War Remnants Museum

Back in Saigon, we spent the last morning of our trip at the War Remnants Museum. The outside of the building was surrounded by American fighter jets, tanks and various heavy artillery sitting still and silent in the mid day sun. A man wearing a U.S. Army hat walked past us as we entered the building. He smiled and nodded to us as we passed, and it was impossible not to imagine him as a veteran of the war, returning to pay his respects and perhaps to find peace in revisiting this land of endless war that has finally arrived at a peace of its own. Inside the museum we were faced with the ghastly images of war and its cost in human suffering. Civilian victims of bombings, napalm and massacre stared out at us alongside images of human bodies, horribly disfigured from the effects of Agent Orange and other pesticides that were sprayed on the countryside during the war. These photographs were indescribably haunting, and although the museum is unfortunately propagandistic and one sided in its depiction of the American War, what is left after viewing the horrific record of needless death and destruction is a powerful sense of war's ultimate futility and of the tragedy of sacrificing so much beauty, life and possibility in the name of war's countlessly unobtainable objectives.

In our travels throughout the country, we often commented on the incredible beauty of the land and of the culture, wondering how such a place could find itself on the wrong side of history for so many years, the victim of so many conquering powers, and yet, the feeling that you get from traveling through this land that has only so recently emerged from one thousand years of fighting, and from meeting its people who are so proud of their history and culture, is a renewed sense of appreciation for the resiliency of hope and peace and of the vast potential of our shared human experience.