Agent Orange

Though it is unclear if they are really doing it to gain ground against China, which has been strolling through the South China Sea with an emperor’s airs (and which gives no sign of backing down in the Olympics), the U.S. government launched a program to clean up an area in Vietnam that was one of the most polluted by that infamous villain of the Vietnam war: Agent Orange.

It is known that during one decade, the United States sprayed 200 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with the intention of clearing and destroying the impenetrable jungle in which the communist guerillas were hiding. By the time they were finished, Agent Orange had destroyed two million hectares of forest and farmland.

The clean-up program will last four years and cost around $43 million, with the goal of decontaminating the area of Danang, an area where the U.S. had one of its military bases.

Although the news has been well-received by some proponents of historical reconciliation, what the government of Barack Obama (as well as previous governments) refuses to admit is that there is any connection between the presence of the lethal chemical and babies with birth defects, grandparents with various types of cancer or people with burns and lesions on their skin.

One motto reigns supreme: “Assistance without regard to cause.” It’s almost as if to say they are helping out of pure goodwill – certainly not out of a sense of responsibility. The scientific studies, they say, are inconclusive. Meanwhile, the number of victims goes up on both sides, since the military had no qualms about showering their own troops with the defoliant. Faced with a cascade of lawsuits on behalf of the victims, the lawyers for the organizations charged with dressing up the villainous Agent Orange have been heard to say that “it’s part of the human condition to look for someone to blame.”*

It remains to be seen how the havoc wreaked by the war on drugs will be remedied.

*Editor’s note: the original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.