A small history lesson

*This isn’t much of like an identity sort of thing, more like a history lesson.

So for ENGL 160, my newest assignment concerns memorials and what not (design, significance) and we were discussing the Viet Nam (correct spelling and spacing by the way) War Memorial. I realized that there are no names of Vietnamese soldiers who fought alongside the United States on the wall. This might be of little concern to readers but for all the Vietnamese children who had family involved in the war, this is pretty insulting. To Vietnamese people, this was a CIVIL war, this battle was more important to us than the American explanation for them going to war. But then again, you might say “hey, we invested hundreds and thousands of our sons and fathers to fight Communism, so we had as much contribution to the war as the Vietnamese people.” Not exactly true. The Americans only cared about Viet Nam when Ho Chi Minh managed to route the French soldiers out of the country. They didn’t care about the Soviet Union (Communist at the time) influence of giving military arms to the Viet Cong or giving political support to force the French (Allied) out of Viet Nam.

In the early to mid 1960s, Viet Nam underwent a nationwide recruitment of children to send to the military (child soldiers). My dad and uncles can attest to this, as they were recruited at the ages of 10 and 11. So way before the American arrival in 1965, the Vietnamese were already preparing for a civil war that would last for many years.

Now take a look at the names on the wall, there are names of soldiers who didn’t last a day, month, or let alone a year in Viet Nam. Vietnamese soldiers have been fighting years against the Khmer Rouge and the Viet Cong themselves, they had to see their country fall after the battle in Saigon, and they had to live to see their nation regarded as a third world country. Yes these soldiers have fought, but little was said on what the military actually did in Viet Nam. Is there any memorial for the My Lai Massacre in which hundreds of people were innocently killed by the U.S. military? Is there any wall for the people that were killed when Nixon ordered a large scale bombing of Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh trail? (Estimated firepower of almost six or more times the nuclear explosion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) Is there any way I can get the name of my grandfather who died when his platoon was trying to defend my dad’s village. It sickens me that there are probably names of soldiers who just slept with prostitutes, killed innocent civilians, and did drugs during there tours.

Is it that hard to get a name engraved on a wall? Don’t Vietnamese soldiers who died have the right to have their names on there also? Or were the Vietnamese people just clueless idiots who begged for U.S. assistance. After the atrocity of electing Ngo Ding Diem (U.S. hired him), My Lai Massacre, the bombings that destroyed the land (still destroyed to this day), and abandonment. All I want for my family and other Vietnamese soldiers is to have their name engraved on the Viet Nam War Memorial, to show the United States that although this was a radical unsupported war, the Vietnamese were willing to give democracy a chance and work side by side to defend a country against Communism (at the time).