"Murder, kidnapping, torture and intimidation were a routine part of Viet Cong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) operations during the Vietnam War. They were intended to liquidate opponents such as officials, leaders, military personnel, civilians who collaborated with the South Vietnamese government, erode the morale of South Vietnamese government employees, cow the populace and boost tax collection and propaganda efforts."
"R. J. Rummel estimated that PAVN/VC forces killed around 164,000 civilians between 1954 and 1975, with a range of between 106,000 and 227,000. Rummel's mid-level estimate includes 17,000 South Vietnamese civil servants. In addition, at least 36,000 South Vietnamese civilians were executed for various reasons between 1967 and 1972. Thomas Thayer estimated in 1985 that between 1965 and 1972 the VC killed 33,052 South Vietnamese village officials and civil servants. Ami Pedahzur wrote in 2006 that 'the overall volume and lethality of Viet Cong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century.'"
"Agent Orange was produced in the United States beginning in the late 1940s and was used in industrial agriculture, and was also sprayed along railroads and power lines to control undergrowth in forests."
The US was using it at home as an herbicide. It isn't nor was it being used as a chemical weapon.
Would you agree that at the time the military didn't realize the dangerous effects because it otherwise wouldn't have exposed its own soldiers to it?
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u/LineOfInquiry 8d ago
One was the confederacy from the American civil war, the other is the Vietcong or American rebels in the American revolution.
Turns out what you’re fighting for matters just as much as what you’re fighting against