[News] Agent Orange and the Third Generation
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri May 28 13:05:50 EDT 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/galleymore05282010.html
May 28 - 30, 2010
"Perfectly Safe: It Just Kills Plants ... "
Agent Orange and the Third Generation
By SUSAN GALLEYMORE
Each year for the last five years the U.S. has
welcomed a delegation of Vietnamese affected by
spraying chemicals in Vietnam three decades ago.
The Fifth Agent Orange Justice Tour ended
recently. It focused national attention on grass
roots and legislative efforts to achieve
comprehensive assistance to victims in Vietnam,
to the children and grandchildren of U.S.
veterans, and to Vietnamese-Americans.
It is not news that American troops fighting for
the U.S. military in Vietnam were told by their
commanders that the defoliants and herbicides
sprayed by the U.S. Air Force were perfectly safe...[they] just kill plants.
The statistics, while heartbreaking, are,
likewise, not news for anyone who pays attention
to recent history. From 1961 to 1970 more than
20,000 missions that composed Operations Trail
Dust and Ranch Hand dispersed about 13 million
gallons of chemicals over five million acres of
Vietnam's forests and agricultural lands;
southern Laos and Cambodia were sprayed too.
To the military mind, defoliating was a practical
solution that disallowed cover to the enemy. To
the corporate mind Dow, Monsanto, Hercules,
Uniroyal, Diamond Shamrock, Syntex Agribusiness,
and more than two dozen others manufacturing
chemicals provided good ROI: one gallon of liquid
cost $7 back then. Moreover, corporations sped up
the 2,4,5T manufacturing process so they could
produce more, faster. They ignored the partially
catalyzed molecule, dioxin, that was a byproduct
of the faster process; it remained in Agent Orange (AO).
Vietnam's dense southern uplands' forests were
sprayed with a range of chemicals signified by
color-coded barrels: Agents Blue, Orange, White,
Pink, Purple and so on. Areas that the C-123
Provider airplanes didn't reach equal to the
size of Rhode Island -- were bulldozed with Rome Plows.
Paul Cox was a US Marine fighting along the DMZ
for months. Today, he is a civil engineer, a
Veteran for Peace member, and a board member of
Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility
Campaign (VAORRC). In a recent presentation in
San Francisco, he described the area he fought in
at the time as almost totally denuded from high
explosives and multiple spraying sorties; aside
from some invasive grass, hardly anything lived,
no animals, no bugs, no nothin'. We could operate
in the area for days in a row and see no living trees.
Since 1994, the Canadian company Hatfield
Consultants has conducted contamination and
mitigation work in Vietnam in close collaboration
with Vietnamese Government agencies. More than
nine projects in twenty provinces have determined
levels of Agent Orange/dioxin in soils, food
items, human blood, and breast milk. Hatfield
also studies the effects of loss of timber that
leads to reduced sustainability of ecosystems,
decreases in the biodiversity of plants and
animals, poorer soil quality, increased water
contamination, heavier flooding and erosion,
increased leaching of nutrients and reductions in
their availability, invasions of less desirable
plant species (primarily woody and herbaceous
grasses), and possible alterations of Vietnam's macro- and micro-climates.
In short, there is no let up to the devastation
wreaked by war's practicality and profit three decades ago.
Consistent determination
Despite VAVA delegates representing three million
people when they travel to the U.S., to date U.S.
courts have not acknowledged the chemicals'
effects on Vietnam or the Vietnamese.
Yet, under U.S. law, veterans who served in
Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 (including those
who visited Vietnam even briefly), and who have a
disease that the Veterans Administration (VA)
recognizes as being associated with Agent Orange,
are presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange
and are eligible for service-connected compensation based on their service.
The VAs list of Diseases associated with
exposure to certain herbicide agents are Acute
and Subacute Peripheral Neuropathy,AL
Amyloidosis, Chloracne (or Similar Acneform
Disease), Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (now
expanded to B Cell Leukemias), Diabetes Mellitus
(Type 2), Hodgkins Disease, Ischemic Heart
Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Non-Hodgkins
Lymphoma, Parkinsons Disease, Porphyria Cutanea
Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers (of
the lung, larynx, trachea, and bronchus), and Soft Tissue Sarcoma.
Veterans' children born with Spina bifida may be
eligible for compensation, vocational training
and rehabilitation and health care benefits. For
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded
in its 1996 update to its report on Veterans and
Agent Orange Health Effects of Herbicides Used
in Vietnam that there is limited/suggestive
evidence of an association between exposure to
herbicides used in Vietnam and spina bifida in children of Vietnam veterans.
A time line, briefly
September 10, 2004: an amended class action
complaint was submitted to the U.S. District
Court, Eastern District; Constantine P. Kokkoris, represented the victims.
March 10, 2005: in Brooklyn, Judge Weinstein dismissed victims' claims.
September 30, 2005: a Brief was submitted to the
2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York against
36 U.S. chemical companies. The summary by Jonathan Moore states:
The lawsuit...seeks to hold accountable the
chemical companies who manufactured and supplied
Agent Orange to the government. Contrary to
government specifications, the product supplied
to the government contained an excessive and
avoidable amount of poison...[D]ioxin...was
present in the herbicides supplied to the
government only because these chemical companies
deliberately and consciously chose to ignore then
existing industry standards and produce a
herbicide that contained excessive and avoidable
amounts of dioxin. The presence of the poison
dioxin had no military necessity...chemical
companies...knew that the more herbicide they
produced the more money they would make and the
faster they produced it the more they could sell
to the government....[T]hey ignored industry standards....
That lawsuit was unsuccessful.
Another try
This year VAVA, Veterans for Peace, and the
Vietnamese will begin to apply pressure on
Congress to pay the bills for damage done in that
country. These groups are drafting legislation
that they expect will become a bill that,
eventually, addresses this legacy. It consist of four parts:
1) clean up the environment and do no further harm.
2) address the problems of millions ill ...that
now extends to three generations.
3) create regional medical centers specifically
for victims' children and grandchildren born with
the physical deformities and mental illness associated with dioxin.
4) conduct a public health study on the
Vietnamese American population in the U.S. to
learn if, and if so, how they have been affected
by AO sprayed in their homeland. (The assumption
is that this population could have a similar
exposure to deployed American military personnel).
Personal stories: new every time
If the news about dioxin and the political and
economic wrangling that accompanies it is
depressingly familiar, what is always fresh are
the hopeful voices and enthusiastic faces of the
VAVA delegates. All suffer grievous disease or
deformities yet their spirits and generosity are astonishingly strong.
This year, 33-year old Pham The Minh accompanied
the small group. He is the son of a Vietnamese
fighter contaminated by Agent Orange in Quang Tri
Province where the spraying was most intensive.
Minh and and his sister were born after the war
with birth defects that signal dioxin contamination.
His is no story of victimization. The man's voice
is vibrantly honest and alive as he says, I grew
up with pain in my spirit and in my body...I
graduated from university and I am happy to teach
English to victims of Agent Orange.
In Minh's city of Hai Phong alone there are more
than 17,000 victims with birth defects, most of
whom live difficult lives and require constant
support from hard-pressed families.
Last year, the delegation was headed by Dang Hong
Nhut who suffers from cancer and has experienced
multiple miscarriages. Twenty-one year old Tran
Thi Hoan accompanied Nhut. Tran was born with one
hand and no legs due to her mother's exposure.
Despite Tran and her mother both being diagnosed
with life threatening and disabling conditions
that create severe and life-long hardship, the
young woman attends college and is determined to
work for a just solution for other Vietnamese families.
The 2007 delegates shared compelling stories too.
Vo Thanh Hai was 19 years old in 1978 when he was
employed replanting trees around Nam Dong that
had been defoliated by the U.S. Army's spraying operations.
In 1986, Mr. Hais wife miscarried. In 1987,
their son, Vo Thanh Tuan Anh was born. In 2001,
he began episodes of fatigue and dizziness that
was diagnosed as osteosarcoma for which he was
treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Their doctor also advised Mr. Hai to have a lump
on his own neck examined. Tests disclosed Hodgkins Disease.
Both father and son have difficulty performing
routine activities. Mrs. Hoa provides their daily
care...which means the family has little regular income.
Nguyen Van Quy served in the Vietnam People's
Army from 1972 through 1975. He ate manioc, wild
herbs and plants and drank water from streams in
areas that had been spayed with Agent Orange. He
experienced periodic headaches and exhaustion and itchy skin and rashes.
In 2003, Mr. Quy was diagnosed with stomach
cancer, liver damage and with fluid in his lung.
His son, Nguyen Quang Trung, was born with
spinal, limb and developmental disabilities,
enlarged and deformed feet, and a congenital
spine defect; he cannot stand, walk, or use his hands.
Mr. Quy's daughter, Nguyen Thi Thuy Nga, was born
deaf and dumb and developmentally disabled.
Neither child can attend school or work and neither is self-sufficient.
In her presentation in San Francisco, shortly
before leaving the U.S. to return home, another
2007 delegate, Mrs. Hong, said how happy she was
to have had a chance to visit this country and
talk to people she found very welcoming.
Mrs. Hong had served in the Eastern Combat Zone
of South Vietnam as a clerk tailor and medical
care worker. In 1964, she was sprayed with Agent
Orange while washing rice in a stream. She tried
to dive into the water to wash away the chemicals
that stuck to her body. Moreover, she consumed
contaminated food, wild grasses, and water every day after that.
In 1975 she was diagnosed with cirrhosis and
required long term hospital treatment. In 1999
she was found to have an enlarged spleen and
hemopoesis disorder. Several tests later
uncovered cancer of the left breast as well as
shortness of breath, high blood pressure,
cerebral edema, breast cancer with bone
metastasis, stomach aches, cirrhosis, gall-stones
and bladder-stones, varicose limbs, limb-skin
ulcer, weak legs and limited range of movement.
Both Mr.Quy and Mrs Hong died shortly after they returned to Vietnam.
Tragedy of such magnitude easily can overwhelm
those unprepared to hear it. Yet listening deeply
to these personal stories presented in the
even-handed, non-blaming manner of the VAVA
delegates creates an opening that may allow We,
the People to apply pressure on Congress to
co-create legislation to alleviate our nation's
moral stigma from our actions in Vietnam.
Perhaps the courage of the women in Lan Teh
Nidah's poem, Night Harvest can give hope to
Americans of peace and reconciliation. These
courageous Vietnamese women harvested rice at
night to avoid detection by American forces.
...
The golds of rice and cluster bombs blend together.
even delayed fuse bombs bring no fear:
Our spirits have known many years of war.
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest.
...
We are the harvesters of my village,
...
We are not frightened by bombs and bullets in the air --
Only by dew, wetting our lime-scented hair.
One day, perhaps, we in the United States will
acknowledge our responsibilities in Vietnam. For
we, too, have known many years of war. Those of
us who struggle for peace are harvesters too. Let
us accept our history, sew the seeds of peace,
and highlight the futile lose/lose proposition that is war.
Susan Galleymore is author of
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745328296/counterpunchmaga>Long
Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and
Terror<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745328296/counterpunchmaga>,
host of Stanford University's Raising Sand Radio,
and a former military mom and GI Rights
Counselor. Contact her at
<mailto:media at mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org>media at mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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