The Blind Spot of the United States and Vietnam

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the US is in Washington, D.C. It's a beautiful commemoration of 58,000 plus American dead and a total erasure or refusal to remember that millions of Southeast Asians of all sides also died during the war. By not remembering those people, it allows Americans to think of their own soldiers and through their soldiers themselves as victims of this terrible war. And with all those names carved so prominently into stone, there is no way any of us can ever forget the sacrifice of those who served. Now if you go to Vietnam, it's exactly the same thing. If you go to the major historical museums, war memorials in Vietnam, what you'll discover