AUGUST 10, 2012, AT NOON: 51 YEARS AFTER THE CHEMICAL WAR BEGAN IN VIETNAM

WE SHOULD BE SILENT IN MEMORY, THEN TAKE ACTION TO REMEDY

By Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn

There are images from the U.S. War against Vietnam that have been
indelibly imprinted on the minds of Americans who lived through it.
One is the naked napalm-burned girl running from her village with
flesh hanging off her body. Another is a photo of the piles of bodies
from the My Lai massacre, where U.S. troops executed 504 civilians in
a small village. Then there is the photograph of the silent scream of
a woman student leaning over the body of her dead friend at Kent State
University whose only crime was protesting the bombing of Cambodia in
1970.  Finally, there is the memory of decorated members of Vietnam
Veterans Against the War testifying at the Winter Soldier Hearings,
often in tears, to atrocities in which they had participated during
the war.

These pictures are heartbreaking. They expose the horrors of war. The
U.S. War against Vietnam was televised, while images of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq have intentionally been hidden from us. But what
was not televised was the relentless ten years (1961-1971) of spraying
millions of gallons of toxic herbicides over vast areas of South
Vietnam. These chemicals exposed almost 5 million people, mostly
civilians, to deadly consequences.  The toxic herbicides, most notably
Agent Orange, contained dioxin, one of the most dangerous chemicals
known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization
as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of
Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).

From the beginning of the spraying 51 years ago, until today, millions
of Vietnamese have died from, or been completely incapacitated by,
diseases which the U. S. government recognizes are related to Agent
Orange for purposes of granting compensation to Vietnam Veterans in
the United States.  The Vietnamese, who were the intended victims of
this spraying, experienced the most intense, horrible impact on human
health and environmental devastation.  Second and third generations of
children, born to parents exposed during the war and in areas of heavy
spraying — un-remediated “hot spots” of dioxin contamination, — suffer
unspeakable deformities that medical authorities attribute to the
dioxin in Agent Orange.

The Vietnamese exposed to the chemical suffer from cancer, liver
damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive
capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Their children and
grandchildren have severe physical deformities, mental and physical
disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and
jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam were devastated and
denuded. Centuries-old habitat was destroyed, and will not regenerate
with the same diversity for hundreds of years. Animals that inhabited
the forests and jungles are threatened with extinction, disrupting the
communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in
some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification
will change the environment, causing dislocation of crop and animal
life.

For the past 51 years, the Vietnamese people have been attempting to
address this legacy of war by trying to get the United States and the
chemical companies to accept responsibility for this ongoing
nightmare.   An unsuccessful legal action by Vietnamese victims of
Agent Orange against the chemical companies in U.S. federal court,
begun in 2004, has nonetheless spawned a movement to hold the United
States accountable for using such dangerous chemicals on civilian
populations. The movement has resulted in pending legislation HR 2634
– The Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2011, which attempts to
provide medical, rehabilitative and social service compensation to the
Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, remediation of dioxin-contaminated
“hot spots,” and medical services for the children and grandchildren
of U. S. Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese-Americans who have been born
with the same diseases and deformities.

Using weapons of war on civilian populations violates the laws of war,
which recognize the principle of distinction between military and
civilian objects, requiring armies to avoid civilian targets. These
laws of war are enshrined in the Hague Convention and the Nuremberg
principles, and are codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the
Optional Protocol of 1977, as well as the International Criminal Court
statute.  The aerial bombardments of civilian population centers in
World Wars I and II violated the principle of distinction, as did the
detonation of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6
and August 9 of 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese people were
killed in an instant, even though Japan was already negotiating the
terms of surrender.

The use of Agent Orange on civilian populations violated the laws of
war and yet no one has been held to account. Taxpayers pick up the tab
of the Agent Orange Compensation fund for the U. S. Veterans at a cost
of 1.52 billion dollars a year.  The chemical companies, most
specifically Dow and Monsanto, which profited from the manufacture of
Agent Orange, paid a pittance to settle the veterans’ lawsuit to
compensate them, as the unintended victims, for their Agent Orange
related illnesses.  But the Vietnamese continue to suffer from these
violations with almost no recognition, as do the offspring of Agent
Orange-exposed U.S. veterans and Vietnamese-Americans.

What is the difference between super powers like the United States
violating the laws of war with impunity and the reports of killing of
Syrian civilians by both sides in the current civil war?   Does the
United States have any credibility to demand governments and non-state
actors end the killings of civilians, when through wars and drones and
its refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the use of Agent Orange,
the United States has and is engaging in the very conduct it publicly
deplores?

In 1945, at the founding conference of the United Nations, the
countries of the world determined:

     to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which
twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

     to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and
worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of
nations large and small, and

     to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the
obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international
law can be maintained, and

     to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.

If we are to avoid sinking once again into the scourge of war, we must
reaffirm the principles of the Charter and establish conditions under
which countries take actions that promote rather than undermine
justice and respect for our international legal obligations. The
alternative is the law of the jungle, where only might makes right.
It is time that right makes might.

August 10th marks 51 years since the beginning of the spraying of
Agent Orange in Vietnam.  In commemoration, the Vietnam Agent Orange
Relief and Responsibility Campaign urges you to observe 51 seconds of
silence at 12 noon, to think about the horrors of wars which have
occurred.  We ask you to take action so as not to see future images of
naked children running from napalm, or young soldiers wiping out the
population of an entire village, or other atrocities associated with
war, poverty, and violence around the world. We urge you to take at
least 51 seconds for your action.  In the United States, you can sign
an orange post card to the U.S. Congress asking it to pass HR 2634.
This would be a good start to assist the Vietnamese victims of Agent
Orange as well as the next generations of those exposed to these
dangerous chemicals in both Vietnam and the United States.

Jeanne Mirer, a New York attorney, is president of the International
Association of Democratic Lawyers. Marjorie Cohn is a professor at
Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National
Lawyers Guild. They are both on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange
Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

To sign the petition, go to http://www.vn-agentorange.org/