White Lies, White Phosphorous

Photo Courtesy of Montreal Gazette

              

                Chemical warfare; it’s something we hear about when we hear of the Bolsheviks in Russia or the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany in the early part of the 20^th century. Hitler used plenty of it, and most recently, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein employed chemical warfare against his own people. Terrorists use chemical warfare all of the time! Remember the anthrax scare just a decade ago? At least the United States does not stoop to that deadly inhuman type of warfare. Or do they?

                Most of us are familiar with the United States’ use of napalm in the Vietnam war. Even though we used it in World War II, controversy over it did not come about until Vietnam. The US used this chemical to “defoliate” the jungles of Vietnam and to flush out opposition hiding in the brush. Unfortunately, defoliation isn’t the only thing that napalm does. According to Vietnamese-American.org napalm has a primary effect of sever burning. These burns are not first degree in nature, they aren’t even second or third degree burns. The majority of napalm burns are fourth degree burns, burns that eat the skin and penetrate to the muscles. Two-thirds of napalm victims will be burned to death and those that aren’t will take months or years of healing and may never fully recover. On top of that, carbon monoxide poisoning, burning of the windpipe, shock, bone structure changes and organ damage.(Vietnamese-American)

                Napalm sounds like a pretty serious weapon when compared to exchanging fire in hand to hand combat. Perhaps another lesser known chemical weapon used was white phosphorous. WP, or its nickname “Willie Pete” can have similar but often worse effects than that of napalm. WP burns much deeper than napalm and as a US serviceperson in Vietnam said “one drop is enough; it’ll keep burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorous poisoning,” (Third World Traveler)

                Fortunately the US does not engage in chemical warfare. In fact, President Nixon even started the campaign to END the use of all chemical munitions. Well, the United States does adhere to this rule, it just changed the classification of what a chemical weapon is. Just in 2005, the US admitted to using white phosphorous in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the fact that they had denied using napalm and white phosphorous; US Ambassador to London Robert Tuttle said that the US “do not use napalm or white phosphorous as weapons”.  (BBC)  We must read between the lines here, they don’t use these chemicals “as weapons” does not mean they don’t use them.  They have just classified “how” they use them as not weapons.

                However, in an issue of the Army’s Field Artillery Magazine, a captain wrote that “WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition.”  Make no mistake, the US is still very much involved in the use of chemical warfare where it sees fit.  Even if its tell little white lies about it. 

How Communism Spread

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How Communism Spread

             When we, as Americans, think of Communism, we think of a great oppressive system of beliefs that allows no one to succeed and where powerful dictators rule with a mighty fist. At least that’s how Communists were thought of in the middle of the 20^th Century. Americans were astonished at why dozens of African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European countries were so susceptible to this horrific style of government. America had a wonderful democracy where everyone prospered and treated each other fairly. So why did Communism spread so freely in the 1950s?

In 1947, harry Truman made the Truman Doctrine where he pleaded with Congress to give aid to Greece and Turkey to stop the spread of Communism as it threatened our national security. He stated of Communism “The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife.” (Major Problems in American History Since 1945). Surely this made Communists (and the leaders of Communism, the Soviet Union) look to be forcing these countries to bow down to them and accept such a horrible governing system. But was this really the case?

In the case of many countries in Asia and Latin America this was not the case. In fact, many countries turned Communist or Socialist because of the Western Europe or American imperialistic and oppressive ways of overseeing these nations. Did the Soviets invade Vietnam and force them to become socialists? Did they do this in Guatemala or Iran or Cuba?  No, they did not. Instead they helped the people of those countries. Under Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev Communism flourished. The Soviets helped many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America with money and projects to build dams, housing and even stadiums. (PBS.org) All the while giving them assistance and backing to fight against democracies when we came for their heads.

But why did we not just help these countries ourselves? Why did we continue to put ruthless dictators into power in these third world countries and do nothing but use their people to exploit their own natural resources.  Perhaps if we would have given an ounce of respect to the people of these nations, they never would have had to turn to Communist Russia for guidance and support. While it may be true that Communism is an unfair and sometimes unjust style of government and that the Soviet Union did rule with an iron fist in Eastern Europe, Americans had a better system. The US had a democracy that anyone in the world would want to live under, yet we withheld that democracy from countries like Guatemala and Cuba and Vietnam.

It is my belief that the Soviets used force to rule because they lacked an adequate system to allow the people it ruled over to be happy and prosperous. We had that system, yet we chose to stoop to the level of the USSR and in turn ended up fighting a long cold war. We could have outsmarted and outclassed the Soviets in no time flat. But our corporate interests and greed stopped us from developing friendly foreign policy and we continued aiding the desperate declining imperial Britain and France. We sat back and wondered why these countries could possibly want to be communist. We only had to look in the mirror.