Robert McNamara dies, architect of war in Vietnam where war's tragedies are tourist attractions
Robert Strange McNamara, the main architect of the Vietnam War as Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, has died at age 93.
Twenty years after America lost the war in 1975, McNamara admitted, “[W]e were wrong, terribly wrong.” His war memoir, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam”, is hawked briskly throughout Vietnam at key sites of the war which killed 58,000 Americans.
In Vietnam, tragedies of “McNamara’s War” are now tourist attractions.
Some of the most popular tours are of the infamous Cu Chi tunnels where Viet Cong once planned attacks, and My Lai village, site of the war's worst known massacre which killed more than 500 civilians.
Vacationing in Vietnam means immersing yourself in the war – often amid a bizarre carnival atmosphere.
At the Cu Chi tunnels, tourists can try to crawl through the original-sized maze, less than three feet high and two feet in diameter. Few fit, so tunnels were dug for foreigners: one giant economy size tunnel, and even a super-size one.
You can even tip-toe through Cu Chi’s simulated minefield. And for a dollar a bullet – minimum of five bullets – you can fire a Russian-made AK-47 or an American-made M-16.
Souvenirs, in addition to the mostly bootlegged copies of McNamara’s mea culpa memoir, abound at the tunnels near Saigon. Oops, Ho Chi Minh City, but no one calls it that. (Ho Chi Minh, which means “Spreader of enlightenment”, was only one of the Vietnam leader’s many pseudonyms.)
Cu Chi Souvenirs included the former Viet Cong drink of choice – “sticky rice” whiskey with a cobra coiled in the bottle. Similarly unappetizing was a videotape of the propaganda-mentary shown at Cu Chi featuring “American devils” and female guerrillas cheerily making booby traps.
My guide throughout southern Vietnam, Tano, said that a Viet Cong guerrilla had shot his uncle through the forehead while asleep in his tent near Cu Chi.
Tano said that another uncle who had been injured by a land mine while working closely with U.S. military was to be evacuated in the code-named “Operation Frequent Wind” just before Vietnam fell to the Communists. But he got trapped in the desperate chaos of those final hours of late April 1975 and missed the last airlift. Instead, his uncle got many “calendars” or years in Communist “re-education” camps.
Tano’s village priest, like many others who had been supportive of U.S. troops, was executed -- “Got a secret visit to God.” Tano smiled sardonically.
Euphemisms relating to the “American War” are widely used throughout Vietnam. The government keeps toning down names of war museums to avoid repulsing American tourists -- or repelling American investment.
In Saigon, the “Museum of American War Crimes” was modified to the “War Crimes Museum”, and now is simply the “War Remnants Museum.” Its pamphlet explains that the exhibits are aimed at drawing "lessons from history," not "inciting hatred."
On the museum's grounds, tanks and planes have signs warning “No Climbing”. In its exhibit of the notorious “Tiger Cages”, named for the size of the cells, Vietnamese soft pop music fails to ease tourists’ horror. The guard, in her traditional ao dai mandarin dress with matching trousers, chats on a cell phone.
In Hanoi, the country's capital, the “Military History Museum” documents over a thousand years of wars in Vietnam – China invaded four times; the Mongols, three times; the Thais, the French, among others in addition to the Americans. The guide grinned broadly before commenting, “We just killed them all.”
Some of Vietnam’s top heroes throughout history were women warriors. A female artillery unit sank U.S. warships, according to one museum. More than 1900 years earlier, in the year 39, the first Vietnamese rebellion was staged successfully by the Trung sisters, Trac and Nhi. One of the sisters’ soldiers led a battle while pregnant, and then delivered her baby although surrounded by Chinese invaders. The so-called Vietnamese Joan of Arc, Trieu Au, rode an elephant as she led a later revolt against the Chinese in the year 248.
The most popular museum in the north is the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" POW prison whose most famous captive was, as we all know from his presidential bid, John McCain. Now the Hanoi Hilton now has an actual Hilton hotel.
Most of the prison had been destroyed for a complex which includes the Hanoi Hilton Opera Hotel. A Hilton spokeswoman e-mailed this response to my question about why they chose that site of all sites: “In recognition of past sensitivies (sic), and given the location of the hotel immediately adjacent to the Opera House, the word ‘Opera’ was added.” A skyscraper office- apartment building, plus a supermarket were also added to the complex.
Wait just a minute: Didn’t the Communists defeat the capitalists? But what about Vietnam’s stock exchange? And other private enterprises like Saigon’s popular restaurant Dzoan and cooking school owned by TV celeb chef Cam Van, dubbed the “Julia Child of Vietnam”? Or the privately-owned tour organizer Trails of Indochina? Its owner, John Nguyen, told me that a decade or so ago, “You couldn’t apply for a private business license, but now you can do whatever you want to do. Yesterday, people didn’t have enough to eat. Today, people are very happy.”
Vietnam’s economic liberalization policy, called doi moi, began in 1986. Its economy was helped also by the normalization of Vietnamese-U.S. relations in 1995, an effort led by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and John Kerry (D-MA), both Vietnam veterans. A major source of income comes from tourism, with Vietnam veterans forming the largest segment of tourists, a Vietnam embassy spokesman told me.
The welcome shown visiting Americans was a surprise and relief.
One smiling 24-year-old Vietnamese woman told me at the Cu Chi tunnels, “My grandparents were guerrillas" she pointed toward her grandmother who sort of smiled at me. "All I know about the war is what I read or see on TV," the young woman added. We’re friends with Americans now. No war anymore.”
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Robert McNamara dies, architect of war in Vietnam where war's tragedies are tourist attractions
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