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I've just come from the War Remnants Museum. I'm a bit emotional.
I could have expected the deluge of harrowing facts and photos, particularly about napalm and Agent Orange. The scale of the damage done was deeply shocking but not a surprise to me, although I hadn't appreciated that the deformities caused by dioxins were full genetic mutations and have therefore become hereditary.
What the US did was horrific but that isn't a waiver entitling the communist government to misrepresent the entirety of the rest of the war, and that is precisely what this 'museum' is being used for: propaganda. The atrocities, the war crimes, the death: only the US's transgressions are here, and the US's weaponry. I did not see a single reference to a shot fired by the VC. Nor any note of the Allies' casualties.
Apparently the war was lost by the world's greatest superpower to the Von Trapp family.
Just think of the three main constituencies who will visit this place: Vietnamese schoolchildren, passing tourists, and veterans.
The vets will know the truth, although they may be similarly angered by the offensively ludicrous bias to the place. Arguably they've had to cope with enough, but at least they will have the critical faculties to shrug if off.
The tourists? Well I heard two Doncaster accents proclaiming how appalling the US has been, ooh the poor VC's. Good that they understand what the US was doing, but they are now totally deluded on the realities of the war.
The group that scares me is the school kids.
When I was in Changi, the guide told us of how on one occasion a Japanese lady ha got up in the middle of the tour around the concentration camps and said it was all propaganda and lies. Denying the Japanese ethnic cleansing of millions, whose bodies have been disinterred. Denying the facts, because that was what she'd been told at school. That's what happens when you lie to a generation.
And when it comes to avoiding bias, I think back to my guide Rom in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge killed all the men in his family. All of them. Because they wore spectacles and had soft hands. Those facts meant that they read books, and so were intellectuals and were therefore a threat and had to die. They were a family of teachers, for crying out loud. The schools of Cambodia have still not recovered from this cull, but I digress.
Rom still bent over backwards to point out where the Khmer Rouge had done things well, especially the management of fishing rights to avoid over fishing.
I said Rom, they murdered your family, don't feel obliged to stick up for them through gritted teeth on my account.
He paused. Tom, he said, I promise. It alway important to always tell truth: alway.
Absolutely. Alway. I'm with Rom on this one.
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