War Remnants Museum
Just as I’m starting to piece together the motivations and political implications of the Vietnam War, I’m hit with this. In here the conflict is known as the “U.S. War of Aggression in Vietnam,” Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers are called “Vietnamese Patriots,” and the U.S. were the bad guys, plain and simple. The fixtures in this museum may be a testament to how Vietnam can compartmentalize their grief and anger -- this conflict was just one of many.
And yet, this notion does little to lessen the horrors of Agent Orange, and the impact of U.S. involvement carefully chronicled on three floors and thousands of square feet. Even if I closed my eyes, blinding myself to the graphic photos and damning explanations, I can’t ignore the brief but pointed cry of a Vietnamese infant girl, too young to understand the atrocities depicted around her, but old enough -- had she been a baby at the time -- to feel the sting of foreign intervention, and close enough to war that the corrosive Agent Orange may still flow through her innocent veins. |