Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee
‘Whose history of the Vietnam War will prevail?‘ History News Network, 4 January 2015
Reports activities of former Vietnam War peace activists in the United States to contest the official view of the war being promoted by a government-funded commemorative committee. The article links to the official site and to an article in the New York Times, which notes that the official site ‘largely describes a war of valor and honor that would be unrecognizable to many of the Americans who fought in and against it’. The program of commemoration has been planned since 2008, gets under way in May 2015 and lasts for 10 years.
The material underlines that the reworking of war history is a common activity of governments in all countries. The section ‘Using and abusing history‘ on the Honest History website will take the browser to material on this phenomenon. A spokesperson for the US Veterans for Peace group said: ‘One of the biggest concerns for us … is that if a full narrative is not remembered, the government will use the narrative it creates to continue to conduct wars around the world — as a propaganda tool’.