Agent Orange

The war history museum in HCM city contains nothing more than merely pictures, where even descriptions are rare and of poor quality if they exist, yet there are things where a picture tells ten times more than a million words. In the chamber on "agent orange", pictures after pictures showed adults and children impacted by this chemical, which is known as the most poisonous material on earth to date, that children are born without limbs, with half the skull and body swell like a balloon filled with air, with skin as rough as ashes from the volcano and so on. In fact, walking around HCM city it is not rare to see children even nowadays with abnormally large heads or with nil fingers. Their big and deep eyes penetrate through the curious me with my Sony Nex 3 on hand, as if they are telling me that i am the misfit - not them! - and should be photographed. not them.

Chemical or biological weapons are considered extremely dangerous and powerful because of the highly unpredictability of their consequences. For guns or cannons, if people are hit then they are hit, if they can hide from it they can hide from it. Simple as that. Within 1 nanosecond after the bullet was fired, the target can pretty much tell how likely they can survive. Or take concentration camp as an example, if someone is locked in the concentration camp, they probably have no clue if they stand a chance in being release in the future but at least at hindsight after the war finishes, someone can tell if the prisoners can live beyond the camp. The damage had been done the hurt will be there, but at least they are measurable and confined. Even for delayed mines deep under the ground, you can count how many mines are still below the ground (no matter how big that number is) and when they happen to explode, the power is limited to wiping out things in the near surroundings.

What about chemicals?

A small dose of which can kill anyone who touched agent orange within second, while the others around may not have the chance to realise what had happened. The consequence of which is unpredictable - even to the producer of that chemical weapon - as that heavily depends on how the mix was made and the health condition of the victim.

How can anyone allow such strong chemical to be used? It was claimed being used in defoliating forests so to make it easier for the US troop to proceed in the Vietnamese war. Do the scientists truly not aware of its impact on human in addition to the natural vegetation? I wonder. Of course the impact probably cannot be seen immediately like it did to the trees and forests, but if there is indeed a chemical being so powerful that it can deforest a large area it is rather impossible not to realise that it may affect human?

My conclusion is that nobody can claim negligence from it. I wonder what do the ones involved in the chain think when they realise what they have done to the nation. Would the scientists suggest the US army to adopt this chemical regret for what they have recommended? Would the factory worker mixing these chemicals be shocked with the power of destruction with the bags of powder they have prepared? Would the soldiers on the helicopter distributing these powder plead themselves guilty and wished time can go back so they can rewrite history?