Toxic Injustice: What Was Done
[Agent Orange]
by Aaron Sussman
www.dissidentvoice.org,, January
16 & 18, 2007
Part I
Of the many atrocities and crimes committed
by the United States in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War,
the military's use of Agent Orange has left the most destructive
legacy, resulting in the ongoing suffering of Vietnamese citizens
and US veterans. This is what was done.
"This is the crime of which I accuse
my country . . . and for which neither I nor time nor history
will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying
hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want
to know it . . . But it is not permissible that the authors of
devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which
constitutes the crime."
-- James Baldwin, Letter to my Nephew
on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation
_War is Hell, but, for many, so is the
aftermath, the ensuing "peace" that emerges out of war's
dust and ashes. Long after the last bullet tears through the flesh
of the last soldier, the Hell of pain, suffering, and trauma remains.
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 US 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.
In late 1961, despite strident objections
from the State Department over the potential effects on civilians,
the use of "burn down" herbicides in Vietnam was authorized
by President Kennedy as part of "Operation Hades," which
would soon become "Operation Ranch Hand." These defoliation
and crop destruction efforts continued at a moderate pace until
the war escalated in the mid-1960s. By early 1965, a new herbicide
called "Agent Orange" was introduced.
Agent Orange is a combination of two chemicals
that undergo a chlorinated chemical process, creating the by-product
2,3,7,8-TCDD, "the most toxic member of the family of chemicals
known as dioxin." This form of dioxin, in fact, has been
described as "perhaps the most toxic molecule ever synthesized
by man." Peter Schuck writes in Agent Orange on Trial, "As
early as 1952, Army officials had been informed by the Monsanto
Chemical Company . . . that 2,4,5-T was contaminated by a toxic
substance."
As American casualties in Vietnam mounted,
it became increasingly clear that superior fire power had little
consequence in a dense, guerilla-friendly jungle and that open-field
combat would be to the Americans' advantage. For this reason,
the US military scorched up to "25 percent of the country's
forests with the deadly chemicals Agent Orange, and also Agent
White, Blue, Pink and Purple," totaling approximately 20
million gallons of herbicides. In April of 1970, the military
ceased all operations involving Agent Orange. The lasting damage,
though, would be devastating and irreversible.
A generation born after the last US 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."
In Vietnam, BBC News journalist Tom Fawthrop
met what the "local villagers refer to as an Agent Orange
baby" in the town of Cu Chi. As Fawthrop testifies, Tran
Anh Kiet is 21 years old; "his feet, hands and limbs are
twisted and deformed. He writhes in evident frustration, and his
attempts at speech are confined to plaintive and pitiful grunts
. . . He is an adult stuck inside the stunted body of a 15-year-old,
with a mental age around six." Many journalists who visit
Vietnam have similar encounters. Jill Schensul of New Jersey's
The Record reports on her meeting with Nguyen Thi Lan and her
five year old son, Minh. Nguyen lifts up Minh's T-shirt to show
the American journalist the effects of US foreign policy: "Instead
of the chubby belly of childhood, this torso is twisted, the skin
taut over a gnarled rib cage that juts grotesquely from the right
side of the chest . . . He cannot see, hear, or speak." Others
write about children who are not allowed in school because their
appearance frightens the other students, or babies whose life
span only reaches a few hours, or adults who were children during
the war and still randomly bleed from the ears and nose. There
are countless horror stories like these in Vietnam, with new ones
constantly emerging.
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 [in the former military
base Bien Hoa] . . . 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 three million Vietnamese
suffer from the effects of toxic herbicides, as do tens of thousands
of American veterans.
While a variety of justifications and
official doctrines have been employed by state officials to explain
violent foreign policies, the injury inflicted by the US military
on American soldiers in Vietnam stands as a unique source of shame.
In Fred Wilcox's book Waiting for an Army to Die, he writes that,
in addition to soldiers' own Agent Orange related ailments, at
least 2,000 children with a range of deformities and birth defects
have been born to Vietnam War veterans. Wilcox interviewed many
veterans, including John Green, Ray Clark, and Jerry Strait. John
Green, a medic in the war, says, "I really didn't know what
they were spraying . . . Some of our food was undoubtedly sprayed
with Agent Orange. But how were we to know? The army told us the
stuff was harmless."
The government and the military denied
the effects of Agent Orange on soldiers from the beginning and
would deny adequate treatment for years. The Veterans Administration
(VA), the second largest government bureaucracy with an annual
budget of approximately $24 billion, was responsible for letting
veterans' conditions worsen while their doctors withheld treatment.
When veteran Ray Clark began urinating blood, the doctors at the
VA "insisted [he] was putting ketchup and water in the specimen
jars" so that he could receive disability and they told him
the problem was "all in the mind," a refrain echoed
to countless other ailing veterans. When former infantryman Jerry
Strait, whose daughter was born with half a brain missing, visited
the VA hospital to complain about severe headaches, he was told
that it was "obviously due to war-related stress." He
was never informed that "he spent more than three hundred
days in the most heavily sprayed region of Vietnam or that the
food he ate and water he drank may have been contaminated with
dioxin." Jerry Strait and thousands more were poisoned by
their own government. There was no accountability, no responsibility
taken, and nowhere to turn.
It took almost two decades after the end
of the war and years worth of litigation for the federal government
to finally offer assistance to American victims of Agent Orange.
Congress authorized financial assistance for veterans in 1991,
but the government was careful in calling the link between Agent
Orange and the veterans' health problems "presumptive,"
allowing the government to "effectively sidestep a de facto
admission of guilt in Vietnam and avoid offering compensation
to Vietnamese victims." The US government still maintains
that "there are no conclusive links between Agent Orange
and the severe health problems and birth defects that the Vietnamese
attribute to dioxin."
The United States government has used
every method of denial, stonewalling, and manipulation to hide
the truth about the effects of Agent Orange. Even the paltry research
that has been conducted has been riddled with problems. Despite
investing $140 million into an Air Force Health Study on Agent
Orange, "a design flaw . . . has resulted in a quarter-century
of inaccurate findings," according to two scientists who
were involved in the study. There was criticism of this research
from the very beginning, as the journal Science expressed concern
in 1979 that "there may be a conflict of interest in having
the Air Force study itself . . . "
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 for such an admittance or
apology to be made 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 US 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 US 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 US could specifically
apologize for in a war in which "every returning combat soldier
can tell of similar incidents [to My Lai], if on a somewhat smaller
scale," according to Robert Jay Lifton, a psychologist who
extensively interviewed Vietnam veterans. Even more importantly
for the US, 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.
The use of Agent Orange was a tragedy
and a crime that is recommitted everyday as Vietnamese citizens
and US veterans suffer from the effects and pass them on to their
children. One of the many unheeded "lessons" of Vietnam
is that atrocities do not end with the war, but linger and fester.
By not admitting the truth about what was done, the US allows
the trauma of Vietnam to remain an open wound. By not taking steps
towards justice and acknowledging what must now be done, the US
allows Agent Orange to remain an open atrocity.
***
Part II
The devastating effects of Agent Orange
are a blemish on the US national record and an obstacle impeding
true reconciliation between the US government and both Vietnamese
and American victims of the toxic herbicide For this reason, issues
of international law, justice, and corporate and governmental
responsibility must be addressed clearly and directly. Those who
are currently suffering from the poisonous effects of Agent Orange,
though, have found that the struggle for justice can be as toxic.
"I died in Vietnam, but I didn't
even know it," announced veteran helicopter crew chief Paul
Reutershan when he appeared on the Today show in the spring of
1978, according to Fred Wilcox in Waiting for an Army to Die.
Reutershan, a helicopter crew chief and self-described "health
nut" who did not smoke or drink, died at the age of 28 of
virulent abdominal cancer. However, before he died, he contacted
a personal injury lawyer and launched the first lawsuit against
the chemical manufacturers that produced Agent Orange, a lawsuit
that would grow into some of the largest and most important litigation
of the time. Awareness of Agent Orange spread rapidly due to this
lawsuit and the data collected by Maude DeVictor, an employee
in the Benefits Division of the VA's Chicago office. DeVictor
began keeping track of chemical-related complaints, despite the
orders of her supervisor to stop, and the data she collected became
the source for the 1978 CBS documentary, Agent Orange, the Deadly
Fog. By May of 1979, a class action suit filed by the lawyer Victor
Yannacone against seven chemical manufacturers included 4,000
claims and continued to grow.
The case would drag on for six tumultuous
and costly years, concluding in 1984 with what was the largest
tort settlement in history. According to Peter Schuck in Agent
Orange on Trial, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and five other chemical
manufacturers paid $180 million to over 50,000 veterans, but still
denied liability. Few of the plaintiffs ever received more than
$5,000. While this was an important case with an impressive cash
settlement, it did little to satisfy the afflicted veterans or
to address the politics of responsibility. The corporations were
never found guilty nor did they admit wrongdoing. Further, due
to the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Feres/Stencel immunity
doctrine, the veterans were unable to file a lawsuit against the
federal government or the military. To this day, the political
issues of Agent Orange have been mishandled, evaded, and ignored.
While achieving a modicum of justice took
many years for American veterans, Vietnamese victims of Agent
Orange have less hope of seeing any form of justice in the near
future. In 2004, several of these victims, led by the Vietnam
Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA), filed a federal
lawsuit against 37 US defoliant producers that created and distributed
Agent Orange. The case was dismissed on March 10th of 2005 because
of a variety of factors that led the Judge to conclude in his
233-page decision that no domestic or international law had been
violated. The lawsuit sought "billions of dollars in damages
and environmental cleanup, on behalf of . . . four million Vietnamese
victims." The ruling was met with great disappointment from
Vietnamese citizens, the Vietnamese government, and American veterans
who helped the Vietnamese victims, some of whom were formerly
Vietcong, file the lawsuit.
Of the ruling, Nguyen Trong Nhan, the
Vice-President of VAVA, says, "We are disappointed . . .
[Judge] Weinstein has turned a blind eye before the obvious truth
. . . We just want justice, nothing more." One problem that
plagued the plaintiffs is that of causation -- of proving that
Agent Orange directly led to their health problems -- an obstacle
exacerbated by the lack of funding with which research could be
conducted among other scientific factors. Perhaps even more crucial
to the outcome of the case was the fact that "the court had
come under heavy lobbying from the US Justice Department to rule
against the plaintiffs, because of Washington's fears of the legal
precedent it would set in other countries ravaged by US military
interventions." John McAuliff of the Fund for Reconciliation
and Development (FRD), which supported the lawsuit, echoed this
unpleasant reality when he said, "Judge Weinstein has made
it easier for our country to continue to evade moral responsibility
for the consequences of its actions . . . We constantly hold
other countries responsible, but never ourselves." Though
this ruling is a setback for the Agent Orange victims, it is not
an unexpected one. The magnitude of this unprecedented situation
and its international scope make it incompatible with the technicalities
and minutiae of the American justice system. No court has the
precedent or the jurisdiction to adequately seek justice on such
a large and multi-dimensional scale. The call for accountability
must be made to the government that launched the war in Vietnam
and left a deadly, toxic legacy.
While all calls for governmental accountability
or reparations entail at least a degree of symbolic justice, the
situation in Vietnam is unique in that it also demands relatively
clear-cut and practical action. The lawsuit brings at least some
attention to the fact that there are still heavily contaminated
"hot-spots" in Vietnam afflicting new victims.
The spraying of Agent Orange covered a
vast amount of space and cleaning up only three of the most contaminated
"hotspots" will cost as much as $60 million. Only recently
has the US pledged to contribute to this cause, in the amount
of just $300,000. Pledges from the US to aid these efforts with
scientific research have been common, but actual results have
been few. In the past several years, Congress has charged the
National Academy of Sciences with studying the health effects
of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese population, but this underfinanced
research is a low priority and "at least two joint research
efforts have fallen through," one as recently as February
of 2005. Almost all of the decontamination efforts have come from
non-profit organizations like the Ford Foundation and international
bodies like the United Nations Development Programme.
The suffering that continues because of
American policy in Vietnam and the lack of assistance from the
US or admission of responsibility emphasizes the federal government's
preference of global power and hegemony over international law,
reconciliation, and moral concerns. The lawsuit on behalf of Vietnamese
victims transcends mere legal matters; as VAVA President Dang
Vu Hiep says, "The suit is not only for the life of Vietnamese
Agent Orange victims, but also for the legitimate rights of all
victims in many other countries, including the United States .
. . We believe that conscience and justice are still respected
in this earth." The American people tend to agree with him.
According to a Zogby Poll from 2004, 79.1
percent of Americans agree that the chemical companies should
have had to pay compensation to American veterans who were exposed
to Agent Orange and 51.3 percent agree that Vietnamese victims
should receive US compensation. From a moral standpoint, 64.4
percent agree that the US government "has a moral responsibility
to compensate US servicemen and Vietnamese civilians who were
affected by Agent Orange." People 18 to 29 years old were
the demographic most likely to endorse compensation for the victims,
demonstrating a commitment of the younger generations to reconciliation
and foreign policy conducted within a framework of morality.
While the Justice Department heavily supported
the chemical companies in court against the Vietnamese victims,
claiming that a ruling against the firms "could cripple the
president's power to direct the military," many American
Vietnam War veterans see reparations as indispensable to achieving
reconciliation, both on a personal level and an international
one. American veteran Chuck Searcy has been in Vietnam for ten
years cleaning up "unexploded ordnance" from what was
the demilitarized zone as part of Project Renew. Searcy says,
"It wasn't so much about undoing what had been done. That
was impossible. But we could build on the ashes and the bones
of the war -- build on the hopes for the future, better understanding
and reconciliation." Despite the US government's occasional
rhetoric about human rights and reconciliation, these wounds are
likely to remain open, as most paths to healing diverge in some
way with American might and dominance.
The Vietnam War, in conjunction with US
military aggression elsewhere in the world in the Cold War and
post-Cold War era, demonstrates that American interests and priorities
are more aligned with military power and economic dominance than
they are with international law or human rights. In response to
the use of Agent Orange, resolutions were introduced in the United
Nations as early as 1966 "charging the United States with
violations of the 1925 Geneva Protocol limiting the use of chemical
and biological weapons," according to Schuck. Perhaps more
than any other nation, the United States is rigidly averse to
having its course of military action influenced by international
norms. It is for this reason that the US did not sign the 1980
Convention on Conventional Weapons, which bans the use of incendiary
weapons against civilians, and that the US is "in near total
isolation in [opposing] the global effort to ban [land] mines,"
according to Human Rights Watch. The unwillingness of the US to
sincerely endorse international law or embrace an international
justice system is well conveyed by former Ambassador-at-Large
for War Crimes Issues David Scheffer, who says, "There is
a reality, and the reality is that the United States is a global
military power and presence. Other countries are not. We are."
The failure of domestic courts to provide
justice or adequate compensation to victims of Agent Orange reinforces
the need for political solutions that are grounded in international
norms. The often amoral interplay between global "justice"
and global "power" makes it necessary for the international
community and the citizens of the US to insist on the protection
of human rights and fundamental respect for human life. In her
book Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Martha Minow asserts,
"Forever after [the Vietnam War era], efforts to create tribunals
for war crimes would raise questions from many inside the United
States about its own accountability to such tribunals." For
nations with power and resources, nationalism and unrestrained
decision-making tend to supersede justice.
The best that can emerge from trials like
those regarding Agent Orange are revivals of discourse surrounding
US actions in Vietnam and empowered movements that call for dedication
to human rights and international law. Yet, in situations like
this, trials alone have very limited potential for effecting positive
and permanent change. It is the US government that must, in addition
to compensating victims and helping to detoxify Vietnam, face
the past by publicly committing to the prevention of such abuses
in the future.
One of the most important ways to do this
is to rethink opposition to a standing International Criminal
Court, which, if given sufficient powers of prosecution, would
enable the punishment of war criminals fairly and efficiently
and aid the cause of reconciliation. Though US objections to this
court, particularly from the current Bush administration and former
Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, center around a
fear of a new judicial body threatening American sovereignty and
eroding the Constitution, these concerns are largely unfounded
unless international law is breached. The International Criminal
Court operates under the principle of complementarity, meaning
that it only functions if a state is charged with an international
crime and fails to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute. Even
abominations of justice -- like the show trial of William Calley
(but not of any senior officers) for ordering the murder of approximately
500 civilians in the hamlet of Song My in 1968, which resulted
in a life sentence that soon became three days in prison -- would
be considered "investigation" and "prosecution."
Instead of a commitment to justice in
Vietnam, the United States has sought "reconciliation"
through the gospel of international commerce. After the US and
Vietnam entered into a bilateral trade agreement in 2000, President
Clinton delivered a speech extolling the act's significance: "This
is another historic step in the process of . . . reconciliation
and healing between our nations. Improvements in the relationship
. . . have depended from the beginning upon progress in determining
the fate of American who did not return from the war . . . Since
1993, we have undertaken 39 joint recovery operations in Vietnam,
and [40 are] underway as we speak . . . And we, too, have sought
to help Vietnam in its own search for answers . . . "
Exactly what answers have been given to
the Vietnamese is unclear. During Clinton's visit to Hanoi, Vietnamese
President Tran Duc Long asked the US "to acknowledge its
responsibility to de-mine, detoxify former military bases and
provide assistance to Agent Orange victims." No answer was
given. Clearly, settling the American conscience about MIAs in
Vietnam outweighs the lingering poison that contaminates swaths
of the nation.
Not only are diplomatic and economic relations
inadequate in achieving reconciliation, but they have the potential
of adding further injustice by distorting the historical record.
According to the Asia Times, "The Vietnamese government,
which for decades publicly documented the impact of Agent Orange
on civilian populations at its War Crimes Museum in Hanoi, recently
toned down the exhibition in line with a warming trend in relations
with Washington." With no justice, accountability, or compensation
over the Agent Orange assaults, truth and historical memory are
all the people of Vietnam have. Documentation of Agent Orange's
tragic effects, especially on generation after generation of children,
must be maintained and made publicly available in order for the
gravity and criminality of such foreign policy decisions to be
understood.
The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam is
undoubtedly one of the most shameful foreign policy disasters
in American history and one for which justice is unlikely to be
achieved. Agent Orange, though unique in the continuous harm that
it causes, was only one aspect of a larger catastrophe. Colonel
David Hackworth, a decorated veteran, says "Vietnam was an
atrocity from the get-go. There were hundreds of My Lais. You
got your card punched by the number of bodies you counted."
The United States has failed to repair the damage it caused, hold
war criminals accountable, provide compensation to victims, and
make a commitment to human rights and international law to prevent
the recurrence of the atrocities in Vietnam. As the woeful past
is rationalized, distorted, and denied, the victims of Agent Orange
become not just casualties of war, but casualties of memory and
injustice -- the Vietnam War's most toxic legacy.
Aaron Sussman is the co-founder and Executive
Editor of Incite Magazine; he can be contacted at Aaron@InciteMagazine.org.
For more of Sussman's work, visit www.ACrowdedFire.com.
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