In this weeks reading from the book Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam written by Fred Wilcox, it really explains the damages of what the United States had done to the people of Vietnam pertaining to the chemical Agent Orange and others that existed similar to that. Throughout the Vietnam war the United States had supported Agent Orange as they said it would never cause any harm to the people and would only effect the land so the Vietnamese people could not use gorilla warfare as a tactic of combat by destroying the land in which they feed off of. As it turns out the scientist who created Agent Orange couldn’t be more wrong as the effects of Agent Orange are drastically opposite to their statements and the long term effects of this chemical have caused a huge epidemic.
This chemical has gone through a few generations of people causing many deformities with the children they have. From the people to whom it was exposed all the way to the children being born, have now been exposed to this chemical, causing cancers to arise in the children as well as major sickness and deformities of body ligaments. Wilcox wanted to interview these people who've been exposed and get a personal interview of how this has caused hardships in their lives.
My opinion is that this had to be the worst thing that America has ever created, and while watching the documentary and watching how the people have been effected, I teared up and felt horrible. I had to look away from the screen multiple times as it was really hard to watch.
Question: Do you think even knowing the effects of agent orange today, would the United States still have used it in combat against Vietnam during the war?
Works Cited:
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/09/multimedia/retro-agent-orange/retro-agent-orange-videoSixteenByNine1050.jpg
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