by Heather M. Brown
Download the Full Article: Defense by Defoliation: The Necessity for Agent Orange in Vietnam
In the mid-to-late 1960s, Americans became increasingly concerned with the strategic decision-making of U.S. leaders regarding the military's presence in Vietnam. One of the most controversial decisions of the era was ratified on 7 January 1962, when the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army were given authorization under Operation RANCH HAND, to deploy the herbicides 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetate (2,4,5-T) and 2,4-dicholorophenoxyacetate (2,4-D), commonly known by its code name, Agent Orange, on South Vietnam. Operation RANCH HAND directed the herbicide spraying project from U.S. Air Force C-123 twin-engine aircraft, U.S. Army helicopters and infantry hand sprayers.
The RANCH HAND herbicide missions were held to a specific standard: typically multiple, brief, two-minute sprays requiring three to five C-123 aircraft flying in staggered lateral formation. Targets were chosen by U.S. military officers who were granted special approval from the U.S. Military Assistance Command and the American Ambassador. Thus, the U.S. Air Force was responsible for defoliating southern Vietnamese jungles, forests and foliage in order to improve visibility of enemy territory by exposing Việt cộng and North Vietnamese Army infiltration routes, base camps, weapon placements, and storage sites. U.S. Air Force records indicate, between 1962 and 1971, U.S. Army and Air Force units conducted 6,542 spray missions and deployed approximately 12 million gallons of Agent Orange on South Vietnam. They specifically targeted foliage used for cover, food crops and U.S. base perimeters.
The U.S. military's use of Agent Orange severely impacted the region of southern Vietnam and the environmental damage serves as a reminder of the U.S.'s actions against those aggressors who jeopardize international peace. Similarly, the use of any military biotechnology, regardless of the country initiating disbursement, can inflict long-lasting collateral damage. However, Agent Orange can be viewed as an innovative and effective biotechnology whose unfortunate negative ecological impact proves the effectiveness of its original purpose. This paper will explore the U.S.'s commercial development and aggressive use of Agent Orange, examining its negative ecological impact as relates to foliage regrowth in southern Vietnam. Additionally, this paper will refute the assumption that the successful testing of Agent Orange preceding the Vietnam conflict deterred the U.S. military from utilizing other defoliation options.
Download the Full Article: Defense by Defoliation: The Necessity for Agent Orange in Vietnam
Heather Marie Brown received her undergraduate degree from Texas State University-San Marcos in December 2010 as a double-major in History and Political Science. Defense by Defoliation served as her undergraduate History senior research paper. Her historical research interests focus on American military history; specifically the American Revolutionary period and the American military presence in Vietnam. She is currently applying to the Diplomatic and Military History program at Texas A&M University for admittance in the spring of 2012.
This essay is dedicated in loving memory to my grandfather, Wayne Forrest Tysver, January 25, 1932 -- October 18, 2010 who was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army with the rank of E-6 in 1962 after 10 years of devoted service to his country.
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Comments
Sometimes we get into these discussions and I think we are actually thinking the same things but using different definitions or terms. You say certain things shouldn't be done because they are unwise. I say they shouldn't be done because they are immoral. Either way, there are some things that shouldn't be done. We both may end up standing in the same spot.
<b>Carl:</b>
Don't know, didn't happen. As to anything wrong with that, they did to an extent and the USSR in turn kept a number of German PWs long after the war. No sense playing what if games but it's been my observation that things go in cycles and that retribution most always appears in one form or other.
We can continue to disagree about nations being able to act morally -- I'll merely point out one more time that a nation does not make operational decisions or moral decisions, people do that.
With respect to Nations A and B -- no, it wasn't acting immorally,nations can't do that. Its decision makers were just acting stupidly. That retribution and cycle thing again. What goes around comes around...
As a point of interest, I said the question was a gem because it was too broad for a sensible answer. 'Unprovoked' is very much viewpoint dependent and the effort by B was undiffrentiated by you -- what kind of attack, how serious, etc. etc. What did A's response entail? Lot of variables there but almost certainly no grave moral questions involved.<blockquote>"...if war is an immoral act, and as you say, people engaging in it are engaging in an immoral activity, are soldiers, regardless of their behavior in and out of battle, immoral?"</blockquote>Speaking as someone who's either been one or been around a slew of 'em for approaching 80 years, I'd say pretty much so. Particularly if booze or the opposite sex is involved... ;)
Ken:
What if the Germans had won? What would the payback have been then? There are always long term costs to everything, but immediate concerns almost always trump the long view. If the Germans made a rational decision to allow millions of Soviet POWs to die of neglect because they judged they would win the war by doing so, would there have been something wrong with that?
Our old disagreement about whether nations can act immorally makes another appearance. I think they can act morally or immorally. An individual can act immorally. A group of individuals can act immorally. A nation is an organized group of individuals, ergo a nation can act immorally. You don't figure that way. My razor sharp wit doesn't move you and your irrefutable logic doesn't convince me. Fair enough.
Rape is by definition a moral act. It can't ever not be. There is no way I can figure that can get around that.
War may or may not be, in my forever a civilian opinion, depending on how the entities fighting it choose to prosecute it. If a strike of some kind goes awry because of confusion, that is an accident. The Rape of Nanking wasn't an accident. It was an immoral act perpetrated, according to some historians I think, intentionally by a nation state.
Now, back to my cubic zircon. You said nation A would be acting immorally if it did not defend itself against nation B, or if you prefer, it would be remiss in its duty to its citizens if it did not make war on nation B. But was nation B acting improperly, immorally, when it attacked nation A?
And to add a second almost a diamond to the setting, if war is an immoral act, and as you say, people engaging in it are engaging in an immoral activity, are soldiers, regardless of their behavior in and out of battle, immoral?
The answer to your first question is no, that was dumb because of the other costs imposed. It is never smart to get too carried away with mistreating anyone because there will <i>always</i> be payback of one form or another. Not to mention that one's own troops may do what they're told but, contrary to what some seem to believe, very, very few people enjoy mistreating people. So there are numerous costs aside from the immediate allocation of resources. Ask today's Germans...
The "anything" can and will be defined differently by different people What's acceptable or not can vary with time and the situation. Those decisions will be made, if there is a moral quotient, IAW the moral construct of the individual(s) who are the deciders. The decisions will generally follow national norms in moral terms but may not.
Your second question a gem, a Cubic Zircon as it were. Morals are an individual construct and nations do not have and may not behave morally IMO. However, as many define morality, war by it's very definition is an immoral act in that even under the best of circumstance some innocents in every nation and entity involved are going to be harmed no matter how much effort is put into avoiding that. Thus anyone who engages is any war is therefor participating in a degree of immorality as some define it. In your hypothetical, and IMO, Country A would be acting 'immorally' if it did <u>not</u> defend itself against the 'immoral' act of Country B. Since they're gonna be 'immoral' either way they go, no sense letting B walk all over them... ;)
They aren't acting immorally 'cause countries can't do that, it's a people thing. They are, however, particpating in an immoral activity. Not a problem to my mind. War is stupid but it happens and as the Marines say"Nobody like war -- but somebody better know how..."
No war is IM just or moral but some have to be fought. In a fight, one has an obligation to try to do it right, sensibly and as forcefully and quickly as possible. Otherwise one is just prolonging the agony and the perceived immorality for everyone involved. Self defense is a long recognized human right, it applies to Nations as well -- and I'd note that if one is 5'4" and 110 pounds with no particularly great fighting skills and is about to be attacked by a 220 pound 6'4" guy with a Baseball Bat, it's okay to hit him with a chair while he's raising the Bat to swing. That may not be moral or decent to some but it's probably wise.
You meet a lot of fascinating people in the military. About 15 years ago I met a terrific gentleman by the name of Don Millar. He has served in WWII and after the war had opened a brush control business in the Pacific Northwest. Over the years he worked up a blend of herbicides that would defoliate, but not kill the trees, unless one repeated the process too often. Typically over three times and things would start to die off.
Always a patriot and concerned citizen, he followed events in Vietnam with interest and saw the troubles the guys were having with ambushes when patrolling rivers. He knew his process could help, so he contacted the Pentagon, and sure enough, a few months later some guys came out to talk to him and observe his operation. He explained the process, shared the risks of over doing it, and shared his carefully developed formulaes and application rates. They left and he never heard from them again. A few months later he saw on the news that the military had began defoliation operatoins in Vietnam.
After the war, he was surprised when he heard about the problems people were having, and at the devastated waths of dead vegetation that he saw in pictures. Then one day he happened to meet a serviceman who had been involved in the defoliation operations. When he learned how they had concentrated the mix and up the rates he was floored. "That will kill people and those forests will never come back!" I believe is about what he said.
"P for Plenty" is the old joke for doing Demo work. It appears it applied to defoliation operations as well.
For what it is worth, Don was really upset about what had happened. It wasn't his fault, but he felt guilty for his part in it. Don saved a lot of lives. They guys who decided to upgrade to the witches brew they actually employed, on the other hand, should be held to account.
Bob
I would have flunked the author on this effort, if for no other reason than for her inexplicable failure to give more than passing reference to the impact of Agent Orange on human beings. The Vietnamese were greatly affected, and virtually all Vietnam veterans are entitled to VA medical care for a host of ailments, to include coronary disease and lung cancer.
To be fair, Agent Orange may not be the causative agent for many vets who may seek VA medical care for the ailments on the list of conditions for which VA will provide treatment. After all, heart disease strikes a ton of folks in our Vietnam cohort, now in its 50s to 70s, and primarily male. Lung cancer can also be expected, due to the number of smokers in that now-long ago military.
Despite the reality that many men of my/our age who never left the US will get the conditions VA will treat, I'm fairly confident that exposure to Agent Orange wasn't good for me. Specific harm in a specific case is always debatable, but the science is compelling. I'm convinced that exposure to Agent Orange has indeed caused a number of fairly gruesome medical problems for many of our veteran cohort. So, apparently, are a number of federal judges and the Veterans Administration. You may therefore number me among those who will consult those friendly VA docs should I have coronary disease, lung cancer or any of the numerous others maladies VA is now covering for those exposed to Agent Orange. The Vietnamese have no access to the VA, but I do.
"F" for nothing more than a cursory mention of a politician's throwaway line of the human costs to the individuals exposed to Agent Orange. Not to mention the very real financial costs to a US Government already staggering under the weight of excessive debt.
Ken:
The Germans killed through intent or neglect a lot of Soviet POWs during WWII. From a strictly practical point of view, that saved them a lot of trouble and resources that would have been expended had they cared for those POWs properly. Those resources were then directed to fighting. Was that OK for them to do? Or does that fall under the classification of the "anything" that is not permissible to do? It seems to me that a lot depends on how you define that "anything". And if "anything" can be defined, even loosely, wouldn't that definition be partially limned by morality and decency?
Second thing: if country A is minding their own business and is subject to an unprovoked attack by country B, and country A then defends itself by making war upon country B and its forces, is country A acting immorally?
<b>Carl:</b>
What you think I mean. War is by its very nature immoral. Thus any talk of fighting cleanly or with morality and decency is misguided and dangerous. That doesn't mean one has carte blanche to do 'anything' as one should always act sensibly and not do things that may be inimical to one's interests but it does mean that issues of fairness and 'decency' merit little or no consideration. IOW, you avoid killing non-combatants because it is not sensible to do so, not because it isn't nice to kill them.
<b>Anon at 12:53 PM:</b>
Or, like my hearing loss due to years of loud noises <u>before</u> we started issuing hearing protection, are the friendly and neutral deaths from such implementation simply unforeseen and unintended consequences...
Adding to Nord's experience, a best friend of mine's father (USAF) died from exposure to Agent Orange.
What can be said of a technology that, through it's specific use, kills friendlies as well as the enemy? Advocating such is a little like advocating the use of suicide bombers; however its implementation is not provided from a position of gross technological inferiority (as in the case SBs), rather from that of technological superiority.
War is ugly, stupid and does bad things to people. Always has. Modern technology doesn't change that, it just changes the specific effects.
If there's a lesson in the use of herbicides in Viet Nam other than the after effects with which I and others live and which killed many it is that attempts to save lives of own troops can have unintended consequences, be those efforts as benign as MRAPs or as deleterious as herbicides.
The issue should not be the use of herbicide, it was simply a tool. The real issue should be fighting a dumb war the wrong way in trying to 'limit' it. Warfare doesn't limit well.
Greek Fire or Nape, Legionary axes or Agent Orange -- the method make little difference, it's war. It's not nice but it's not going away. Trying to make it nice leads to more death and destruction and long term ill effects than does a short sharp campaign.
Don't go to war unless there's no other choice and if you do go, do it right -- hard, fast and dirty. Then you don't need herbicides -- or MRAPs.
Let's cut to the chase. Had friends die from Agent Orange and the V.A. would not treat in the beginning. had to go to to private doctors to get biopsies.
Add in this: Had a relative at Dow Chemical. That company could not fill the large orders of defoliate from the Defense Department, so they sub-contracted production to a series of Mississippi River-based chemical firms that did not employ good quality control procedures. That resulted in widely divergent amounts of TCDD showing up in the final product.
FWIW
I will keep it simple and cut to the chase here. Also behind the use of Agent Orange, and the earlier application of Agent Blue, was the hoped for impact defoliation would have on depriving rural peasant villagers from supporting themselves with their agriculture livelihoods, thereby forcing them into the more easily controlled cities, and by extension, weakening the Viet-Cong support base. . .an often overlooked benefit that was quietly known as forced draft urbanization.
The author of the article writes:
<blockquote>However, Agent Orange can be viewed as an innovative and effective biotechnology whose unfortunate negative ecological impact proves the effectiveness of its original purpose.</blockquote>
For those interested in a 'hateful' perspective on the effectiveness of herbicides:
<blockquote>The prose is, without a doubt, strong stuff. "Terrified by my mother-in-law's mournful cry, I raised my head to look at my belly, and nearly fainted when I saw what I had given birth to," writes prize-winning author Suong Nguyet Minh in the voice of a woman whose husband had been exposed to herbicides while serving as a soldier.</blockquote>
<blockquote>"[I]nstead of a baby, just a piece of bloody red meat. It had a dark mouth that looked like a fish running aground and yawning before dying." Or there's novelist Hoang Minh Tuong's tale about another veteran whose wife gives birth to a son named Mung and a daughter, Duyen. "When Mung turned eight, his hair fell out and his legs began to weaken. By the time he was 10, he could no longer walk," Hoang writes in a short story titled, "Grace". "Then it was Duyen's turn. She also lost her hair, and tumors began to form all over her body. Her eyes bulged out, and her memory deteriorated." </blockquote>
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MD16Ae01.html
Here's another quote from Eric Hoffer:
<em>Our impulse to persuade others is strongest when we have to persuade ourselves. The never wholly successful task of persuading ourselves of our worth manifests itself in a ceaseless effort to persuade others of it. (from The Passionate State Of Mind. p.61)</em>