NORTHAMPTON — The
Paris Peace Accords were signed Jan. 27, 1973, making possible a
re-united Vietnam. The peace accords ended eight years of the American
War (as it is known to the Vietnamese) and two prior decades of covert
warfare against this small, agrarian Asian country. For much of the
American public, the war was a bitterly divisive issue to put behind
them.
With no good ending,
why dwell on or learn from or lose sleep over Vietnam, unless you had
lost a loved one or were a veteran haunted by its violence?
In the Paris peace
negotiations President Nixon agreed to pay Vietnam $3.25 billion for
reconstruction aid; however, he was impeached before this agreement was
honored. The following two post-war presidents — Ford and Carter —
refused to enforce it and Congress then annulled the agreement.
Our government then set
out to punish Vietnam, working to hinder its entry into the United
Nation, initiating an economic and trade embargo and blocking aid from
international agencies, until 2000. Some have labeled this period of
penalizing the country that defeated us, the second American War in
Vietnam.
Last March, I traveled
through Vietnam from Hanoi to Da Nang in central Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh
City (formerly Saigon). The purpose of my journey was to investigate the
plight of third and fourth generation Agent Orange-dioxin victims, the
fate of contaminated sites from the war and what is being done to
overcome the legacy of the 12 million gallons of Agent Orange our
military sprayed on upland forests, coastal mangroves and villages from
1961-1971.
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