02 Jan 2012: WAR IS ABSOLUTELY STUPID, THEN AND NOW #2 of 2

There are lingering effects of the American War to be seen throughout Vietnam. I haven't mentioned very much of that because the country as a whole has moved on and today is optimistic and energetic --- a nice contrast to the gloom in Europe and the U.S. these days. But the War Remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Sai Gon) is a brutal reminder of what happened then and the parallels of recent years. It makes my blood boil.

Ironically, this building was originally the U.S. Information Service Office, which in its Orwellian way sent out false information about how well the war was going until even they didn't believe it themselves. Then it was the U.S. War Crimes Museum, more apt. These days it is consistently the most popular museum in Saigon for Western tourists because so much was covered up or never divulged to them by their own government, and is largely denied still today.   

U.S. armoured vehicles, artillery, bombs, aircraft and gruesome experimental weapons. Photos of U.S.-South Viet atrocities from US sources, including the disgusting and infamous My Lai massacre of women and children. The cruel "tiger cages" where captured enemy were starved and tortured. A barbaric guillotine, and photos of severed enemy heads being dragged around. Deformed babies from the indiscriminate use of Agent Orange to kill all vegetation. Deformed babies of U.S. servicemen who came into contact with it and carried it home to their next generation! And sadly, the worldwide condemnation of the war at the time, protests that were completely and stubbornly ignored. The U.N. investigation years later formally concluded what everyone knew --- the U.S. had violated every treaty and moral obligation it had signed to uphold. The 4 floors of factual evidence leave you numb, like the evidence of Nazi gas chambers except this spanned 17 years.  

So what? Old news? What about Bay of Pigs? Tamils? Nicaragua? Kosovo? Iraq I and II? Afghanistan? Bombing in Libya? Torture in Guantanamo? Doesn't any politician or general read history before they invade? President Eisenhower said the U.S. had to protect Vietnam for supplies of copper and tin! Today it's for oil. The stupidity and delusions of  aggression happen over and over. Everyone remembers the past, why don't they remember the future?