Toxic injustice, part 1: What was done

[donsu]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1677.shtml


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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 U.S. 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.

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A generation born after the last U.S. 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.”

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One public health study at Columbia University found that “up to 4.8 million Vietnamese were living in 3,181 villages that were directly showered with Agent Orange” and that dioxin levels are four times higher today than what was previously predicted. The most discouraging studies, though, are those that prove how toxic the environment still is in parts of Vietnam. In 2003, “Dr. Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the US, sampled the soil . . . and found it contained TCCD levels that were 180 million times above the safe level set by the US Environmental Protection Agency.” Today, as many as 3 million Vietnamese suffer from the effects of toxic herbicides, as do tens of thousands of American veterans.

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Many Vietnamese citizens and government officials have called upon the United States to admit wrongdoing, take responsibility, express contrition, and aid the process of reconciliation. Yet, American foreign policy is far too complex and riddled with human rights abuses to admit or apologize for such without jeopardizing legal standing and ability to continue current practices. The United States could not apologize to Vietnam, for instance, while ignoring the fact that, in the same year that troops withdrew, the CIA and the Nixon administration helped orchestrate the military overthrow of democratically-elected President Salvador Allende in Chile to install Augusto Pinochet, one of the most brutal and murderous dictators of the 20th century. Nor would it be satisfactory for the U.S. to apologize for Agent Orange, but not mention the terror-spreading Phoenix Program that resulted in the killing of up to 70,000 Vietnamese, many of whom were civilians and family of Vietcong, or the elite U.S. Army unit, “Tiger Force,” which, in the Central Highlands in 1967, committed the “longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War,” killing hundreds of unarmed civilians, as reported by the Toledo Blade. It is unclear what the U.S. could specifically apologize for in a war in which “every returning combat soldier can tell of similar incidents , if on a somewhat smaller scale," according to Robert Jay Lifton, a psychologist who extensively interviewed Vietnam veterans. Even more importantly for the U.S., apologizing for or openly acknowledging the damage caused by Agent Orange could adversely affect current practices in Iraq, most notably the use of white phosphorus as a weapon in Fallujah.

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Next, Part 2: What must be done
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and now we are killing off Iraqis (and anyone else living in Iraq) with depleted uranium

[KT2000]

1. Pulp and Paper Industry

threatened economic ruin for the US if the damage from dioxin was recognized according to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. About the only thing that has changed from the 60's and 70's is that most business and government have formed a united front to deny the existence of any health damage done by chemicals.