PS to Agent Orange in Okinawa

Here is something NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff wants the "powers that be" to recognize, too. It's not only the substances they scatter all over an innocent landscape.

Governments are great at asking people to donate their lives, but not so great at accepting the responsibility to treat the one irreplaceable item in the universe--the individual, human life--with care and respect.

This is from Mr. Kristoff:

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 14, 2012


HERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.

An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.



Question: If all of these "wars" are about human rights, and these soldiers are human, what about their rights?