The Little Told Story of Agent Blue

It's official. The war in Iraq has now lasted for six full years. I don't know what I can say about it, truly.

But I think now is a good time to discuss a largely untold story about the Vietnam War. Namely the story of Agent Blue. Agent Blue was not some character in a "007" film, but another one of the Rainbow Herbicides like the much more notorious Agent Orange. Of all the rainbow herbicides, Agent Orange was the most widely used and gained the most notoriety for the health effects it was known to have on many Vietnam Vets or their offspring and many of the Vietnamese particularly those living in areas that were the most heavily sprayed.

Agent Blue may not have gained the same notoriety, but its purpose in the Vietnam War was no less nefarious. A lot of discussions of the Agent Orange, the widely known Rainbow Herbicide talks about it as depriving the Viet Cong of hiding places. But the larger goal involved in that kind of chemical warfare is to destroy the plant based ecosystem of an area including the food supply of the "enemy". In fact, one of the earlier well known uses of the term ecocide was a book that talked about it in reference to the Vietnam War.

Indeed if Agent Orange was the main herbicide intended to deprive the Viet Cong of hiding places, Agent Blue's main purpose was to deprive them of food, since it was primarily used for killing rice.

You might be asking by now if this is some sort of conspiracy theory, but I'm afraid that it was never any big secret. In fact, very open references to destroying the Viet Cong's food supply with herbicides can be found in newspaper clippings early in the Vietnam War.

The problem was how do you distinguish between a "Viet Cong" rice paddy vs. a "pro-Diem" rice paddy?

Most rice paddies in Vietnam at that time were grown primarily for and by peasants who couldn't exactly buy food at Fred Meyers if their crops were destroyed by herbicides. And as has often been the case in war the strategy was to starve the enemy, largely by starving the populace at large.

The program was slowed down not because of any public outrage, but because it caused a shortage of the same herbicides for domestic users. (Potential topic for future blogs.)

What indeed is one to make of intentionally and systematically trying to wipe out the population's food supply like that? And while simultaneously having dropped napalm and more bombs than were dropped on Europe during WWI? While also at the same time fighting a body count based ground war?

Of course, there has been a lot of debate about the Vietnam War for the past 40 plus years now. But sadly, discussion of the effects of that war on the Vietnamese have been often lacking.

And in the annals of war, too often stories like Agent Blue have remained untold.

See You Next Post! And

Say Goodnight Readers.