Vietnam War Museum in Saigon

Fifty years ago we were at war with Vietnam.  That was then.

Now there is a museum in Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon.   The Museum--and the past--does not appear to a casual visitor to be what this city and countryside is about.   Vietnam is about the present and future.

Watching CNN on Saigon cable TV I watched a statue of Robert E Lee get toppled.  The last few days have had heavy breathing and outrage about what Trump said and didn't say regarding Charlottesville's killings and demonstrations.  The controversy is about removing park statues memorializing Confederate generals and politicians.   The "lost cause" still burns on, people re-imagining the Civil War as a glorious and heroic battle for a noble way of life, the races in their places, civility and gentility affirmed.  The Civil War seems very present in the American south.  People fight over the memorials.  The Revolution is very present in Boston and Philadelphia, but there aelebration of patriotism.The wars were 160 and 240 years ago.

Vietnam suffered, but won.   Vietnam remembers the war the way Boston and Philadelphia do.  Not the way the American south does, to my observation.   

The war was fifty years ago but Vietnam has moved on.  Ho Chi Minh's face is on the money, but Vietnam strikes me as being about the money and the getting and spending and living--not about the past.  Americans are welcome here. 

The Museum has parked in front of it American tanks and artillery pieces, a fighter plane, a Chinook helicopter.   Inside are photographs of the bomb damage to cities and defoliant damage to the countryside and agent orange damage to the citizens in the form of birth defects.  I had thought the overall affect of the museum would be similar to the effect created by the Holocost Museums, a  feeling of outrage at the inhumanity and a promise never to forget.  

The Vietnam War Museum has a different message, to my mind.

It is a message of victory and pride in restored national unity and sovereignty.  They won what they wanted, they own country.  (And by losing and leaving we got what we wanted, a capitalist Vietnam independent of China.)  The images of destruction they endured does not serve as a record for remembrance and outrage; it is a record of the extraordinary difficulties withstood and surmounted.  See how strong we are!  See how great our victory against those odds!  See the sacrifices we endured, and yet we persevered!

The Vietnam Memorial in the District of Columbia is about the senseless loss.  The Museum in Saigon is about the great country that emerged.