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US Is Finally Cleaning Up Agent Orange In Vietnam
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."
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.
How do you get nine acres to beat another acre to death?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But what about our fathers who also had this shit sprayed on them and told to fuck off and die of cancer?
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".
My guess would be that Monsanto and Dow now have an Agent Orange clean-up chemical to sell and have been lobbying for this to boost their profits.
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.
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.
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.
The fact that they're de-toxing the soil 40 years later tells me there's a difference. Simple slash-and-burn at least allows regrowth if the farmers go away.
I was in Nam towards the end ('73) while in the Army, I was stationed at an abandoned
Air Force hospital (flush toilets, hot water, Hooch's) - a Mash unit at Tuy Hoa.
Apparently different companies "downsized" together into one. A conex that had
been some groups bagage had been sitting alone outside of our hospital since I'd been there.
Bored I poked through it one day. It was filled with stuff I couldn't explain then nor now. A lot
of atropine self injectors (they make lousy darts), cases of them and new rubber suits.
Imagine Dracula's cape with a hood, I wanted one for myself. It was made
entirely out of a thick soft rubber, with it and other items I found, one could be
completely covered and safe from nerve gas (my first impression).
I haven't heard of anything thing that could justify such an outfit, except agent orange.
If it were used in it's dispersion, Agent orange was seen as some nasty stuff
by those who used to own that conex.
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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"No, it was not "very common"."
Not according to journals from my Grandfather, Lt. Col USMC, who served it all from WWII up to Korea/Vietnam.
That shit happened DAILY.
You're starting to sound pretty ignorant of history. THAT is foolish.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.