Thursday, August 9, 2012

United States cooperates with Hanoi government in clean-up of "Agent Orange" and other harmful chemical agents left behind in Vietnam from the war. (USA Today, August 9, 2012) "Dioxin, which has been linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities, will be removed from the site of a former U.S. air base in Danang in central Vietnam. The effort is seen as a long-overdue step toward removing a thorn in relations between the former foes nearly four decades after the Vietnam War ended." It's now over 37 years since the end of that long and tragic war...better late than never? http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-08-09/agent-orange-vietnam/56899152/1

20 comments:

  1. I was surprised to read this news today.
    "better late than never," is about as good a spin they could put on this... now that most of the agents have probably 90% bio-degraded.

    Weird.
    I suspect this is more a "political" decision than a real "ecologically responsible" one.
    $43 million is sort of token effort for damages that must total into the several billions.

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  2. Are you frigging kidding ME?
    Im not paying for that..how about they pay for what hey did to my brother over there..then, we'll talk..

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  3. I sympathaize with what your saying ,Jillian. My own brother was lucky to a degree--he came back from being based at DaNang. Thanks to Agent Orange, though, he could never have any children of his own other than the one he had before his deployment.

    I'm not sure if by "they" you are referring to the US Veterans Admininistration or that portion of the Vietnamese population who fought against us. In any case, the war itself is over and I think at some point our government should take a hand in cleaning up the toxicity of that country.

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  4. I respect that Jillian. They won't get much from us anyway I predict.

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  5. Good.
    And i will not apologize for that.
    Have a great day..and peace..lol..I stumbled upon your page. Sorry. :)

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  6. There was no need to apolgize anyway.

    Peace to you.

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  7. Very glad to see this Doug due to the fact that China claims the entire sea and the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands over which it exercises complete sovereignty. But Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines also have staked claims on all or some of the territory, which straddles vital shipping lanes, important fishing grounds and is believed rich in oil and natural gas reserves. Due to Us intrests we need all the friends we can get in that region.

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  8. Harboring some resentment is understandable but we would do well to remember who invaded whom and why.
    If I were to lay blame, I would blame our defense department (that's a euphemism for ya...) and political forces so paranoid about the "communist" specter that we did several stupid things in several foreign locations where we basically accomplished nothing good.

    In my opinion, we actually DO owe them something, since they fought battles that were bascially chemical-free while we were busy dropping agent orange, DDT, and napalm everywhere we went.

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  9. I think that would be part of this program, Mike. We will need friends over there and a "reboot" of our image in the area.

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  10. Yes, I'd like it better if we just went back to calling it the War Department so anyone who signs up for service who know exactly what those departments are for and what to expect.

    As for the Vietnam of this generation, I agree we should do something to deal with the lasting effects of toxins in their ground. The war is over and we cannot go back and rectify the ills and horrors committed on any side. But we can help build something more than emnity for the future.

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  11. It's also bullshit in my mind to let little kids near Da Nang get very sick from ground and water contamination in their food or water supply---for a war that was fought so long ago.

    Just sayin'.

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  12. No argument, apologize to my dead brother for the fact he got cancer and died from that crap.
    justsayin..

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  13. Your dead relative card wins, lady.

    Ready to stop now?

    Please?

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  14. Doug I doubt she has any idea what agent orange is, what it was used for or who introduced it to the country. If she did surely she would feel some responsibility for the cleanup.

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  15. "The effort is seen as a long-overdue step toward removing a thorn in relations between the former foes nearly four decades after the Vietnam War ended."

    Long-overdue is a bit of an understatement, too little too late seems to sum it up better to me Doug.

    How do you make reparations for an offence against the whole of nature and a crime against humanity?

    I suppose they could stick a couple of extras noughts on the figure, but even then it wouldn't compare with for example Goldman Sach's profiteering....although it might get close to Google's tax evasion.....its hard to put the obscene criminality involved in this monstrous eco-crime into any kind of meaningful context at all....it is just too appalling to quantify and is tantamount to offering a few million to wipe out the Nazi Holocaust ...like I say Doug, too little to late .....another insult to the victims.

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  16. I'm sure a lot of people in the international community will view it as such, AA. I posted the article here as a footnote to the circular nature of history. American-Vietnamese relations are moving on to a new generation--from a war to a cautious thaw in relations and now a few band-aids for the gaping wounds.

    Our Great White Fathers (Johnson and Nixon) in government told us to hate the Vietnamese and sent mother's son to kill and die and bleed and sacrifice limbs and sanity for some cause clearly not worth the sacrifice.

    Now a new group of national leaders are preparing us to go forth to the strip malls of American and buy multi-national Vietnamese sweat-shop made sports shoes and DVD players.

    Someday but their oil at the petrol stations.

    M any of our fathers and brothers lie dead in the cold turf, or live broken in spirit or body. Many Vietnamese, North and South, who fought are now dead and broken what they fought for has been eroded away as well by the need for tinket factories and cheap wages...transnational big business and world oligopoly marches on!

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