Agent Orange was not intentionally used to kill and maim children.
Yes it was. Because, as you wrote yourself:
Its intended use was crop destruction.[...]
And from WP:
The goal was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and cover and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters.[49] The program was also a part of a general policy of forced draft urbanization, which aimed to destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base.[8][9]
Defoliants are used to quickly kill vegetation and deny its use for cover and concealment. It can also be used against agriculture and livestock to promote hunger and starvation.
How the hell was that policy supposed not to hurt children or farmers not participating in the war ?
"We destroyed their country and burned it but we didn't think it would starve anyone or people would die as a result". Do you use nuclear weapon to destroy infrastructure and when asked about human casualties then declare "Our intention was only to speed up the neutralization of city infrastructure, not to kill anyone." ?
> Agent Orange was definitely used to gain the upper hand in the war.
The point of fighting in a war is to gain the upper hand.
So... agent orange was used to win the war, which is my point. And yes forced and global defoliation qualify as warfare tactics. And so agent orange was used because of the warfare advantage it would give. It was used as a weapon against a resource (crop) without a care for the people on it. So yes it was used against people.
PS: My main point is that Agent Orange was used as a weapon on the ground of its intended consequences. That at that time they didn't fully consider the chemical effects on humans is highly convenient and suspect to me. Hence my reaction to the "it wasn't an anti-personnel weapon".
And to support that, from the first WP page:
Many experts at the time, including Arthur Galston, the biologist who developed and intensively studied 2,4,5-T and TCDD, opposed herbicidal warfare, due to concerns about the side effects to humans and the environment by indiscriminately spraying the chemical over a wide area. As early as 1966, resolutions were introduced to the United Nations charging that the U.S. was violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which regulated the use of chemical and biological weapons.[46][55]
There's a difference between weapons used to destroy enemy resources and weapons used to destroy enemy civilians and troops. Agent Orange is the former with a side effect of the latter, whereas something like mustard gas or the chemical weapons used in Syria are simply the latter. It's a siege weapon (like a catapult) instead of an attack weapon. I think the distinction is important. I agree that the use of Agent Orange was a travesty.
How are you defining "side effect"? It seems to be something like "effects which are not the stated goal", combined with "side effects do not define what a tool is". By that logic, we should just nuke all our enemies, since our enemies are in the blast radius. Deaths of everyone else nearby and fallout and all that stuff are just side effects, nukes are totally OK when they are used to attack, not siege.
I just don't think the US military realized the consequences of Agent Orange on the population when they came up with that terrible, terrible plan. Nobody is denying that Vietnam was a clusterfuck, but I believe Hanlon's razor applies.
Burning large areas of forest where you know people might be living (must be living, in the case of farms) can't be overlooked. Hidden from decision makers, but not overlooked.
Yes it was. Because, as you wrote yourself:
Its intended use was crop destruction.[...]
And from WP:
The goal was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and cover and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters.[49] The program was also a part of a general policy of forced draft urbanization, which aimed to destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base.[8][9]
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare:
Defoliants are used to quickly kill vegetation and deny its use for cover and concealment. It can also be used against agriculture and livestock to promote hunger and starvation.
How the hell was that policy supposed not to hurt children or farmers not participating in the war ?
"We destroyed their country and burned it but we didn't think it would starve anyone or people would die as a result". Do you use nuclear weapon to destroy infrastructure and when asked about human casualties then declare "Our intention was only to speed up the neutralization of city infrastructure, not to kill anyone." ?
> Agent Orange was definitely used to gain the upper hand in the war.
The point of fighting in a war is to gain the upper hand.
So... agent orange was used to win the war, which is my point. And yes forced and global defoliation qualify as warfare tactics. And so agent orange was used because of the warfare advantage it would give. It was used as a weapon against a resource (crop) without a care for the people on it. So yes it was used against people.
PS: My main point is that Agent Orange was used as a weapon on the ground of its intended consequences. That at that time they didn't fully consider the chemical effects on humans is highly convenient and suspect to me. Hence my reaction to the "it wasn't an anti-personnel weapon".
And to support that, from the first WP page:
Many experts at the time, including Arthur Galston, the biologist who developed and intensively studied 2,4,5-T and TCDD, opposed herbicidal warfare, due to concerns about the side effects to humans and the environment by indiscriminately spraying the chemical over a wide area. As early as 1966, resolutions were introduced to the United Nations charging that the U.S. was violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which regulated the use of chemical and biological weapons.[46][55]