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Agent orange world war 2
Agent orange history science and the politics
The effects of Agent Orange on soldiers and the public
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During the war in Vietnam thousands of people and soldiers suffered from problems related to the war. But Agent Orange and Napalm were the worst equipment we used in Vietnam for the civilians. Agent Orange ruined 5 million acres of Vietnamese land (“History: Agent Orange”). “Flying overhead, American airmen could smell the stench of burning flesh.” The article “Napalm’s death” shows the dismay of those affected by napalm. We may have “failed to win” the Vietnam War, but we sure did more than enough to harm the Vietnamese. During the Vietnam War two air dropped horrors, Napalm and Agent Orange, both took their toll on not only soldiers in Vietnam but also many Vietnamese citizens. Napalm and Agent Orange are like a plague, they affect everyone including the innocent. The civilian killing abominations, known as Agent Orange and Napalm, were an influential part of intensifying the traumatization in the War against Vietnam.
Agent Orange is a terrifying concoction of many chemicals. Agent Orange is an herbicide containing a toxin called dioxin, a chemical causing cancer and major genetic damage . It was part of multiple other herbicides that were collectively called the rainbow herbicides . The rainbow herbicides were all slightly less toxic than Agent Orange. We dropped about 8 million gallons of Agent White, Blue, Purple, Pink, and Green. But out of these Agent Orange was the most lethal herbicide (“History Agent Orange”). Napalm is no better than Agent Orange. Napalm is an incendiary weapon that was synthesized from naphthene, palmitic acid, and gasoline that was created by group of Harvard chemists, led by Louis Fieser in 1943 (“Napalm In Vietnam”). It was first used in World War Two by bombers, to annihilate the Japa...
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Roughneen, Simon. "A Battle Unending: The Vietnam War and Agent Orange." The Diplomat
. N.p.,n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2014. http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/a-war-unending-the-vietnam-war-and-agent-orange/ Streithorst, Tom. "Napalm’s Death." Prospect Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 08
Mar.2014. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/napalm-america-korea-japan- vietnam/#.Uxu1PfldVXU
Ut, Nick. BBC News. BBC, 05 Sept. 2005. Web. 08 Mar. 2014. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4517597.stm Vogel, Steve. "Agent Orange’s Reach beyond the Vietnam War." Washington Post.
The Washington Post, 07 Aug. 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2014. The Washingtonpost.com/ politics/agent-oranges-reach-beyond-the-vietnam-war/2013/08/03/803e57c0-e816-11e2-aa9f-c03a72e2d342_story.html. http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/a-war-unending-the-vietnam-war-and-ag ent-orange/
History has proven the use of chemical weapons ranging back for decades. From the Greeks in ancient Europe using Greek fire to South American tribes using a form of tear gas made of grounded up hot chili peppers to scare away enemy tribes. As well as dipping the tips of spear heads with a poisonous toxin. Poisonous toxins used from live reptiles like frogs and venom from the snakes found from whichever region had enough potency venom to exterminate. The past has proven, that in order for Armies to survive and win, it relied on out smarting the enemy. New technologies and the evolution of weaponry were left to the brightest minds from those eras to develop.
In the article, “A Legacy of Illness: The Healing Process Is Far From Done” by Amanda Spake, the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War is shown to be detrimental to Vietnam War veterans’ mental and physical health. The aftermath and effects of the agent did not and still does not receive the acknowledgment it deserves. The depth of the mental and physical distress of Vietnam veterans exposed to the agent is dismissed by the Veteran Administration, Department of Veteran Affairs and the general public. It is from this lack of awareness for the hardships of the veterans of the Vietnam War endangered by Agent Orange that their psychological and physical struggles stem.
On April 12, 1961, the first application of the chemical nicknamed Agent Orange was sprayed on Vietnamese foliage in an attempt to stop guerilla warfare, launching a herbicidal disaster ("Herbicidal Warfare"). The consequences of agent orange, unbeknownst to the former government officials, led to a series of catastrophic effects including, but not limited to neurobehavioral and physical anomalies of the human body. As a result of the lacking knowledge of Agent Orange, the United States and Vietnam are still cleaning up the herbicidal mess that could have been avoided (Magnuson). Decades later, scientific evidence proved that the use of the dioxin herbicide Agent Orange was linked to many physical and neurobehavior disorders (Poremba).
The weapons that were used in the Vietnam War included: assault rifles, mortars, light weight machine guns, tanks, jets, helicopters, land mines, booby traps and poison gases that were meant to kill the plant life in the area. However, the poisonous gases lead to serious health problems. The weapons of the Vietnam War were lightweight and had further shooting range than weapons in previous wars. The United States and Vietnam both used extremely deadly weapons that caused tons of damage to the land and cost both countries many human casualties.
"Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam." Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam. N.p., 1994. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. .
The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.
It has been known that the Vietnam War affected many American soldiers who were involved in the war physically and psychologically. The Vietnam War was one of the most memorable wars in history. Many Americans’ lives lost for no objective at all. Chapter 10 informed us about how the Vietnam War started and what really happened during that time. It also gave us background information about Vietnam Veterans and nurses who were involved in the war and what they went through during the war. I had the opportunity to interview a Vietnam Veteran also.
All in all, every year since 1975, Vietnamese have been killed or injured and they are so disappointed. The war causes chaos and is a sign of bad omen to Vietnam. This never-ending horror could be remedied if enough Americans cared about saving Vietnamese lives, as the stars of this documentary claim they did. After all, what kind of people seed a foreign land with hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives and then allow succeeding generations to lose eyes and limbs and lives? Only a “violent and unforgiving”
Chemical Warfare in WWI World War I was beginning to invent new ways to produce more casualties to the enemy’s force and reduce the probability of losing Soldiers from their own line of defense or offense. They did this by conducting extensive research in chemical warfare. At the same time, it will motivate the troops and win the hearts and minds of the people of their country if they had new ways of ending the war quickly. Chemical warfare affected tactics and techniques of warfare and almost changed the outcome of World War I. (LTG Carl E. Vuono) The French were the first to start experimenting on chemical agents in 1912.
In fact, the Tet Offensive broke out on the Tet's Eve - in the early
Health effects are prominent in Vietnam veterans but denied by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As reported in the American Legion Magazine, “The defoliant also is believed to have poisoned many people who handled it or passed through sprayed locations. After the war, a conspicuous percentage of veterans contracted various cancers or diabetes, and birth defects occurred at high rate among their children, VA compensation and care were denied (Carroll).” Denial of these severe diseases and unnatural occurrences by the VA could be construed as a cover-up for the government’s mistake or a truthful disconnect of Agent Orange and the diseases. Research has shown, “Dioxin has been found to be a carcinogen associated with Parkinson’s disease,
The Vietnam and other wars have mentally and sometimes physically dismembered many veterans. Another factor that plays a role in a war-related suicide is the addition of many on-site diseases such as defoliants, Agent Orange in particular. Made up of equal parts N-Butyl Ester 2,4,-D and N-Butyl Ester 2,4,5,-T, Agent Orange made many Vietnam soldiers go insane (Vietnam Veterans, 11-10-2000). This atrocious chemical lead and still today leads to death, deformation, and diabetes. Dr. Joel E. Michalek, who deals with statistics for the air force, was the first to notice a link between Agent Orange and diabetes. But the federal government was not willing “...to spend millions of dollars on such studies”. Dr. Michael Gough, a retired biologist was quoted as saying “the conclusion I’ve come to is that there is no evidence whatsoever to support any connection between low-level dioxin exposure and any human disease”. Some say they will not do research because it is another thing “...that will be linked to the health complaints of Vietnam veterans” (Kolata, A16). There is hope still. In 1996, Clinton ordered disability benefits for Vietnam veterans suffering from prostate cancer and nerve disease associated with Agent Orange. Eventually, the government will fund more and more diseases for those who served in the war and were exposed to the substances.
There were many events that lead up the Vietnam War, it started in 1945 with the hostilities between the French and Vietminh. “Geopolitical Strategy, economics, domestic US politics, and cultural arrogance shaped the growing American involvement in Vietnam” (Anderson 1). As a matter of fact, the Vietnam War was several wars, but it was not until 1962 that America had their first combat mission, however, Americans were killed during ambushes by the Vietnamese before the first combat mission. There is much controversy over the reasons for the Vietnam War, supported by the several different books and articles written about the war. “The most famous atrocity occurred in a tiny hamlet called My Lai in March 1968” (Detzer 127). History shows that the reaction of many Americans to the attack by US soldiers on the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War was opposition, and the actions of the US soldiers during the My Lai Massacre will be forever remembered as a significant part of the Vietnam War and American History.
“Photographs like the one that made the front page of the most newspapers in the world in 1972- a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by american napalm, running down a highway toward the cameras, her arms open, screaming with pain-- probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities”(476)
As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as