Rainbow Herbicides

Heard of Agent Orange, the herbicide/defoliant chemical used in the Vietnam War? Agent orange was only one out of many herbicides created during that time period by the United States to be used as a weapon against its enemies. The idea of rainbow herbicides is first inspired by the Malayan Emergency that led to Operation Ranch Hand. There were 6 different types of herbicides: Agent Green, Agent Pink, Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent White, and Agent Orange (there were 4 different versions: I, II, III, and enhanced agent orange/orange plus/super orange). Each one was labeled accordingly to the color of stripe labeled on the barrel and the color it gave when the chemical was released. The main task of the herbicide attacks was to uncover enemies' hideouts in nature, which in turn ruins the agriculture. This tactic of locating enemy has its pros and cons but cons outweigh, in my personal opinion, the pros because it ruins the ecosystem, which can at first be minimal but eventually affect a bigger population of organisms than it originally intended to. Imagine this: the herbicide was meant to only be sprayed for about a mile surrounding a well-covered camp, but in that radius of a mile lived mammals, birds, and other organisms. Because that herbicide killed certain species in that area, other species that relied on that animal that died is now unable to get the things it needs from the dead animal. This leads to the species' death, which leads to more organisms failing to do the same, ultimately coming to an ecosystem collapse. This issue might not concern us as humans, but what if that chemical got to the meat and the vegetables we eat daily? Maybe natural selection and nature itself is able to recover from the damaged ecosystem, maybe it might not. When America came down with the decision to spray Agent Orange in Vietnam, was it really ethical for them to do so or could there have been a better way to go regarding this situation?