More War: What is it good for?

After the DMZ and the tunnels in Hue I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon and also the Cu Chi Tunnels 50Km outside of Saigon. Finally, after countless tours and exhibits I finally feel like I have a grasp of how the war developed and who was involved. And it’s way less black and white than it seemed.

History – skip it if you know it. I didn’t before i went to Vietnam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

In the blue corner - the US and the Southern Vietnamese. In the red corner -- the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC).

End of History lesson.

I thought previously that the US had stormed into Vietnam to get the Commies and shouldn’t have been there, period. This is only half-true (the shouldn't have been there half...)

55000 US troops killed. 3 million Vietnamese killed.

Previously I’ve been disparaging about the US troops in the Vietnam. Not anymore. I can’t imagine being 19 or 20 and from the Midwest and sent to a difficult, unfamiliar, hot and humid jungle environment to fight for the Southern Vietnamese who look just like the people you’re trying to kill and, not only that, can sometimes support the NVA too. You wouldn’t know who to trust, you’d be scared, playing an away-game and you’d want to go home. Armies train soldiers to dehumanize their enemies – it must be harder to kill someone you think is trying to raise a family and look after their land as opposed to someone who is a baby-eating monster - and who do you (de)humanize when everyone looks and behaves the same to you?

A tiger trap....



In the Vietnamese Museums the US are depicted as monstrous imperialists. This point of view is not without merit and the US Foreign policy leaves a lot to be desired, then as now. However the soldiers were soldiers were soldiers. The NVA propaganda movie we were shown at the Cu Chi Tunnels made me sympathetic to the US it was so biased. I know this is to be expected but all the displays are like “This is a picture of the Americans panicking.” or, “This is little Chan. She can shoot a rifle and though she was too young to join the army once she had finished planting rice she followed the soldiers wherever they went. She was so fearless she was awarded the medal for being the "Most American Killer.” (as opposed to her friend who was awarded the title of "Most American Executioner.")

Another one ran: “These are the Vietnamese people fighting the imperialist Americans by night and planting their rice by day (Cue shot of smiling peasant with rifle slung over the shoulder as he plants rice in some kind of pastoral idyll).” It’s to be expected, but I don’t imagine for one minute that the inhumanity stopped with the US troops. As far as I know all fighting forces dehumanize their enemy. The Japanese did for the POWs, the British did in China and I suspect India and Africa, The Germans did and the Russians definitely did. I can’t imagine the North Vietnamese upon finding a ditched US pilot brought him home for tea and cakes before letting him finish out the war sleeping in Granny's room…..

An abandoned tank in the woods around the Cu Chi Tunnels. Back in the good old days it were once nothing but mud around here as far as the eye could see...



Anyway, I think all soldiers are brave (braver than me, that’s for damn sure) and necessary. But only a crappy government ever has to use them. (Hello Margaret Thatcher you vile old witch, Hello Tony Blair, you fop….then again George was going in regardless wasn’t he, despite what the rest of the world thought, eh? May as well have joined him to get the oil...it's not like your kids will ever go to fight).

The tunnels only come in women's small and children's sizes...this park ranger challenged everyone to squeeze down the original opening.



Fake steps down to a real tiny tunnel.



I could walk down the fake steps, but I wouldn't fit any further. (Does this tunnel make my thighs look big?)



So, back to the war museum. Along with Dachau it’s the most disturbing exhibit I’ve seen. From the Vietnamese point of view there were despicable mass slaughters (My Lai and Senator Bob Kerrey’s swift boat patrol – these people should all be in jail for life or investigated for murder), the affect of the 21 million gallons of Agent Orange that was deployed, still creating birth problems now--4 generations later. There are still 55 gallon drums being found in the countryside that have leaked into the eco-system, babies born deformed, joined together or with Downs syndrome. (Governments should be forced to clean up after themselves in a war – the US should be addressing the Agent Orange and unexploded ordnance in Veitnam; Britain should be clearing the Falklands of landmines….etc, etc), and there are still many unexploded bombs, grenades and landmines that every so often maim or kill children or farmers (40000 farmers maimed or killed since the end of the war). The photos are graphic, especially of the babies murderd at My Lai and the two fetuses in jars as examples of what Agent Orange does in the womb: these are beyond words. For the Americans there are also victims of Agent Orange – the servicemen who handled it all the time, for example. And there’s a mental cost of the war. How you can have your photo taken with a decapitated corpse (as some US soldiers did and as the Vietnamese love to display to show them what monsters the Americans are compared to the kindly, rice-planting NVA) How do you get to a point where you can pose with severed heads? Or slaughter entire villages? How do you cope with following your enemy down a tunnel into blackness and an invisible death? How do you live after that? How do you ever go home?

Recovered ordnance at the Khe Shan museum.




At the Khe Shan museum on a hilltop in the DMZ you can go into a US sandbagged dug-out. I can only imagine how scared you would be in there, staring at the jungle in 100 degree heat all the time knowing that not far away, beyond the greenery and through the heat, there was amassing a large force of alien people who wanted to kill you and who knew exactly where you were. I think it would be easy to discover you were someone else while you were there. I mean, I find out I'm someone I don't like about halfway through every poncy rock and roll tour that I do...even when there's good catering and daily showers.

Anyone can play guitar.



It cost US$6 for 10 machine gun bullets. Not as much fun as going to the shooting range in Hawaii with Brian, but a good second.....

And it's a sport, most of all. One where you can wear a bumbag / fanny pack as you participate. They even have nice Lady Guns (see below):