Jan 9th, 2008
The American War
The obvious images that are conjured up in your mind about Vietnam are those of its recent history. We’ve all read about it, watched films about it and made up our own opinions. We spend our lives in the west being taught everything we think we need to know about the world in our schools. As we soon realise, when stepping outside the front door and going to visit a place we sometimes learn a different side to the story. The Vietnam War or the ‘American War’ as it is clearly referred to here in Vietnam is one of those things that benefits from a balanced view.
Whilst our parents will remember the news every night recalling the day’s latest casualty numbers and being subjected to horrifying imagery beamed over from Vietnam, not everything was seen by the west. This was probably truer for American media than others. Today the web lets us see all the gory details if we want to go look it up but there is nothing like standing in the very places where the atrocities took place and mulling over it for a while.
Our experience in Vietnam with regard to the war was positive. Positive because I for one felt as though I heard a little bit of the story from the other side of the fence and also to allow the geography of the events surround us as we travel the length of the country.
There is little or no animosity towards Americans, or at least not obvious. The only ‘teasing’ we heard was from our guide who showed us around the Cu Chi tunnels describing the size of the holes into the tunnels as “so small that the hamburger-eating Americans could never fit” – quite funny actually. No one in our group was from the US.
I visited the Vietnam memorial in Washington a few years back but didn’t get the opportunity to visit any in-depth museums about how the Americans present the war to themselves. That said the western media gave me a full dose of their side of the story. When we visit the US next year we will actively go in search of the museum in Washington to learn more.
In Saigon the government has presented the ‘Liberation’ of South Vietnam and reunification of the country as quite a stirring tale. One of the most interesting facts we learnt was that ‘technically’ speaking America never declared war on North Vietnam because they were ‘technically’ just supporting the South Vietnamese government in their struggle to keep Ho Chi Minh from achieving his goal of a united Vietnam. We also learnt that Ho Chi Minh spent quite some time before the war asking for support from the US to re-unite the country and prevent a takeover from China. The US ignored this call for assistance. Some Chinese officials incidentally still claim that Vietnam is a Chinese southern state (another Taiwan or Tibet); they don’t seem to learn do they?
The most informative and sometimes horrifying museum to visit is the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. After a morning visiting the Cu Chi tunnels to see how the Viet Cong lived underground for nearly 15 years during the war, we went to see how the war was seen through the eyes of the Vietnamese people. All these sorts of propaganda need to be taken with a pinch of salt, both Vietnamese and American, so we embarked on the tour with a open mind.
A new part to the museum has been added since I last visited 5 years ago and it has hundreds of new photos and commentary showing the dreadful impact of the war on the Vietnamese people. The utter devastation left behind from the 15 million tonnes of bombs dropped by the Americans is stomach churning. Physical deformities still ruin rural life two generations after Agent Orange herbicides were dropped. Agent Orange not only crippled the Viet Cong’s food supplies and places to hide in the jungle but it also ruined the countries economic back bone, rice exports. Today they are nearly back to full strength being one of the world’s largest exporters again. When we travelled later through the countryside it’s easy to see how important the rural agricultural population would have been then and is today. We took a train from Hanoi to Vinh about 5 hours south and saw nothing but paddy fields the entire journey.
Napalm burnt and ravaged villages all over Vietnam, often affecting the innocent more than the Viet Cong. Photographs in the museum, show the horrifying impact of a human body burned to cinders in seconds.
The psychological effects of war were all too clear as well. American GIs are seen posing with the cut-off heads of the North Vietnamese laid out in front of them in a semicircle on the ground. Another GI is seen standing with a grin on his face holding up half a body, no legs and half its torso missing.
You can’t blame anyone for the effects of war; it really is simply the human condition to breakdown in these circumstances. Whilst I’m no expert on war this museum paints a picture of it in a way that you can only hate war more and more as you stroll past these terrible images of innocent people affected by its evil.
On the flip side there were a couple of rooms to the exhibition which showed how prominent people of the time, like Jane Fonder, and the general public of almost every nation on earth protested for the end to come sooner rather than later. It reminds me how powerful public opinion can be to bring about change in the world.
I’ve never been around a museum telling the history of a war in so much detail and so completely – it really does stick in your mind for days to come, if not years.
The American War ended 40 years ago. The impact is still felt in the heavily land-mined areas of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and even today a farmer may lose a limb or die when one goes off whilst planting rice, living as they’ve done for centuries before. It, like so many wars, was just another example of how to waste time, money and most importantly innocent lives. Still today as we don’t learn from the lessons past. Wouldn’t it have been nice if George Bush and Tony Blair had taken a little reality check, a trip down memory lane if you like, and come to this museum before ordering the last invasion on Iraq?