War is Hell

With 8 million people in the city, and 3.5 million motorbikes, I assumed Saigon would greet me as loudly and brashly as Hanoi had. But, I actually quite liked it there. It is a bit more modern than Hanoi with taller, newer buildings and more upscale shopping centers. Plus it’s more spread out and, although it’s still bustling and buzzing with people and motorcycles, there seems to be wider, more open sidewalks and green space, allowing for a bit of a breather here and there.

I did a lot of my favorite tourist activity—random strolling around. It was sweltering hot and averaged in the 100s everyday. One of the few tourist sights I visited in Ho Chi Minh City was the War Remnants Museum. The Vietnam War (also known as the Vietnamese Revolution, the Second Indochina War and, in contemporary Vietnam, as the ‘American War’) was a military conflict in present day Vietnam occurring from 1959 to April 30, 1975. It was a successful effort by the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) led by Ho Chi Minh and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, (also known as the Việt Cộng, or more informally by the American troops as the “Charlie”, “VC” or “Cong”) to impose on Vietnam a communist system, defeating the South Vietnamese Republic of Vietnam (RVN). To a degree, the Vietnam War was a “proxy war” between the U.S. and its Western allies against the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Nearly 60, 000 American troops died in battle whereas approximately one million Vietnamese troops and two to four million civilians. Another three million Vietnamese were affected by Agent Orange. I had just been born during the last few years of the war and honestly do not recall learning much about it in school.

Much of the museum in Saigon was dedicated to exhibits of photography showing the overall horrors and atrocities of war. Besides the military and civilian casualties, the war claimed more journalists and photographers than ever before. Well, until now. The Iraq war has since surpassed this statistic claiming the most journalists. Of course, since the museum is here in Vietnam, it’s from their perspective, but there’s no denying the enormous amounts of casualties and suffering that the Vietnamese people endured during these years. I found it quite moving. There are photos of torture, photos of the horrible aftermath of chemical warfare—Agent Orange and dioxins that were used by the Americans that caused severe health issues then and to future generations with deformations of newborns from mothers who were affected, and photos of general death and destruction.

At home in the US, a generation of Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of military intervention without clear motives or objectives. Sound familiar? Between 1965 and 1973 the United States spent $120 billion on the war in Vietnam. The war seemed to demonstrate that no power, not even a superpower, has unlimited strength and resources. But perhaps most significantly, the Vietnam War illustrated that political will, as much as material might, is a decisive factor in the outcome of conflicts.

There were also photos of demonstrations from around the world against the war including several from the US. It was good to see some recent photos of US war veterans visiting Vietnam and some speaking out on behalf of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. Seeing it all was quite heavy and hard to look at. Historical events like this always beg the question: How could all this death and sadness hope to bring about peace? From the Vietnam War and now to the War in Iraq, it all seems eerily similar. Perhaps many years from now I will find myself in an Iraq War Memorial museum seeing the same senseless images of war.