There is a mythology the U.S. built around the American War in #Vietnam. It goes like this:
Young idealistic soldiers were sent into an unwinnable situation by confused politicians.
They came home broken and unappreciated.
It was a tragedy. A mistake. A lesson learned.
Notice what that story does.
It centers Americans.
Their trauma. Their confusion. Their homecoming. Their feelings.
In this story, the Vietnamese people are a backdrop.
A jungle. An obstacle. An abstraction.
Three million dead Vietnamese people are the scenery for a story about American self-discovery.
They made hundreds of movies about Vietnam.
The Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now. Platoon. Full Metal Jacket. Born on the Fourth of July. Hamburger Hill.
Count how many of them center a Vietnamese character with a full human life, a family, a name you remember after the credits roll.
txt - @RussianBaZa
#VietnamWar #Nam #Vietcong
1/2
Young idealistic soldiers were sent into an unwinnable situation by confused politicians.
They came home broken and unappreciated.
It was a tragedy. A mistake. A lesson learned.
Notice what that story does.
It centers Americans.
Their trauma. Their confusion. Their homecoming. Their feelings.
In this story, the Vietnamese people are a backdrop.
A jungle. An obstacle. An abstraction.
Three million dead Vietnamese people are the scenery for a story about American self-discovery.
They made hundreds of movies about Vietnam.
The Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now. Platoon. Full Metal Jacket. Born on the Fourth of July. Hamburger Hill.
Count how many of them center a Vietnamese character with a full human life, a family, a name you remember after the credits roll.
txt - @RussianBaZa
#VietnamWar #Nam #Vietcong
1/2
- -
They lost the war and still managed to make themselves the main character.
And then, with extraordinary arrogance, they put their soldiers' names on a wall in Washington and call it a memorial, as if the dead to be mourned were the people who flew 10,000 miles to do the killing.
Where is the wall for Vietnam’s three million?
There isn't one.
Because in their telling, the Vietnamese were never quite real enough to mourn.
footnote : #Cambodia is not mentioned..
2/2
#USEmpire #Vietnam
They lost the war and still managed to make themselves the main character.
And then, with extraordinary arrogance, they put their soldiers' names on a wall in Washington and call it a memorial, as if the dead to be mourned were the people who flew 10,000 miles to do the killing.
Where is the wall for Vietnam’s three million?
There isn't one.
Because in their telling, the Vietnamese were never quite real enough to mourn.
footnote : #Cambodia is not mentioned..
2/2
#USEmpire #Vietnam
My Lai, Sexual Assault and the Black Blouse Girl: Forty-Five Years Later, One of America’s Most Iconic Photos Hides Truth in Plain Sight | Reading The Pictures
Looking back at the Vietnam war and the iconic photographs that mark that era, how is it that the American public knows about the “Napalm Girl” but no one knows or speaks of the My Lai “Black Blouse Girl?” And what does it mean that, forty-five years later, even though her experience was publicized by investigative reports and Congressional testimony, what happened to her – reflected in this famous photo – remains hidden in plain sight?
#USEmpire #Vietnam #VietnamWar #Nam #MaiLai
Looking back at the Vietnam war and the iconic photographs that mark that era, how is it that the American public knows about the “Napalm Girl” but no one knows or speaks of the My Lai “Black Blouse Girl?” And what does it mean that, forty-five years later, even though her experience was publicized by investigative reports and Congressional testimony, what happened to her – reflected in this famous photo – remains hidden in plain sight?
#USEmpire #Vietnam #VietnamWar #Nam #MaiLai