The War Museum
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
1
64
65
Trip End
May 11, 2006
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam
Friday, May 5, 2006
When I saw the photographs and exhibits in the museum it shook me as to just how cruel the human race can be and, when we put our minds to it, just how brilliantly we can excel at coming up with a plethora of different ways to maim, torture, and kill each other. Some devices for this purpose on display were cluster bombs, grenade launchers, nail bombs, phosphorous grenades which melt the skin on contact, napalm bombs which burn everything they touch, and Agent Orange.
Agent Orange was the nick name given to the herbicide used by the Americans to clear the forestation that provided cover to the the Viet Cong fighters. Containing Dioxin, one of the the deadliest chemicals known to man, the herbicide caused untold suffering to the hundreds of thousands of people that came into contact with it, their spouses, offspring, and their offspring. Nearly 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed on North Vietnam during the conflict. Many died of cancer, many were born with deformities. The US denies the link between Agent Orange and the catalog of ailments suffered by the Vietnamese after the war, even though they've handed out millions of dollars in compensation to their own veterans for exactly this.
It's odd to think about the people who designed these weapons of war. How they must have sat at their drawing boards as if designing a new car or airplane, but the purpose is not to dream up something that will go faster or be more economical but simply to cause more death and injury per dollar spent. What a macabre profession to pursue.
Not only were the weapons so utterly cruel but the soldiers who conducted the war were pretty much on a par. Some disturbing pictures showed VC soldiers being dragged behind tanks, families of 3 or 4 generations just before they were shot dead, GIs with beaming grins holding up to the camera parts of the exploded remains of opposition soldiers; and piles of children and babies shot, presumably, because they were Vietnamese. A report of one of the massacres included the killing of 182 women, 17 of whom were pregnant, 173 children, 56 of whom were between 0 and 5 months old, and 60 men over the age of 60. One of the soldiers convicted of one such massacres went on to become US Senator Bob Kerry; at the time he was awarded the Bronze Star for the action in Thanh Phong where the killings took place.
Obviously it would be stupid to believe that atrocities weren't committed on both sides but, with their far superior firepower and war chest, America's seem infinitely more calculated.
Now everybody, think happy happy thoughts. Sorry but this is what I did today. Right I'm off now because what ever they're cooking in this internet cafe it sticks.
Here's food for thought, literally. While I was checking out a lot of the stuff I just wrote about I came across an article stating that in December of 1999 traces of Dioxin were found in tubs of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Shall we have Honey and Herbicide or Cookies and Cancer this evening? Yum!
