Vietnam War through the eyes of the vietnamese
Text written in: English
Noah and I just went to the War Remnants museum here in Saigon/ho chi minh city. It is a museum that details, very graphically, the history of the "american war." It was pretty biased but also showed pretty accurately some of the atrocities/ war crimes of american soldiers during the war.There were 7 exhibits there. one for the history of the conflict. One for the journalist who had covered the conflict (plus tons of their pictures). one for the "war crimes "of american troops. one was just a bucnh of american tanks and planes
outside. one was a reconstruction of a prison for vietcong in saigon. One was about the international support for american withdrawl, and one was a guestbook expressing mostly anti-american
sentiment.
Most disturbing were pictures of totally blown apart bodies, pictures of people about to be executed, and jars with deformed fetuses (fetuses that were deformed due to exposure or parental exposure to agent orange/dioxin). Pretty grusome stuff, plus a video about the continuing effects of dioxin on the populace of vietnam. Pretty much anyone who was exposed to it can have seriously deformed children and also loose limbs, sight, etc themselves. so there is now a group of people in vietnam who are really really deformed because of the U.S.'s use of the herbicide.
Overall my first reaction was to be horrified at the generally terrible nature of modern warfare, but then because AMericans are villified I sort of rebelled against that sentiment and was frustrated at the biased nature of the museum. It did not detail any wrong doings of Northern vietnamese during the war and even glossed over the willing participation of southern vietnamese in commiting horrific crimes as well. Of course, what did I really expect, so I got over that and realized that the real source of my frustration was that I couldn't defend the U.S. very effectively. I mean war is hell and during many many wars deplorable and seemingly unatural cruely becomes the norm but the U.S. probably should not have been involved. Further I couldnt help feeling like our currnet situation in Iraq was similar to the American War. American intervention "to help" an impoverished country with loads of civillian resistance to our occupation which also supposedly serves our strategic interests but mostly ends up with lots of dead fathers, brothers, and sons....
On the way home Noah and I mused on these subjects and we were in agreement that the current conflict is similar in many ways and also that since we disagree with the war in principle (especially considering our new found awareness of how horrific war can be) that we should do more to oppose it. Yet we had done very little .ARe we lazy? or do we just not care enough about it? All of this left me feeling a bit guilty and a little confused.
Soon after we stopped at a corner restaurant to escape the heat with a cool drink. The waiter served us eagerly, motorbikes (thousands of them) constantly rolled by, and we sipped beginning to feel more normal again. Soon enough the relative calm of seeing life go on relatively peacefully, and the sense of well being imbued by being young, well-loved, educated, sheltered, and relatively wealthy men calmed our frazzled nerves, and despite the mental anguish caused by a harsh afternoon went away. Should the museum have caused a deep change in my psyche, maybee, but guess what? I feel fine.
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(2) (Joerg Hug)
In Saigon oder auch Ho Chi Minh City ist wieder Pary angesagt. Ich treffe wieder auf...
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Entry 58 of 72 
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