the Vietnam War

Back from the two-day retreat! Also meaning back to workL As I read more chapters from Lies My Teacher Told me, I feel more ashamed of myself for not knowing enough history to critically assess textbooks and Loewen’s claims, and this chapter was one such. Embarrassingly, I knew close to nothing about the Vietnam War, including why it happened, who fought, and what happened at the end. Although a twenty minute research on the computer is not enough to cover the profound history of the Vietnam War, I did get an outline of it. I felt that the division that existed in Vietnam was similar to that of present day North Korea. In the case of North Korea, the North was supported by Russia while the South by the U.S. Looking at this similarity, I am starting to think that the U.S. and Russia (or Soviet Union) is forcefully involving many other countries in their ongoing conflict. I can’t help thinking that the Vietnam War was more about the U.S. combating its greatest and long-time enemy, the Soviet Union than U.S. fighting for democracy in Vietnam. What Rab told us about Vietnam on Friday, that the U.S. compelled North Vietnam to pay for all the money that the U.S. provided for South Vietnam, is outrageous. When we tried to discuss this in our group, nothing came out except that it was unacceptable. After hearing that, it is impossible to be convinced that the U.S.’s ultimate goal in the participation of Vietnam War was to encourage self-determination for the Vietnamese.

Loewen talked about photographs in the textbooks, and I’ve noticed some things about them as well. I learned about WWI and WWII in High School, and the photos in the textbooks I used were mostly photos of the military such as airplanes, bombs, and soldiers. For some reason, they didn’t stir anything inside me; it was unemotional and mechanical. In contrast to that, the photo of the national police pointing a gun at the man (pg 248) in this book was hard for me to look at, especially when it says that this man was eventually shot. I am sure that textbook authors intentionally leave out these moving photos because they are too provocative and may arouse a strong opposition from students toward their own country. I have read somewhere that memorization of facts are greatly aided by visual things such as videos and photos. If you are trying to memorize a certain fact, you associate a memorable image with it and this makes it easier to remember the fact. It is hard to deny that photos of a Buddhist burning himself, a naked girl fleeing from an attack, and piles of corpses on the street are not memorable, which is probably another reason why textbook authors deliberately leave them out. I think that the U.S. should accept the fact that they are not the “international good guy” because this has caused harm to many countries such as Vietnam and Haiti, and further misunderstanding of this can cause more victims around the world. Textbooks should also be more prudent as not to arouse and encourage this misunderstanding. In the beginning of this chapter, there is a quote by General William Westmoreland saying, “without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind”. I think the opposite. When textbooks “censor” the information that it presents, it confuses students about the truth and turns them into ignorant citizens who think bad is good and vice versa.