Dad and I and the people taking us around went with us to the
War Remnants Museum. The place was incredibly sad. I also never realised how Agent Orange is still causing birth defects in babies after all these years. However after walking through half the museum, I realised it was going to be a pretty one-sided view of the Vietnam War. It's not that I think most people (at least now) condone the Americans having gone into Vietnam, but there were tons of photos of American atrocities (ironically taken by American war photographers mostly) but none of the atrocities committed by the Viet Cong. In a museum that has a room called 'Historical truths', that's kind of ironic.
There were notes of apologies from some American GIs and of course photos of protests all over the world, including the US, but there was nothing from former Viet Cong soldiers. What were their thoughts now, years later on their behaviour, after Vietnam is unified? If the museum had taken a more balanced approach, I think I would have felt even sadder - as it was, I left unsure of how much was propaganda. Interestingly, read
this story of psyops, which both sides of course were involved in).
It also left me unsettled because there was talk of 'patriots' and 'matyrs' but not the fact that war is bloody, bad and makes people do and suffer horrible, horrible things. There was an exhibit of drawings by children - most were of their hopes for peace, but one little boy's picture was entitled something like the 'American Imperialist Aggression against Vietnam".
I also found out that
by the war's end, Vietnam had been involved in continuous warfare against several different countries for 116 years! Then after the end of the Vietnam War, they went on and fought the Cambodians, and then the Chinese! It's amazing what that must do to the psychology of a nation.
Interestingly, there was also a guillotine. First time I've ever seen one for real.
Imp and I had an interesting discussion about this online.
