US Is Finally Cleaning Up Agent Orange In Vietnam 277
derekmead writes "It only took 40 years. And yes, Washington still disputes Hanoi's claim that up to 4 million Vietnamese suffered contact with the defoliant, which was dumped en masse in a U.S. air campaign to scorch away the dense jungle cover under which guerilla fighters hid. But the AP reports that the U.S. is finally set to start cleaning up the mess. The numbers are staggering: Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed some 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and a galaxy of other herbicides on nearly a quarter of former South Vietnam. The defoliant ate through about 5 millions acres – a tract comparable in size to Massachusetts – of forest. An additional half-million acres of crops were decimated."
If I was cynical... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would think that the clean up was a pre-requisite to the large resort chains going in and buying up the beach front...I hear it's beautiful there.
That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
But what about our fathers who also had this shit sprayed on them and told to fuck off and die of cancer?
Re:That's nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Or their children who were born with birth defects...
Re:Decimated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations, in your haste to be OUTRAGED, you missed the fact that the GP was just making a (lame) joke about the definition of the word "decimated".
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the...? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not sure if you're aware, but wars are not contests in being selfless and giving towards your opposite. Generally the point is to win.
Re:That's nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Your fathers are Darwin award winners.
+1 Unwitting Stupidity
Re:What a waste of tax payer money! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
Still our enemy "technically?" Relations with Vietnam were normalized years ago. We have an embassy there. We have trade agreements with them. I mean, yes, if you consider them to be gooks, then I guess you need to consider them our enemy but that's an individual thing.
Really, who gives a shit if we supply some technical support to cleaning up crap that we sprayed. Regardless of what you think of the war and the VC, it was a pretty fucking lame thing to do. Kind of like the military equivalent of peeing on someone. Poisoning their ground and water. Ill-conceived nonsense like that should be handled properly; god help us if we take the high ground for once. Oh noes...we're showing weakness...we're not a super-power anymore, we're a bunch of weak kneed socialists. Short-sighted is short-sighted. In that part of the world, it's just as valuable having friends and influence now as it was when we did it by fighting in the jungles.
Re:What the...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure if you're aware, but wars are not contests in being selfless and giving towards your opposite. Generally the point is to win.
Yup. But the point was, this was an unnecessary war that was mostly being conducted because Lyndon Johnson couldn't figure out a way to withdraw that wouldn't result in people blaming him. And, like most wars, those who suffered were mostly civilians.
Sometimes I think that no country should be allowed to go to war, if it hasn't has a war on its own soil in the last fifty years. We (the USA, or rather the former Confedracy) last had a war on our soil in 1865 (if you don't count a few skirmishes in WW2), so we can't identify with the horror.
Re:Tough luck (Score:5, Insightful)
They won in the sense that they kept fighting until the US decided to pull out. It's not like they were marching on Washington DC. Your reasoning would only make sense in a symmetric war.
Re:That's nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Or their children who were born with birth defects...
Exactly. It's a life-time battle just for a US Vietnam Vet to prove he was in the place he was in at the time this shit got sprayed on them, let alone get help for their children.
I can't imagine slowly dying of cancer and know that their children are 2nd generation casualties of this shit. This goes for both sides of the battlefield.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear, hear. Considering that the US's days as the uncontested military superpower are likely numbered (I'd give us a few more decades at most), it seems to me it makes good long-term strategic sense to start cultivating friendships and good will now, when our actions still matter. Especially considering the massive loss of global good will we've suffered in the last decade.
No, you are not (Score:5, Insightful)
Vietnam is opening up to foreign investors, and the United States is increasingly in competition against the Chinese in the influence game in South East Asia
While the Vietnamese communist government may want to get on the side of the US to counter the red China, most people of Vietnam just do not trust Uncle Sam
What took place in the village of My Lai and the Gulf of Tonkin incident have burned into the brains of many Vietnamese
BTW, the clean up of Agent Orange should not only be done in Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia
Too many deaths, sufferings, and deformations had resulted from the Agent Orange - and Uncle Sam must be man enough to acknowledge what they had done, and to amend the damages that they had caused
Re:Five million acres (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh no.
First, Chernobyl wasn't destructive. Aside from the reactor itself, things only fell apart when Mother Nature started kicking the crap out of everything for several decades without any sort of maintenance.
Second, the environment around Chernobyl isn't lethal. Anyone spending time in there shouldn't expect to live to much past retirement, but you can say the same to chain smokers or extreme alcoholics.
Third, Agent Orange is only a problem because it was contained, used and applied in such poor methods/over-concentrations, that it largely didn't serve its intended purpose (defoliation and crop destruction). ANYONE would get sick if you took an industrial grade pesticide, concentrate it to military-grade levels and then poured MILLIONS OF DRUMS of it into the nearby air.
Re:If I was cynical... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, you are not (Score:4, Insightful)
you would have to be either crazy or retarded to trust the government
Re:No, you are not (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoa, kinda nit picky there fella.We all know war is terrible and Vietnam happened right in front of our eyes. War isn't fair. It isn't a game with referees like basketball, that can blow a whistle and stop play.Bad shit happens to innocent people in EVERY WAR.Now quit acting like the U.S. military invented sin.
If Vietnam works like the rest of the world, there will be a percentage that love us and a percentage that hate us and a smaller percentage that do not care. Just like our civil war, more than a century ago, still has opinions tied up in generations of people involved. ,anymore. There will always be a variety of opinions and they will shift over time in factuality, strength and percentage for a variety of reasons, mostly disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and media ineptitude.
We all know the war is over. Some, to this day, believe the south had the right to secede and the north was wrong to stop it. Some remember Lincoln for the racist,atheist,shyster he was. Some believe Blacks are to punish for their role. Some Blacks believe they should get paid lots of money for their predecessors pain and suffering. Some know the war is over and it has nothing to do with anything
Atrocities are where you find them. Frankly we've come a long way and Vietnams woes are a walk in the park compared with suffering in history. So quit whining like a stupid 60s hippie with a Jane Fonda poster in the bathroom and take a META look at the situation. We are all so boooooored with the same propaganda informed 60s activist peace-nick crap shoved in our face the last 40 odd years. Hippies did nothing and accomplished nothing ,but helping their foes by being exactly the ridiculous clowns they appeared to be. We need fewer ACTIVISTS and waaaaay more THINKTIVISTS.