Vietnam

On the day I am born, the "US begins spraying foliage in Vietnam to expose Viet Cong guerrillas. The US dropped millions of gallons of herbicides such as Agent Orange which sparked charges that the United States was violating international norms against using chemical weapons in war, and many of the herbicides were later found to cause birth defects and rare forms of cancer in humans."

V.C. Weed Killer

As I watch the film of American soldiers spraying the banks of the Saigon River with a mixture of commercial weed killer and river water, my heart weeps. The young men draw herbicide-laden mist into their lungs with each breath, not knowing the suffering it carries. An unseen assailant waits in the mist, delivering birth defects to American children and haunting American families with rare cancers.

Defoliating the lush green shoreline saves human lives by under- mining an enemy, subverting a military maneuver. An enemy once readily camouflaged is unable to hide, unable to ambush. Yet an unseen assailant remains, the herbicide-laden river will ravage Vietnamese children with birth defects, strike down Vietnamese families with rare cancers – without regard to north or south, enemy or ally.

Death. Poison. Ravaging. Suffering. War.
A broken and fallen world. The inhumanity of humanity.

Rw


#Trust30 Carries On
Congrats on completing 30 days of writing reflections! The feedback on #trust30 has been so great that Amber has volunteered to continue the prompts as a personal project. The hope is that these daily emails will guide you on your writing journey, and help you to look within and get to know yourself. To kick off this new leg, here’s a prompt from Seth Godin: Find something that happened on the day and date you were born. Write about it.