Week 8 Blogpost - Jaselle

Jaselle Abuda

Professor Valverde

ASA 150E

26 February 2017

Fred Wilcox’s book Scorched Earth exposes the true motives of United States’ form of action in eliminating any further spread of communism throughout Asia. However, instead of their intentions of removing the spread of communism in Asia, and possibility that it may spread throughout the Western hemisphere, they had cause so much more damage and threat than the communist regime could have ever done to the country of Viet Nam. President Kennedy approved of this war tactic in hopes to better strengthen the chances of the U.S. winning the war, but in doing so, they had strategically come to desperate measures of using dangerous chemical war tactics to win. Convincing President Kennedy that the use of chemical defoliants in Viet Nam does not violate the terms and regulations for what are accepted in an herbicidal warfare, therefore, is an accepted tactic of war (Wilcox 10). Furthermore, the U.S. did not want themselves to be “barbaric imperialist”, because once the civilians are harmed it will be considered as a war crime. Acknowledging the fact that destroying the crops violated international law and is considered as a war crime, they failed to accept their faults and instead masks the program into thinking that it is only for defoliation rather than the destruction of enemy crops (Wilcox 10).  The motives of the herbicidal warfare were to destroy the rainforest and vegetation that the Vietcong uses to hide, but instead, it had targeted the crops and livelihood of innocent Vietnamese civilians. In a secret operation named Operation Pink Rose, publicly exposed the actual intentions of the herbicidal warfare that it’s objectives were not only to destroy forests but to also eradicate food crops.

While reading Wilcox’s book, it reminded me of a documentary I once watched called Fish Boy. The focus of the documentary was mainly on a boy named Minh Anh, who has a rare skin condition where instead of his dead skin falling off it is turned scaly and hard causing him to dramatically overheat. The documentary then mentions that many of the orphans of the Peace Village Children’s Ward in Saigon maybe affected by the chemical substance Dioxin from Agent Orange.

Image source: "A Boy With A Rare Skin Condition Faces Daily Struggles With A Never-Ending Hope". The San Francisco Globe. N.p., 2015. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Question: Are there any further compensations and aid that has been done by the U.S. to help those who were affected by Agent Orange?

Bibliography

"A Boy With A Rare Skin Condition Faces Daily Struggles With A Never-Ending Hope". The San Francisco Globe. N.p., 2015. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Documentary: https://youtu.be/VwM8ZJbA98U