Tag: Vietnam

Does Anyone Remember Agent Orange?

If you are a Vietnam veteran then this term is well know to you and/or your family…..I remember it well.

This is for the young ones out there…..

Agent Orange was a herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Much of it contained a dangerous chemical contaminant called dioxin. Production of Agent Orange ended in the 1970s and is no longer in use. The dioxin contaminant however continues to have harmful impact today. As many U.S.Vietnam-era veterans know, dioxin is a highly toxic and persistent organic pollutant linked to cancers, diabetes, birth defects and other disabilities.

The Red Cross estimates that three million Vietnamese have been affected by dioxin, including at least 150,000 children born with serious birth defects. Millions of Americans and Vietnamese are still affected, directly and indirectly, by the wartime U.S. spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides over southern and central Vietnam.

Agent Orange was sprayed at up to 20 times the concentration the manufacturers recommended for killing plants. It defoliated millions of acres of forests and farmland. Large tracts of that land remain degraded and unproductive to this day. The chemical dioxin in Agent Orange can remain toxic in the soil for decades. Soil samples have now been analyzed from both the areas that were heavily sprayed and the former American military bases where Agent Orange and other chemicals were stored and handled. In almost all instances measured dioxin levels were below Government of Vietnam threshold standards. However some soils at three of the former military bases did have very high concentrations of dioxin. To prevent dioxin from entering the food chain and affecting both adults and children in surrounding areas, these chemical “hot spots” are now being cleaned up.

What is Agent Orange?

Why dredge up this ugly bit of history right now?

Great question and it has to do with the Trump Administration…..

In mid-February, Trump administration leaders received a desperate warning from their diplomats posted in Vietnam, one of the most important American partners in Asia.

Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange, which the American military sprayed across large swaths of the country during the Vietnam War. After Rubio’s orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind.

And even more pressing, the officials warned in a Feb. 14 letter obtained by ProPublica, Vietnam is on the verge of its rainy season, when torrential downpours are common. With enough rain, they said, soil contaminated with dioxin could flood into nearby communities, poisoning their food supplies.

Hundreds of thousands of people live around the Bien Hoa air base, and some of their homes abut the site’s perimeter fence, just yards from the contaminated areas. And less than 1,500 feet away is a major river that flows into Ho Chi Minh City, population 9 million.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-halted-agent-orange-cleanup-dioxin-vietnam-poison-risk

It is good to see t5hat the idiots in the Donny Show have not let empathy get in the way of their ultimate goals….

Just another example of the lack of accountability of the US for the mistakes they made against other nations.

This situation is disgusting on so many levels….but what did I expect from a group of disgusting idiots?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The “Angels Of Dien Bien Phu”

I wrote a piece for women’s history month and the notes got lost on my desk and it did not make it when intended….

Dien Bien Phu was the battle that took France out of Southeast Asia….a little background is probably needed for Vietnam is quickly becoming a war to forget for most Americans…..

In November 1953, the French, weary of jungle warfare, occupied Dien Bien Phu, a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos. Although the Vietnamese rapidly cut off all roads to the fort, the French were confident that they could be supplied by air. The fort was also out in the open, and the French believed that their superior artillery would keep the position safe. In 1954, the Viet Minh army, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, moved against Dien Bien Phu and in March encircled it with 40,000 Communist troops and heavy artillery.

The first Viet Minh assault against the 13,000 entrenched French troops came on March 12, and despite massive air support, the French held only two square miles by late April. On May 7, after 57 days of siege, the French positions collapsed. Although the defeat brought an end to French colonial efforts in Indochina, the United States soon stepped up to fill the vacuum, increasing military aid to South Vietnam and sending the first U.S. military advisers to the country in 1959.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/french-defeated-at-dien-bien-phu

The “angel”…..Her name was Genevieve de Galard…..

Born into a storied family, Geneviève de Galard was shaped by its patriotic spirit and even as a youth felt a need to prove herself worthy of its heritage. Only 14 at the outset of World War II, she faced the horrors and hardships of Nazi occupation in her most formative years. Completing her education after liberation, she eschewed a life of privilege to pursue a path of giving through nursing. Fueled by patriotism and intrigued by the raging colonial conflict in Indochina, she became a flight nurse for the French airforce and made her first tour to Vietnam in April 1953 as the war against the Viet Minh grew more desperate. Based in Hanoi, in January 1954 she began working on evacuation flights from Dien Bien Phu, the isolated outpost that quickly became the focus of the war as some 11,000 French soldiers came under siege. By March 28, de Galard had flown dozens of evacuation missions to and from the outpost and had no reason to fear the flight that day would be her last—and that over the next 56 days, as the only woman at the base, she would become a worldwide icon of hope and compassion.

An Angel in Dien Bien Phu’s Hell

I will be writing more on the debacle of Dien Bien Phu later…..

I apolgize for not posting this when the interest would have been high…..none the less this fascinating women deserves all the accolades she has received.

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Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Closing Thought–30Apr20–#2

This day means something to me as a veteran of the Vietnam War….

Flashback: The Fall of Saigon

(photo from NBC News)

On this day in 1975 Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese…..

The day after the North Vietnamese took Saigon, the city was woken by triumphal song. During the night the engineers of the victorious army had rigged up loudspeakers, and from about 5am the same tinny liberation melodies were incessantly played. It was 30 April 1975, and sharp early sunlight illuminated Saigon’s largely empty streets, at a time when the city’s frenetic traffic would normally have already begun to buzz. But hardly anybody knew what to do – whether to go to work or not, whether there would be anything to buy in the market, whether there would be petrol, or whether new fighting might break out. It was, of course, not just Saigon’s daily routine that had been utterly disrupted. Its established role as the capital of non-communist Vietnam had vanished overnight, its soldiers had disappeared, and many of its generals, politicians and civil servants were at that moment bobbing up and down on the decks of warships in the South China Sea, with US Navy blankets pulled round their shoulders.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/21/40-years-on-from-fall-of-saigon-witnessing-end-of-vietnam-war

CBS offers up photos of the day Saigon fell to the Advancing North Vietnamese…..https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/fall-of-saigon-vietnam-anniversary/

This is how the North viewed this day….

Forty years ago, on April 30, 1975, Nguyen Dang Phat experienced the happiest day of his life.

That morning, as communist troops swept into the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon and forced the U.S.-backed government to surrender, the North Vietnamese Army soldier marked the end of the war along with a crowd of people in Hanoi. The city was about to become the capital of a unified Vietnam. “All the roads were flooded by people holding flags,” Nguyen, now 65, told me recently. “There were no bombs or airplane sounds or screaming. The happy moment was indescribable.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/the-vietnam-war-as-seen-by-the-north-vietnamese/390627/

This happened 4 years after I returned to the US…I was working as a warehouse manager working nights.

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Hanoi! WTF?

It has been announced the draft dodging president will meet our enemy Kim in Hanoi Vietnam……

Sorry I spit on this decision!

As a Vietnam vet I do not feel that Hanoi is a proper meeting site, DaNang would have been better…..but I would not expect a guy that daddy bought him some bone spurs so he could stay behind and play little rich boy while others did the right thing and served their country.

That rant is over with more on the news of the “summit”…..

Trump is now confirming that the talks will be on February 27 and 28 in Hanoi, and said he expects North Korea to “become a great Economic Powerhouse” because of how great and capable Kim is.

The two leaders held a summit last year in Singapore, and had agreed to a future meeting at the time, though the exact details were long withheld from the public. The goal of the talks will be to try to restart a peace and nuclear disarmament process for the Korean Peninsula.

While agreements were made in the first summit, the US refusal to give North Korea anything in return for its progress on denuclearization was quickly damaging the confidence in the process, and slowed everything to a virtual halt. US officials are reportedly open to offering some concessions during these talks, though whether they will hit what North Korea really wants, a peace treaty, remains to be seen.

The state of North Korea’s commercial airliner fleet somewhat limits where such summits can be held, and the choice of Vietnam is an interesting one. Hanoi does host a North Korean Embassy, though CNN suggested that the US might prefer Da Nang as a choice because it recently hosted an economic summit

(antiwar.com)

Only a coward would put his personally ego over the feelings of the people that fought so he could stay home and play with the part of a little rich boy in Manhattan.

Trump….BITE ME!

He by the way….you know how Trump has such glowing things to say about Kim well here is what he thinks……

North Korea accused the Trump Administration of being a billionaires’ club that harbors a “policy of racism” while exacerbating social inequalities and denying freedom of the press and health coverage to citizens.

The “White Paper on Human Rights Violations in the U.S. in 2017,” issued by the Institute of International Studies in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Wednesday, claimed that human rights in the U.S. have deteriorated since President Donald Trump took office last year.

“Racial discrimination and misanthropy are serious maladies inherent to the social system of the U.S., and they have been aggravated since Trump took office,” the paper read. “The racial violence that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 is a typical example of the acme of the current administration’s policy of racism.”

The paper, which is being circulated by North Korean diplomats in Geneva, did not refer to the row between North Korea and the U.S. and its allies over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, nor to the international sanctions imposed against it.

(Newsweek)

Hahahahahaha!

Sorry had a mental moment of jocularity….

I regret it but I harbor strong feelings of dislike for Hanoi….I am not one of those tree hugging vets that wants all to forgive and forget….let bygones be bygones….that just not happening.

Change venue!  Hanoi is NOT a good choice but then this president has made few “good choices”.

Lesser Known Battles Of Vietnam

Anyone that watches any of the history channels knows of the battles of Vietnam and the outcome…..battles like that of Khe San or Hue during Tet…these were those battles that the US troops mustered all their energy and won the day.

Then there is Hollywood which did all it could to give the appearance that the US troops could do no wrong and their tactics and fortitude gave them a victory at all costs…..

I hate to be the one to inform you of this but the US did not win every battle they engaged in in Vietnam…..McCain was blowing smoke……

One theme presented by supporters of the American empire is the U.S. military is invincible and can never lose unless stabbed in the back by impatient politicians. They claim the U.S. military never lost a battle during the entire Vietnam war. On August 30, 2011, President Barack Obama proclaimed to a gathering of veterans: “But let it be remembered that you won every major battle of that war. Every single one.” Vietnam vet Senator John McCain repeated this lie in a 2013 article in the “Wall Street Journal.” This myth was disputed by America’s most decorated officer of that war, Colonel David Hackworth, in his book “About Face.” The U.S. military had every advantage, yet mistakes were made and battles lost. Internet research turns up these 104 lost battles of the Vietnam war: 

http://www.g2mil.com/lost_vietnam.htm

Americans need to know the truth…..that we did not win every engagement we entered into with the VC and/or the NVA….you can do what we always do….re-write history but the truth is far from what we are fed.

Death Of An Icon

My weekend begins with the news of someone that I knew….not personally but rather through the radio while I was serving in Vietnam….anyone that was there will recognize the name of “Hanoi Hanna”…..

She passed away this week……at the age of 85…….

Thinh Thi Ngo, the Vietnamese radio host better known as “Hanoi Hannah,” passed away on Friday at age 85, reports the New York Times. Ngo was a propaganda broadcaster for North Vietnam during the war; her English-language program was designed to convince American soldiers that their presence in Vietnam was wrong. Despite the serious nature of her mission, many who heard her remember her fondly, including Sen. John McCain, who was forced to listen to Ngo’s broadcasts daily during his captivity in the “Hanoi Hilton” POW camp. “She’s a marvelous entertainer,” McCain recalled in 2000. “I’m surprised she didn’t get to Hollywood.”

Ngo’s 30-minute broadcasts ran for a decade, from 1965 to the end of the war in 1975. AFP says Ngo’s programs were an eclectic mix: in soft-spoken English, Ngo would read out names of American soldiers killed that day, interspersed with lessons on Vietnamese history, and music by modern American singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In a 1994 interview with the New York Times, Ngo said “My work was to make the G.I.s understand that it was not right for them to take part in this war.” Of her moniker, she said: “The Americans like nicknames.”

She was not well loved by US troops would be an understatement….but she was a fixture on our radios…..and yes…an ICON.

Ironically 3 years ago the General of the North Vietnamese Army, Gen. Giap dies at the age of 103…..he also is an icon of the day…..his book, People’s Army, People’s War, was required reading …….

I recently read an interview that he gave about the war in Vietnam…..

The death of Vo Nguyen Giap on October 4, 2013, in his 103rd year, was noted with respect everywhere in the world. General Giap commanded the military forces that freed Vietnam from French colonialism in the 1946–1954 war that ended with the victory at Dien Bien Phu (1954), and that then defeated U.S. imperialist aggression in the 1962–1975 war that ended with liberation of Saigon. The heroic and victorious struggle of Communist Vietnam was a major factor in the growth of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements that shook the previously colonized world, Western Europe, and even the United States.

Source: The United States Has Lost the War: An Interview by General Vo Nguyen Giap |

Yes he was the enemy…but I cannot argue against his tactics……they were effective……

Slowly, all of us vets that served in Vietnam are dying out and soon we will be the forgotten generation along with those of the Korean War…..we already the ignored generation….soon we will be the forgotten.

 Vietnam Offers a Roadmap for the Mideast

In my studies of conflicts (war if you will) I have always looked for alternate policies that would help remove the US from its massive troop build-ups and its interventions…..

We need a new plan for the Middle East……a re-think if you will….

The request by a U.S. Army captain to a federal court for a declaratory judgment about his constitutional duties regarding going to war is the latest reminder of the unsatisfactory situation in which the United States is engaged in military operations in multiple overseas locales without any authorization other than a couple of outdated and obsolete Congressional resolutions whose relevance is questionable at best.

Of the many ways in which the U.S. Congress has fallen down on the job, this is one of the more important ones. There are several reasons that Congress should take up without further delay the question of an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF). Getting out of the legal netherworld in which current U.S. military operations exist is one of those reasons.

Source: A Need to Rethink Mideast Wars – Consortiumnews

Is there a way of approaching the Middle East that does not involve intervention and war?  I found an op-ed that I rather like…..and I believe it could work….if only our leaders would try……

Just recently the US president has offered support to an old enemy….Vietnam….and that agreement could be a template to be used in the Middle East…..like it or not.

As President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam and the lifting of the arms embargo to that country represents his “pivot to Asia,” his simultaneous killing of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, and the U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s announcement of an assault to free Fallujah in Iraq illustrate why the […]

Source: Trajectory of US Policy in Vietnam Offers a Roadmap for the Mideast – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

There is no argument that we need to find people that can think outside the box that the M-IC has constructed…..armed conflict only makes their business more and more profitable……and afterall that is the American Way, right?

The Ghosts of Vietnam Should Haunt Us – but Don’t – The Unz Review

40 years ago the War in Vietnam came to an ugly end……the fall of Saigon.

Most of us that served in Vietnam have scars of some sort……some are deeper and others not so much….nonetheless there are scars…….that haunt us in our dreams, our thoughts and our lives.

I would like to believe that our experiences in that war made us a better person…..we remember what war was like and there is a significant portion of the population that have no idea…..and for that reason this country has made some bonehead decisions internationally……decisions that have been costly…..but who is keeping score?

For one…..I AM!

I think that the ghosts of Vietnam should be on the minds of everyone making life and death decisions for our military……..

 

The Ghosts of Vietnam Should Haunt Us – but Don’t – The Unz Review.

US vets come to Vietnam to confront past, and find a home – Yahoo News

This year is the 40th year since the fall of Saigon and an end to the Vietnam War…..I will be posting a lot this year on my war with the hope that Americans will remember and finally understand……..

Many Americans know the problems that some vets had when they returned home…….unless you were there you cannot understand the internal battles that many of us had to fight…….

This is piece is a good one on the lengths Viet vets will go to to find the peace that they may have not known for 40 years……..

This may be of little interest to most but if there is a Viet vet out there that will find this an uplifting article…….then it is not a waste of time…….

 

US vets come to Vietnam to confront past, and find a home – Yahoo News.

From the Fall of Saigon to Our Fallen Empire by Tom Engelhardt — Antiwar.com

40 years ago this year Saigon fell to the advancing North Vietnamese along with its allies the Viet Cong……I case you were unaware…….

As a Vietnam vet I hate to see the US return to doing stupid stuff as it did in my war……from the beginning I compared the wars, Vietnam and Iraq, both wars smelled the same…..we went there under false pretenses…death is the only thing that has come out of Iraq as it was in Vietnam.

This is an interest piece that kind of follows along my thinking back in 2004……please give it a read and comment…….

 

From the Fall of Saigon to Our Fallen Empire by Tom Engelhardt — Antiwar.com.