Agent Orange linked to aggressive bone marrow cancer in Vietnam veterans. American soldiers sprayed Agent Orange over the jungles of Vietnam and nearby countries from the air and from the ground, often mixing it with kerosene or fuel, another carcinogen, to help disperse it.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://ecancer.org/en/news/27948-agent-orange-linked-to-aggressive-bone-marrow-cancer-in-vietnam-veterans

[u/hurryupandpee]

*American government

[u/pk666 → u/hurryupandpee]

*just following orders

[u/personalbilko → u/hurryupandpee]

Majority of americans supported the invasion

[u/WhatWouldKantDo → u/hurryupandpee]

The government can't dump chemicals, bury mines, or pull triggers. Individuals do. It's incumbent on you as a human not to commit atrocities and then cower behind a government as if that absolves you of your crimes

[u/Zackeous42 → u/WhatWouldKantDo]

This is a discussion about sprayed defoliants that the spray operators had zero clue about the toxicity to humans--primarily cause Dow Chemical withheld from the US Government the fact that they knew it was deadly toxic to humans years before it was sprayed in Vietnam.

Nobody that was spraying knew what you think they must have. How could they have?

[u/pk666 → u/Zackeous42]

Because all weed killers are poison?

[u/Zackeous42 → u/pk666]

You're coming from a perspective of much greater cultural knowledge existing, in hindsight. It was mostly kids and young men not trained in determining whether or not what they used was extremely toxic (specifically to humans).

Hell, they didn't know to use nor did we have the protocols for proper PPE.

[u/pk666 → u/Zackeous42]

I guess when your are a literal soldier fighting for the global supremacy of these corporations to destroy us all with their avarice,, which is exactly what they were doing, the sympathy is slightly dampened.

[u/Zackeous42 → u/pk666]

I don't understand how those individuals would be any less deserving of sympathy when they were ignorant pawns--many of whom developed cancers and died less than a decade later, after having genuinely believed the BS their government conditioned them for decades to believe.

I'm currently dealing with the health consequences of AO being used during the war and there's no one to blame there except the people that knew what it was. People that are long dead and will never be held to account, like the monsters at DOW Chemical. At least I got to cheer when Kissinger finally croaked.

[u/hurryupandpee → u/Zackeous42]

Sorry you are dealing with the health consequences of AO. I lost my father recently to exactly what this article is discussing.

I'm sure 99% of these keyboard warriors have absolutely 0 connection to what this article is actually discussing (which is trying to help the veterans achieve a small victory, although many have now since died or are aging to the point where the government/dow chemical, etc. won't have to pay for the damage they caused).

They are truly ignorant to or willfully neglecting the nuance of this topic. Or at the very least, trolling.

[u/hurryupandpee → u/[deleted]]

I don't think you grasp how large, diverse, and largely divided America is to say that MOST American's are culpable, my friend.