The Cellar - Feb 9th, 2016: Vietnam, The Flip Side

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Feb 9th, 2016: Vietnam, The Flip Side

Yesterday we celebrated Tet, the Vietnamese new year. Because of my (r)age, I can't hear the word Vietnam without thinking about the stupid war. National Geographic published a book of photographs taken by the other side. It wasn't easy, it took years to track down the images.

http://cellar.org/2015/natgeovietnam.jpg

Quote:

NG News: For many people in the West, the Vietnam War has been defined by several iconic images. But they were all seen through the lenses of American and other Western photographers. Your book shows us another perspective of the conflict, which the Vietnamese call the American War. Will this book redefine the popular view of the war?

Niven: I grew up as a kid with pictures of the Vietnam War and can probably recite at least ten images in my head that still stick in my memory. I think a lot of Americans have the same collective memory of the Vietnam War. I was curious about what pictures filled the memories of the Vietnamese people and if their view of the war was impacted by images in the same way. This book is an attempt to put together pictures showing how Vietnamese people viewed the war, and what those photographs looked like.

http://cellar.org/2015/natgeovietnam2.jpg

But we learned a valuable lesson, what did we learn?
We have to crush those hippie peaceniks so we can continue to bully inferior people, with the help of and in support of, the military-Industrial complex. http://cellar.org/2015/shades.gif

A Viet Cong guerrilla with an M16. Interesting. More interesting than the fact that she's a woman, IMHO. Admittedly, my knowledge of the Viet Cong is weak, but I didn't expect to see one with a US weapon.

They took a lot of their weapons from the battlefield.

Yep, the VC took useful abandoned weapons from the battlefield. When they were through, this lovely young woman picked up the M-16.

With all the terrible destruction the US inflicted on Vietnam and the Vietnamese people, they have forgiven us.
Tacitus explained 2000 years ago why we, especially veterans, haven't done the same:
"It is human nature to hate those whom we have injured."

I'll bet this was ready before 1975.

http://cellar.org/2015/Vietnam-MapAndDirections.jpg