Chloe Azurin
Professor Valverde
ASA 150 E
Chapter 16 of Scorched Earth talked about how a man engaged in psychological warfare and resettling people in his own village of Hiep Duc & later returning to learn about his culture and heritage and when wrote an article encouraging people to send him letters about their families’ experience with the effects of Agent Orange on their lives. More than 4,000 responses were sent to him spilling out stories of pain and urgent requests for help. Reading the epilogue was particularly powerful because of the potentiality of the letters. Not to romanticize testaments of suffering and truth, but there seems to be a sort of untapped alchemy imbued into the letters. A part that incited a visceral reaction from me: “A four-year-old-girl wandered in one morning with her brain exposed; somehow still able to walk. An American grenade had blown off part of her skull.” (167) Were I in a position of power and able to circulate this through the uppers levels of the necessary evil, I would hope that immediate action would take place because the evidence could not be hidden
The sheer intensity and evidence of the traumas both direct and physical as well as the indirect and psychological issues (such as being a mother having to provide 24-hour care to three paralyzed children) has the capability to force the government into and
A part that incited a visceral reaction from me: “A four-year-old-girl wandered in one morning with her brain exposed; somehow still able to walk. An American grenade had blown off part of her skull.” (167)
My questions for this section are: is there something more than Orientalism and racism at stake here? Is the inability for the US to admit their faults potential for creating a domino effect of destruction for the rest of the world? 
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