The consequences of the Vietnam War
are not isolated to the wartime era and its immediate aftermath. As Wilcox
discusses in "Scorched Earth", the costs of the Vietnam War and the
US's warfare tactics have affected the land of Vietnam and its people to this
day. Agent Orange is an extremely carcinogenic pesticide employed by the US
during the war. The North Vietnamese troops used the forest and its cover to
their advantage, until the US started using Agent Orange (AO) to drive them out
of hiding. Initially, the government insisted that AO posed no serious health
threats to human beings. As we know now, they couldn't have been more wrong.
To this day, we see Vietnamese
people born with deformities and cancers linked to AO. US veterans of the Vietnam
War also suffer from the highest rate of testicular cancer than any other group
of war veterans. Interestingly, the South Vietnamese government assumed
ownership of the herbicide when it was delivered to Vietnam. In a way, this
allowed for the US to shift some of its moral responsibility off to another
government. In addition, the US initially dismissed AO sicknesses as side
effects of the Okinawa bacteria. These actions display the US's repeated
motives of hiding its mistakes and avoiding addressing its failures. Rather
than taking the responsibility and redress in these types of situations, the US
has largely ignored its responsibilities and even got out of its 2004 lawsuit
by a technicality (statutes left out "pesticides").
Question: What are some methods in
which the US would be forced to accept responsibility for its actions? How
would you suggest the US redress for its wrongful use of Agent Orange?
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