Most of the media coverage of President Obama’s trip
to Asia has focused on whether the president should apologize to Japan for the
United States dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
According to Obama administration officials, there are no
plans to apologize for this bombing, which took the lives of more than 100,000
Japanese civilians.
But might the same question be asked about Agent Orange in
Vietnam?
The U.S. military
sprayed the toxic herbicide, along with other deadly defoliants, over more than
20 percent of South Vietnam between the early 1960s and early 1970s in an attempt
to flush out their enemies.
Agent Orange doesn’t
get as much press as it used to, but its profound lingering effects remains a
significant international public health issue in 2016.
Hundreds of thousands
of American veterans of the Vietnam War have died, or are still suffering
because of exposure to dioxin, the deadly toxin in Agent Orange.
Exposure to it can
cause multiple cancers as well as other diseases and health problems.
The Vietnam Red Cross estimates that Agent Orange has
affected 3 million Vietnamese people, including at least 150,000 children.
Babies in Vietnam are still being born with birth defects due to Agent Orange.
The United States and Vietnam set up a decontamination
effort several years ago in Da Nang, a city in Central Vietnam
that was once the site of a U.S. airbase that stored Agent Orange. It was the most toxic of 28
reported dioxin “hot spots” in Vietnam.
But because of chilly relations between the United States
and Vietnam over the past four decades, efforts to clean up Agent Orange have
been slow and minimal.
Could that change when Obama visits Vietnam for the first
time on Sunday?
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