By
Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn
August
6, 2012
.
AUGUST 10, 2012, AT NOON: 51 YEARS
AFTER THE CHEMICAL WAR BEGAN IN VIETNAM, WE SHOULD BE SILENT IN MEMORY, THEN
TAKE ACTION TO REMEDY
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There are images
from the U.S. War against Vietnam that have been indelibly imprinted on the
minds of Americans who lived through it.
One is the naked napalm-burned girl running from her village with flesh hanging off her body.Another is a photo of the piles of bodies from the My Lai massacre, where U.S. troops executed 504 civilians in a small village.Then there is the photograph of the silent scream of a woman student leaning over the body of her dead friend at Kent State University whose only crime was protesting the bombing of Cambodia in 1970.Finally, there is the memory of decorated members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War testifying at the Winter Soldier Hearings, often in tears, to atrocities in which they had participated during the war.
These pictures
are heartbreaking. They expose the horrors of war.
ED: Please
see:
The U.S. War
against Vietnam was televised, while images of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
have intentionally been hidden from us. But what was not televised was the
relentless ten years (1961-1971) of spraying millions of gallons of toxic
herbicides over vast areas of South Vietnam.
These chemicals
exposed almost 5 million people, mostly civilians, to deadly consequences. The
toxic herbicides, most notably Agent Orange, contained dioxin, one of the most
dangerous chemicals known to man.
It has been
recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and
by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).
From the
beginning of the spraying 51 years ago, until today, millions of Vietnamese
have died from, or been completely incapacitated by, diseases which the U. S.
government recognizes are related to Agent Orange for purposes of granting
compensation to Vietnam Veterans in the United States.
The Vietnamese,
who were the intended victims of this spraying, experienced the most intense,
horrible impact on human health and environmental devastation. Second and third
generations of children, born to parents exposed during the war and in areas of
heavy spraying ~ un-remediated “hot spots” of dioxin contamination, ~ suffer
unspeakable deformities that medical authorities attribute to the dioxin in
Agent Orange.
The Vietnamese exposed to the chemical suffer from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders.Their children and grandchildren have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans.The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam were devastated and denuded.Centuries-old habitat was destroyed, and will not regenerate with the same diversity for hundreds of years.Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles are threatened with extinction, disrupting the communities that depended on them.The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated.Erosion and desertification will change the environment, causing dislocation of crop and animal life.
For the past 51
years, the Vietnamese people have been attempting to address this legacy of war
by trying to get the United States and the chemical companies to accept
responsibility for this ongoing nightmare.
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An unsuccessful legal action by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against the chemical companies in U.S. federal court, begun in 2004, has nonetheless spawned a movement to hold the United States accountable for using such dangerous chemicals on civilian populations.
The movement has
resulted in pending legislation HR 2634 ~ The Victims of Agent Orange Relief
Act of 2011, which attempts to provide medical, rehabilitative and social
service compensation to the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, remediation of
dioxin-contaminated “hot spots,” and medical services for the children and
grandchildren of U. S. Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese-Americans who have been
born with the same diseases and deformities.
Using weapons of
war on civilian populations violates the laws of war, which recognize the
principle of distinction between military and civilian objects, requiring
armies to avoid civilian targets. These laws of war are enshrined in the Hague
Convention and the Nuremberg principles, and are codified in the Geneva
Conventions of 1949 and the Optional Protocol of 1977, as well as the
International Criminal Court statute.
The aerial
bombardments of civilian population centers in World Wars I and II violated the
principle of distinction, as did the detonation of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 of 1945. Hundreds of thousands of
Japanese people were killed in an instant, even though Japan was already
negotiating the terms of surrender.
The use of Agent
Orange on civilian populations violated the laws of war and yet no one has been
held to account. Taxpayers pick up the tab of the Agent Orange Compensation
fund for the U. S. Veterans at a cost of 1.52 billion dollars a year.
The chemical
companies, most specifically Dow and Monsanto, which profited from the
manufacture of Agent Orange, paid a pittance to settle the veterans’ lawsuit to
compensate them, as the unintended victims, for their Agent Orange related
illnesses. But the Vietnamese continue to suffer from these violations with
almost no recognition, as do the offspring of Agent Orange-exposed U.S.
veterans and Vietnamese-Americans.
What is the
difference between super powers like the United States violating the laws of
war with impunity and the reports of killing of Syrian civilians by both sides
in the current civil war?
Does the United States have any credibility to demand governments and non-state actors end the killings of civilians, when through wars and drones and its refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the use of Agent Orange, the United States has and is engaging in the very conduct it publicly deplores?
In 1945, at the
founding conference of the United Nations, the countries of the world
determined:
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, andto reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, andto establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, andto promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
If we are to
avoid sinking once again into the scourge of war, we must reaffirm the
principles of the Charter and establish conditions under which countries take
actions that promote rather than undermine justice and respect for our
international legal obligations.
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The alternative is the law of the jungle, where only might makes right.
It is time that
right makes might.
August 10th
marks 51 years since the beginning of the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
In commemoration, the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign
urges you to observe 51 seconds of silence at 12 noon, to think about the
horrors of wars which have occurred.
We ask you to
take action so as not to see future images of naked children running from
napalm, or young soldiers wiping out the population of an entire village, or
other atrocities associated with war, poverty, and violence around the world.
We urge you to
take at least 51 seconds for your action.
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In the United States, you can sign an orange post card to the U.S. Congress asking it to pass HR 2634. This would be a good start to assist the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange as well as the next generations of those exposed to these dangerous chemicals in both Vietnam and the United States.
Jeanne
Mirer, a New York attorney, is president of the International Association of
Democratic Lawyers. Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of
Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. They are both on the
board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.
To
sign the petition, go to http://www.vn-agentorange.org/
I see the Pentagon generals as being essentially Nazis.
ReplyDelete- Aangirfan