Two Sides to Every Story, Two Sides to Every War.

A great debater understands the power of knowing each side before making their argument. Similarly, for every war, there are two sides to the story. Is it the American War? Or is it the Vietnam War? Even by name there is a different perspective to the war. When it comes down to it- we have to acknowledge what we see is heavily sculpted and purposefully planted by the media and what our government wants us to see.

200 journalists died during the war, trying to capture the realities. We had the opportunity to talk to one who is publicly acclaimed for his work. A small room had large posters hanging featuring his work. A Vietnamese women in sitting with her head in her hands as a helicopter takes off behind her. She had just lost everything. A Vietnamese women sitting with two babies in front of her in the dirt, her head cupped in her hands. Her face is absolute despair- crying and anguished. The name: burned and ruined. The next is an American G.I. my age, crawling through the brush on Hamburger Hill. His face is close and clear, the bare branches and the environment around him is blurred and unknown. He’s probably 20- not much older than myself. In fact, he’s actually very cute. He looks like someone who could have been sitting next to you in class or your friends’ older brother. Except he isn’t. His face has a maturity and knowledge you’ll never know. I’ll never know. Most of us will never experience. War. His eyes are sunken in, screaming desperation. He is clearly exhausted- his mouth is hanging open. As the photographer recalled his experience, tears filled his eyes, and he became a different person.

What was the Vietnam War? 58,000 American deaths. That would be like taking out the MV Explorer, every one of your daughters, sons, teachers, workers, staff- over 60 times. The total of Vietnamese deaths? 4.5 million. That would be well over 5,000 MV Explorer ships completely full of 900 or so of us. Think about it. Either way, it’s a tragic number. Those were your boyfriends. Your classmates. Your friends. Your high school sweethearts. Your sons. Nothing more than a bunch of college freshmen holding guns and wandering around aimlessly in Vietnam.

The War Remnants Museum is 7 buildings with collections of photos and weapons. No restraints. Everything- and I mean everything- was put out on the table for all to see. It was seeing the war through others eyes. We were viewed as terrorists who took up where the French left off. Terrorists. A word we have come to fear so heavily.

It started off easily enough. Men in masks, standing in front of planes proudly, etc. By the second room you begin to take a deep breath. A picture of a female photographer holds her face close to her camera, taking a picture. Next to it is another picture of a mangled body. Hers. As she takes her last breaths.

A man- James- is giving mouth to mouth to his friends, desperately trying to relieve him. After the picture was taken by the photographer, he stepped on a mine, killing the photographer and the two men in the photo. It was the last photo he ever took.

Story after story, death after death. Each one vividly naming names, showing faces of dead, mangled bodies, and leaving nothing to the imagination. The body of an American soldier falling from a helicopter, midair as he falls to his death. American soldiers dragging a body by the back of their tank.

The third room is when the torture begins. Now why would they see us as terrorists? Why is this room a little harder to swallow than the others? This when you introduce women and children. Innocent bystanders who suffer from the effects of war. Worst of all, it’s Americans who have done this. A woman with holes down her entire back from pellets. A child- a little boy- whose skin from his forehead, around his eyes, and his chin has been eaten away from Napalm. His eyes are little more than useless marbles, sitting in sunken in mounds of ripped apart flesh. Sure enough, all of them should have been dead and very well look it, but they are not. Left to spend the rest of their life reliving the pain.

Next are the effects from Agent Orange, used to burn through the heavy leaves of the forests in order to reveal guerilla Viet Cong. It contains one of the most powerful and dangerous poisons known to man- named by the distinct orange line on the canisters. Six to 21 million gallons was sprayed over Vietnam. Wherever it was sprayed, no life growth is possible. It will continue to stay on and in the land for 100 years. That means it continues to have its effects. Even for us- if we drink substantial amount of water or ice, or even fish- our kids could become morphed if we weren’t careful enough.

Some SAS students- not myself personally- got to go to a center for Agent Orange victims. Little kids have heads that are filled with extra water that they can’t even pick them up. They have to be drained every couple of hours. Even then the oldest to survive was only 10. Offspring continue to have deformities. Jars with babies with two heads and other various extra body parts sat on a ledge. Pictures of little kids curled up without limbs or with bones the circumference of little more than a marker lined a wall.

In the corner a large oversized picture shouts out at you. Before I tell you what it is- let me note that a small plague next to it reads a US decree to give equal treatment to women, children, elderly, and other innocent bystanders. Next to it are a dozen women, children, and babies laying on the ground, obviously trying to get away from the Americans who killed them. Two of their dresses, one of their shoes sits in a small pile in front of the picture. It was taken at the Haong Dien massacre in My Lai, on March 16, 1968, where 504 civilians were killed. 182 women. 173 kids- including 56 newborns. Equal treatment- right.

Next wall is guns. Guns. Guns.

Two helicopters are flying side by side. At first glance it’s very blurry. When you read the title though, you realize that small line midair isn’t a glitch in the blurry photograph, but a body of someone who refused to talk plunging to his death. As I’m reading this, I notice the girl next to me is making a disturbed face. Truly, utterly disturbed. This picture will never leave my memory- ever. I don’t think I have ever seen something so disturbing- and that includes what I’ve seen in Holocaust photos.

Even as I write this description, I feel disgusted. I literally want to throw up. A soldier is towards the right of the picture. He could be anyone, his face turned slightly downwards. He’s looking at his prize- which he’s holding up and studying. It’s a corpse from a grenade launcher. Except for a hand and the head, the body is by no means recognizable. The soldier is holding it by what appears to be an arm, with a small hand peeking out. No shoulder, no chest, nothing else but droopy cloth and the hand itself. Then the hand is attached to what appears to be more rags of cloth. Some flesh, god only knows from where, is connected to some of the pile that is this boy. A boy. A male. His eyes are open, staring into the distance. Across from his gaze, organs hang. The fact that his face is perfectly in tact, every feature distinct as though he were posing for a picture, right there connected to something that couldn’t even be identified.

It doesn’t end there, but I think I will. Four other rooms explain torture, show torture devices, and pictures of people before their deaths. However, I don’t think I need to say anything else, except that everything’s subjective. There are two sides to every story.

Now- relations are cordial. Clinton reenacted trade in 1994, and we’ve been making progress since. People welcome us and ask us many questions about our home and our lives. It’s crazy to think that on the land that our professors and older relatives last saw in battle, we wandered about shopping, eating, and enjoying ourselves. It makes one wonder- in 40 years will there ever be a time where we will visit Iraq? Interesting perspective- huh? Clearly unlikely, but it definitely makes an interesting twist.