"Without at all supporting what the US did, nor wanting to get into a big debate here, I'll just rhetorically ask: I don't suppose this museum -- or perhaps any museum in VN -- details the horrors carried out by the communists, which includes all the standard atrocities that dictatorships bring about (reeducation, persecution and executions, concentration camps, death by economic ruin, and so on). My point is that the museum you visited seems to be both accurate and misleading at the same time: accurate of the wrongs Americans did, but ignoring the wrongs done by others (including well after the Americans left)." --Tom
Absolutely. There was never any attempt at presenting a "balanced" view. And sometimes the propaganda was so thick, it was almost amusing. But I wouldn't expect there to be a balanced view. We don't, after all, list the names of dead Vietnamese veterans at our Vietnam memorials.
And you are very right about the atrocities committed, even after the Americans left. In fact, one of the heartbreaking stories that I heard had to do with many of the older cyclo (three-wheeled rickshaw) drivers. Many of them were well-educated professionals (doctors, teachers, or journalists), who sided with the Americans during the war. After the war, as punishment, they were shipped off to re-education camps, were stripped of their citizenship, and are not allowed to have property. It is officially illegal for them to even be in the country. The only option now open to these talented, skilled men is pedaling tourists around the city in their rickshaws. |
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Why doesn't Basia know her third grade teacher's name? Basia Story #2. See April 3 entry made by her sister Margaret first. Next...Basia's insatiable curiosity about her envrionment and her innate intelligence allowed her to skip the third grade. She arrived in the US in April knowing no English at all. She finished the second grade in June She went to summer school to learn English at St. Michael's school in Bridgeport Connecticut. That August, her summer school teacher recommneded that she be put in the fourth grade. Early signs of things to come.
Posted by: Donna K | Saturday, April 09, 2005 at 08:26 PM