sells 'gifts' from china)
6. Join your local Transition group - if your community doesn't have one, start one.
7. Learn how to fix everything instead of buying new crap.
8. IMPORTANT: Make less money so you are paying less in taxes. I have some friends who have vowed to keep their income below the level required to pay taxes. That's REALLY low, but they grow lots of their own food, they wear old clothes, they ride their bikes to work, and they Keep It Simple. They are also having a blast, in case you wondered!
Being outraged by these horrors, such as the effects of Agent Orange on children, and then driving your SUV home from your $80,000+ job to your $300,000, 3,000+ square foot house means you are not connecting some dots. Do it.
If enough people do this, then it will become a crime and all of those people will be legally enslaved - read the 13th Amendment if you do not believe me.
3 million.
Thats over 3% of there entire population. Now in a perfect would our government( while probably still denying how deadly that shit is) would give a 10,000$ lump-sum disability benefit to all 3 million people poisoned with agent orange.
Then another 2 billion for clean up, along with a promise to never use earth poisoning weapons again.
I can hear the right wing now " Comrade obama gives US tax payer dollars to communist allies "....
Stories like this are one in a million. Wake up people. You are being turned into property.
I visited Vietnam five years ago. I traveled from Phu Quoc Island in the far southern part of Vietnam all the way up the coast to Hanoi. Everywhere I went, I saw a very beautiful country and I met very warm and friendly people. I ate dinner in the homes of Vietnamese families in the south and the north. I thought, no one could possibly make war upon these people if they would come here first, sit down, dine, talk, and get to know them first hand.
I visited the war memorial museum in Ho Chi Minh City. I saw a fetus with two heads preserved in a jar, a casualty of America's use of toxic chemicals during the war. Further north, I visited Son My, a most beautiful and tranquil country village near the coast, where the Mi Lai massacre took place. There the people have erected a museum and a memorial. Prominently displayed inside the museum are vivid photographs of the human carnage of that massacre. Outside above the entrance to the museum there is a sign with some words printed in large, bold red letters, obviously expressing something with some emotional emphasis.
I took a photograph of the sign, and after I came back home, I asked a Vietnamese American friend of mine to translate the words for me. From the grimace on his face, I could tell that reading the words captured in my photograph did not evoke any pleasant feelings or memories for him. The sign erected at the Son My massacre site says this, “FOREVER AND DEEP IS OUR HATRED FOR THE AMERICAN INVADERS.” Obviously and understandably, the sign expresses the deep and lasting physical, emotional, and psychological wounds that our warring there inflicted upon the people and the nation. And we all know that since that time 35 years ago, right up to this very day today, America continues to inflict deep and lasting wounds upon peoples and nations all over the world. How many more memorials like the one at Son My will we find elsewhere in the years to come?
There is, and will be, no end to the suffering in Vietnam caused by our chemical weapons of mass destruction. Bombs, defoliants, dioxin, DUPs, landmines, cluster bombs, all dispersed so generously in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and who knows where else, these are the products of American ingenuity, the gifts that keep on giving, maiming, killing, and inflicting deep wounds upon every generation that comes along. The great tragedy is that it is all for nothing, unless you are a profiteer in the business of providing the products and services of war.
So, who are we really, America?. Oh, that's right. We're a Christian nation. So generous. So right. So proud. God bless America.
Wow! What a fantastic witness...thanks.
And if you live past the despair and depression that may come I guarantee the depths of your experiences will be well worth the suffering.
"There is, and will be, no end to the suffering in Vietnam"...the great, fantastic, marvelous Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh would disagree -- to him all things come to an end...but to touch it now one has to move from the "historical dimension" to the "ultimate dimension"; so form "Ty":
"I hold my face...in my two hands...no, I am not crying.
I hold my face...in my two hands, to keep my loneliness warm.
Two hands protecting...two hands nourishing, two hands preventing...
my soul from leaving me in anger."
(ok...so hearing Ty's voice, in search of the correct words on tape...and remembering my witness to the savage rape and machete brutality to the women of the Congo his words carried me through...I cried.)
...and...:
Please Call Me By My True Names
"Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorhosing
on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes,
arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bomboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a memeber of the politiburo,
with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his
"debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like a spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full
it fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
That is an incredible quotation.
In your ponderings, you inadvertently just spoke the true answer:
Christians, historically, are bloody killers. What's worse, they parrot a fiction about a son of god of compassion, when historical greek scrolls of the area paint a rebel who dared the authority of the day to do something about his subversive activities.
He was anything but passive. He rode through the West Gate of Jerusalem on a burro in such a fashion that mimicked the prophesy of a man who would overthrow the empire. He was an in-your-face kind of guy, from what I have read.
And thus, for two-thousand years, Christians of all stripes have beaten and pummeled countless peaceful civilizations for no other reason that they would not convert to this looney religion. The Crusades alone, left a swarth of destruction and murders that went on for hundreds of years.
Not much has changed this century. Christians are dangerous people. They sit in church with their hands folded in their laps while the offering plate money they dropped into the untraceable money laundering machine will invariable always find its way to Arms dealers. It's untraceable, untaxable, unauditable, unstoppable,
"Faith-Based-Initiatives" buy small arms for petty rebels , that always are used as justification for dispatching gunboats and bombers later. An example is the true movie "Charlie Wilson's War". Church groups played a huge role with their gun-toting missionaries in arming a bunch of goat-herders who would have been rolled over by the Red Army in short order. This was in 1985. Technically, we have been fighting the Afgan war for 25 years. We funded the Pakistani ISI over one billion in cash which was probably accessable to Ossama Bin Laden.
You see, we have to keep inventing conflicts just to justify keeping this huge Military Machine rolling. My dad, who was a pilot in Vietnam, was fond of saying at the time: "It's not the best war, but it's the only one we've got." This is the military mindset. Promotion and career is deeply tied to accomplishments in combat.
Just like the prison system, it's a sick institution of depravity, torture, cruelty and barbarism. Small wonder, there is a priest or chaplin assigned to every combat unit.
TJ
"Is uniformity obtainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned,yet we have not advanced an inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. - Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia" - 1782
Clinton and "peace prize" winning I'll Bombya Too: see above -- Bigger Better Boy is presented by "the good boy looking up at his mommy while finishing his writing lesson" in his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography(you've seen the pose, with hands crossed at desk, et al -- and also the chronic/impulsive tilting of the head: the Spaced Out Buffalo Soldier) -- "If you know what you're doing, you can do what you want." -- Feldenkrais...If you know who you're dealing with, you can say the functionally optimal words. -- Puck Twain.
And don't forget about Agent Blue, in our chemical warfare arsenal, used in Vietnam on the food crops. For more info, go to:
http://www.gmasw.com/ao_note1.htm
The U.S. is imploding and we are beginning to reap what we have sown.
No. Don't forget the Blue, Oh, now, totally free American. Stripes of Red blood there, Stripes of White lies here...and a vast ocean of Blue...where do you place your Star now?
That is 3.8 MILLION Vietnamese dead during the U.S. Agressive War......58,000 dead American Soldiers from the U.S. Agressive War.....Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and American Soldiers have died early deaths because of 12 known fatal diseases caused by contact with: Agent Orange, Agent Pink, Agent Purple, and Napalm........Millions of Americans and Vietnamese have permanent disabilities because of those chemicals used by U.S. Forces.........
And, the lessons were never learned in Desert Storm or the Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan........When you have "Sheep" representing the American People in past Congresses, the Military Industrial Complex, including the chemical industries, got to wage wars with chemicals and the best Weapons of Mass Destruction against unarmed civilian populations who never were a threat to the United States of America.......To claim that a guy in a cave was able to have NORAD set up 5 practice exercises on 9/11 so that hijacked planes could not be intercepted has helped to continue "The New World Order's Depopulation Plan" So, why not use depleted uranium weapons and more chemicals? The "Sheep" in Congress will merely agree to more murders of unarmed civilians....."They" had no problems murdering almost 3,000 people on 9/11 and blaming it all on a guy in a cave!
This is an excellent, very important article but it is misleading about the numbers of civilian versus military deaths during World War II, the most brutal war in history. Twice as many civilians died as military.
An estimated 62 to 78 million people died overall in the “good war.”
Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
The ratio of civilian to military deaths was 4 to 1, twice as high, during our invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Our government killed a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians, according to figures released by the government of Vietnam in April 3, 1995. That figure doesn’t include civilian deaths in Laos and Cambodia, estimated at 750,000, according to Wikipedia. And the total grows larger as more and more civilians die from unexploded ordinance and the grotesque chemical poisoning we inflicted.
The ratio of civilian to military deaths caused by America’s wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, continues to rise, which is one reason they stopped counting, and hardly make a distinction between the two.
The rotten little mantra that Obimbo picked up from Ronnie Rotgut who had it stuck under his snout by some pig scribbler likle Piggy Noonan or some other fuck is "America -- the last best hope of mankind" . . . a mankind in which millions of victims of the Fuck-U-Up-nited States live as mutants in a no-longer imagined dystopian horror . . .