Obama and the Vietnam War

Here's the lead of an article I read in the English daily today:

"HA NOI — Secretary of the Britain-Viet Nam Friendship Society, Len Aldis, has sent a letter to US president-elect Barack Obama, calling on him to bring justice to Vietnamese Agent Orange/Dioxin victims and their families in his first term in the White House."

The article continues, "Aldis called the use of 80 million litres of the toxic chemicals by US troops over large parts of Viet Nam a crime. He said it left a legacy that had traveled down into the third generation of Vietnamese and soon into the fourth."

I suspect that each new U.S. president receives a similar letter, which is quickly tossed into the dustbin.

Although the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange claims that some 3 million Vietnamese people are living with deformities or diseases caused by Agent Orange, the U.S. government continues to withhold compensation for the victims -- despite long-ago promises made in the 1973 Paris Peace Accords to give $3.5 billion in aid. Supposedly children in the affected areas are still being born with birth defects, and there's plenty of hideous photographs and preserved fetuses shown as proof of AO's debilitating effects at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. For very upsetting pictures, go here.

Of course, Washington says there's not enough evidence to link the cases of children born with extra thumbs, cancers, mental retardation and cleft palettes to the deforestation chemical. According to a liberal weekly from Australia called Green Left, Michael Marine, Washington’s former ambassador to Vietnam, claimed just last year that “we still lack accurate research on the causes of many disability cases in Vietnam. It doesn’t mean that I believe and am sure that the people I met aren’t dioxin victims. It only means that there hasn’t been any scientific basis to ascertain the truth.”

Marine continued: “There are two things I want to bring up, which is deformed newborns and malformation. There are many factors that cause these such as nutrition, heredity, disorders caused by engaging in particular professions, or even [their] parents’ age.”

I really hope Obama decides to find a bit of money somewhere to help. I'm amazed that Vietnam has forgiven the United States for the war and our post-war neglect, but I'm grateful nonetheless.