From: D EW <saniv at hotmail.com>
Date: Dec 1, 2006 10:33 AM
Subject: Vietnam
To: johnny at charm.net




It's such a big deal to us, that war we lost.

Maybe to people around Saigon, too; they also were on the losing side, and
now they and their children can't get decent jobs easily.  But their
grandchildren will outgrow the adage "it takes three generations to grow a
tree..."

More than half the population is under 30.  They have no memories of war,
certainly, and their preoccupations are mostly economic.  Socialism, but
no social security or unemployment.  Being the youngest son makes it hard
to find a wife, when everyone knows she'll have to take care of your
parents -- it's not only shameful to send ageing relatives to nursing
homes, there are very few facilities to send them to, because of low
demand.  Everyone said they liked the one-party system; they did not want
to waste time on multiple platforms and arguments every few years.

In Hanoi, the "American War" is seen as a mere appendix, a 10-year
extension of the real war; throwing out the French colonials.  What's left
of the prison known as the "Hanoi Hilton" has one room with a few American
artifacts and photos, but the rest focus on the guillotine, the gallery of
manacles, and the sloping cell floors where Vietnamese prisoners were
incarcerated and tortured.

I imagined the animus might be flipped around for French visitors, but
then decided, no, probably not.  Conversations may be convenient, but
exhibits are not so flexible.  The only visible anti-American sentiment I
saw was some gleeful bad illustrations of the effects of different kinds
of traps around (and in, of course) the Cu Chi tunnels.

China Beach was empty.  Empty white sand for miles.  Most of the US base
buildings have been torn down, but there's no hurry to redevelop the
place. It doesn't look like the airport at Da Nang has changed much since
1973, except it isn't very busy any more.

Vietnam, our reference point to Iraq, our sting of defeat and wounded
pride, our loss to the commies.  Their tiresome extension of a struggle
for liberation and an ideology quickly abandoned.  Vietnam, so much larger
in our imagination than we in theirs.

Only grief and death are immutable features of war.  So it will be after
Iraq, after Israel, after western Africa.  But the words of wars are
always about something else.

--Elayne Warren
A'73