I’m walking around the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. I’ve looked at the military aircraft in the front courtyard which looms large but doesn’t yet give too much away of what the Vietnam War was all about. It feels very American with each piece of used equipment stamped with U.S. Army and U.S. Airforce. But then comes the hammer blow.
Moving on to the Tiger Cages I see contraptions which humans have made out of barbed wire and are no bigger than a coffin so that they can cage other humans. It makes my stomach lurch and I have to walk out into the stifling heat to collect myself. There were so-called Sunbathing Rooms which baked prisoners in the scorching Vietnamese sun.
It was not a case of having to envisage what was done to the Vietnamese people because photographs tell the gruesome story of so many victims – no imagination necessary – it was all there for us to ingest. The torture and inhuman acts that took place were supported and overseen by American advisors including the CIA. There were rooms within the museum that I simply could not bring myself to enter yet some images assaulted the corner of my eye and were very disturbing.
To comprehend that there were people in the “civilised” United States who masterminded maximum effect torture treatments beggars belief. I don’t know if I’m ashamed to say or if I’m justified to say that I found it very hard to keep going. One wall notes the names of victims massacred by U.S. troops on the night of February 25, 1969, amongst many other horrific instances of cruelty. Other countries were also involved in the war, yet this museum was focused on what the U.S. perpetrated onto the Vietnamese people and advised on torture techniques for the South Vietnamese to utilise.
The tank, bulldozer, Chinook and Huey which seemed so large and looming at the beginning paled in comparison to the ‘Agent Orange’ room. The U.S. used not only lethal weapons but toxic chemicals to destroy the countryside, the lives and the futures of the Vietnamese people. One photo shows a large barrel of Agent Orange with a U.S. serviceman standing next to it. The callous words on the side, written by hand, read “the purple people eater”. It showed a total disregard for the inhumanity they were about to shower over their fellow human beings. The effects of the toxic chemical, which resulted in tragic and extreme birth defects for generations, defy comprehension and understanding of what government officials signed off on for such crimes against humanity. Government leaders sat in their comfy offices and ate well as they gave the green light and watched the horror unfold. Nothing has changed. I kept repeating sage words from Confucius as a mantra of composure, ‘Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself’.
It wasn’t foreign governments demonstrating in the streets against the war, it was the average person marching through capital cities and opposing the atrocities taking place upon people whom they had not met and had no fight with; not dissimilar to the protests against the actions of Israel today. Again, I quote Paul Valery ‘War: a massacre of people who do not know each other for the profit of people who know each other but do not massacre each other’.
As I continue through the museum, I’m trying to contain my grief to learn more of what the Vietnamese people suffered fifty years ago. It was so barbaric and bestial back in the 60s & 70s, yet such inhumanity is still with us. The CIA’s nauseating torture programs for the detainees from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib and beyond are advised by those who invent new and more effective ways to inflict pain and fear on people whom they deem to be the enemy. But an enemy of humanity gets a hall pass.
After World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust and the waste of millions of lives across Europe and the world, there was the echoing lamentation of “never again”. After the horrors of the Vietnam war there was the echoing lamentation throughout the world of “never again”. Iraq and Afghanistan were futile and cruel endeavours to cower a people. Cries of “never again” are justified.
Savage history has been ignored because the United States are at it again spreading their wicked and violent tentacles and supporting regions of the world which blatantly ignore international law and human rights. Appalling euphemisms like mowing the grass, tiger cages, sunbathing rooms, human animals and neutralise are all inter-mingled under the same banner of cold-blooded inhumanity – which seems to be okay by U.S. standards within successive administrations.
Usually what happens after wars are discussions, signing agreements and handshakes between those who had the control to stop a war in the first place. After any horrific war one may ask what was the point of all the fighting and loss if it ends the same way each time. Can’t we skip the war bit and get straight to the negotiation? Otherwise we are slowly but surely corroding our sense of what being human truly means.
Is there no world leader who can understand how the world could and should function? Is it just ‘normal people’ who understand the concept? Justice, fairness, humanity and diplomacy should be the order of the day. I’m often given the stock standard rebuttal to my objection to inhumanity with, “it’s human nature to conquer and control”. Ah yes, but it’s also equally human nature to resist injustice and cruelty. We are currently witness to Israel perpetrating mind-boggling inhumanity and cruelty almost seventy-five years on from WWII and fifty years on from the tragedy of Vietnam. So, in fact, it’s not ‘never again’ but ‘yet again’.
The United States of America are the ‘Where’s Wally’ of this world. Look closely enough and there you’ll spot them amongst some of the broken, dysfunctional and destroyed regions of the world. Currently we are seeing torture and inhumanity via depraved actions of starvation, utter destruction of homes, hospitals and infrastructure by Israel who are aided and abetted by the most powerful government who are too blinded by greed and power to realise that no empire lasts forever; especially when they are cruel.
Reb Halabi
Reb Halabi is a PhD candidate focusing on the intersection of religion and geo-politics.
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