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Agent of suffering

Tom Fawthrop

February 10, 2008 5:00 PM

 

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tom_fawthrop/2008/02/agent_of_suffering.html

 

 

Three-year-old Xuan Minh, believed to be suffering from the effects of

Agent Orange, looks out from his hospital bed in Ho Chi Min.

Photographer: Richard Vogel/AP

 

 

Long after the last bullet has been fired in a war, unexploded bombs,

landmines and toxic chemicals continue to maim and kill civilians.

This is particularly true of the Vietnam war. Three decades after US

soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon

in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam.

Relations with the United States have been normalised since the 1990s,

but the denial of justice to the victims of Agent Orange remains a

major bone of contention.

 

Not only are Vietnamese still maimed from treading on unexploded

bombs, they are also victims of this insidious scourge that poisons

water and food supplies, causing various cancers and crippling

deformities. Eighty million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed on the

jungles of Vietnam, destroying swathes of irreplaceable rainforest

through massive defoliation and leaving a toxic trail of dioxin

contamination in the soil for decades. The legacy of this chemical

warfare can even be inflicted on the unborn, with Agent Orange birth

deformities now being passed on to a third generation.

 

In the 3,160 villages in the southern part of Vietnam within the Agent

Orange spraying zone, 800,000 people continue to suffer serious health

problems and are in need of constant medical attention. Last month,

members of a US Vietnamese working group reported that it will cost at

least $14m to remove dioxin residues from just one site around the

former US airbase in Danang. The cost of a comprehensive clean-up

around three dioxin hotspots and former US bases is estimated at

around $60m. The $3m pledged by US Congress last year is a

pathetically inadequate amount set against the billions spent in

waging war and deploying weapons of mass destruction.

 

The recent study of one Agent Orange hotspot, the former US airbase in

Danang, found dioxin levels 300 to 400 times higher than

internationally accepted limits. The study confirmed that rainwater

had carried dioxin into city drains and into a neighbouring community

that is home to more than 100,000 people.

 

Dr Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the

US, sampled the soil around former US airbase in Bien Hoa in 2003 and

found dioxin levels that were 180 times above the safe level set by

the US environmental protection agency. The US government was aware of

these findings (pdf) back in 2003.

 

The US government's Veterans Administration officially recognises 13

medical conditions linked to Agent Orange and provides free medical

treatment to US soldiers who can prove their exposure to the

herbicide. But Washington has adamantly denied all responsibility and

evaded any kind of accountability for the estimated four million

Vietnamese soldiers and civilians who suffered far greater exposure to

the dioxin than the US war veterans.

 

In February 2004, the Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent

Orange (VAVA) filed a class action law suit in a New York court,

against Monsanto, Dow Chemicals and 35 other manufacturers of the

herbicides deployed in Vietnam. The plaintiffs and their lawyers

deliberately chose the very same court that had presided over the only

previous lawsuit brought against Agent Orange manufacturers, by US war

veterans.

 

The original lawsuit was settled in 1984, when seven American chemical

companies paid out $180m to 291,000 US citizens over a period of 12

years. The out-of-court settlement was linked to a let-out clause for

the chemical companies that refused to accept liability, claiming the

science did not prove that Agent Orange was the cause of a diverse

range of cancers, autoimmune diseases and birth deformities. In 2005,

a US court predictably rejected the Vietnamese claim for massive

compensation in respect of war crimes and crimes against humanity

inflicted on the civilian population. It is still being appealed in

the US courts.

 

Why has Washington been so doggedly determined to deny any

compensation to Vietnamese victims, even refusing to come up with

humanitarian aid? A clue can be found in the intervention of the White

House counsel in the Vietnamese lawsuit against the chemical

companies. The US government intervened to argue that if the court

permitted the case to prosper, it would undermine national security

and limit presidential options in a time of war.

 

In the New York Court Seth Waxman, defence counsel for the chemical

companies, argued there was a lack of legal precedent for punishing

those who used poisons during warfare, and said US battlefield

decisions could be harmed. " This does affect our ongoing diplomacy, "

he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in

Iraq.

 

To accept US responsibility for Agent Orange could expose Washington

to claims relating to the use of napalm, phosphorous bombs and various

My Lai-type massacres.

 

Tragically, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese victims are denied

compensation because the US government and its military want no limits

placed on their arsenal of weapons, and few restrictions on their

methods of interrogation and torture. They are also deeply anxious to

guarantee that international justice is confined to putting developing

nations and other weak regimes in the dock - Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and

Serbia. The US government, in refusing to sign up to the international

criminal court, has ensured that they are beyond the reach of

international law.

 

 

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

Confucius