Posted on 06/21/2005 10:06:14 PM PDT by Destro
President Bush yesterday welcomed a Vietnamese leader to the White House for the first time since the Vietnam War, praising Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and accepting his invitation to visit the communist country next year.
No Vietnamese leader had visited the United States since US troops withdrew from the country after the war, which claimed 58,000 American soldiers' lives and left an estimated 3 million Vietnamese dead by the time South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese troops in April 1975.
Bush reiterated US support for Vietnam's bid to join the World Trade Organization and agreed to visit the nation during a major Southeast Asia trade conference next year.
''I'm looking forward to my trip," Bush told reporters as he stood with Khai in the Oval Office.
A few hundred demonstrators, many of them Vietnamese immigrants who left their homeland during the war, protested a few blocks away, saying Vietnam remained a repressive one-party state that denies its people basic political rights.
Khai and his delegation of about 200 businessmen and Communist Party leaders began their US tour in Seattle on Sunday, where they met with Microsoft's Bill Gates. They will go on to New York, where Khai will ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, and then to Boston on Friday to woo more business for Vietnam and to promote educational exchanges during stops at Harvard and MIT.
The visit underscored just how much American attitudes toward communism have changed.
''We shouldn't be in the business of fighting commies anymore," said William Taylor Jr., a retired Army colonel, author, and Vietnam veteran. ''Communism will fail. If you have trade relations and civic exchanges, over time, we can have a big impact changing these countries in a peaceful way."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
I only started thinking about this because I purchases an item of clothing made in Vietnam and I started to wonder if those stories were/are true why are we trading with this nation when our men are unaccounted for.
I did some research online to see what was what and came to the conclusion that maybe the MIA/POW stories were not true but created by the irrational emotionalism in the heartbreaking era after the end of that war.
There are conspiracy web sites that say McCain and Kerry sold out the POW/MIA issue but those are by advocacy groups who provide no clear understanding what was done?
So I ask once more - with credible sources to look up - what is the final story on Vietnamese war era POW/MIA's?
Typo correction: "I have asked this question before one seems to KNOW the answer."
==Were the stories of American POWs held after the war by the Vietnamese (the Chuck Norris 'Missing in Action' and 'Rambo II' scenarios) urban legends/myths that developed after the war and later used by hucksters to raise money for themselves?
Let's cut to the chase, Destro. You're overjoyed that the US is feting more Communists like Putin et al, and you're using the POW/MIA issue to push hot bottons and demoralize genuine conservative anti-Communists. Nice try. You strike me as the internet equivelant of Hanoi Hanna. I, for one, see right through you:
http://www.psywarrior.com/hannah.html
The third myth concerns the fate of the MIA/POWs in Vietnam. It asks a legitimate question: At the conclusion of hostilities in 1973, did the U.S. government knowingly abandon U.S. servicemen imprisoned by communist forces anywhere in Southeast Asia? This was not merely a question for the military or civilian authorities, but for a large number of American citizens. Since the end of the war, occasional news reports of supposed POW sightings in Southeast Asia continue to reinvigorate the controversy. Movies such as the Rambo series have created an entire mythology of government cover-ups and perfidy. H. Bruce Franklin examines this myth in his 1992 book M. I. A. or Mythmaking in America.
The kernel of truth in this myth is that there were over 2,000 servicemen who never returned from Southeast Asia, dead or alive. As wars go, this number of unaccounted soldiers for is relatively low, for example, over 78,000 are unaccounted for from WWII and over 8,000 from the Korean conflict (Franklin, 11). At least half of the Vietnam unaccounted for were known to be dead, but for various reasons their bodies could not be recovered and sent home. Most of the others could be reasonably assumed to be dead as soon as they were classified as missing in action. The military services kept separate records of men classified as MIA and POW. Only cases with documentable evidence of capture were labeled POW.
Franklin argues that Richard Nixon changed the definition of "missing in action" and also changed the rules of war to generate domestic support for his war policy. President Nixon conflated these two separate categories to attempt to inflate the numbers of those who might be held by the Communists. By increasing the numbers, it would be easier to arouse public support for efforts to free those men, i.e. generating more support for continued military operations (Franklin 96-99).
After campaigning on a "secret plan to end the war," Nixon used the POWs as hostages to convince the American people to back continued escalation of hostilities. Franklin writes,
The POW/MIA issue served two crucial functions in allowing Richard Nixon to continue the Vietnam War for four years, even though he assumed office almost a year after the nation had shown its desperate desire for peace. It was both a booby trap for the anti-war movement and a wrench to be thrown into the works of the Paris peace talks. (Franklin, 74)
It attempted to derail the anti-war movement by changing the objective of the war. Americans were no longer fighting to save the Vietnamese from Communism; they were fighting to free their sons, brave men captured by Communist forces in Asia.
This change of objective also worked in Paris. Nixon required that the North Vietnamese and all other combatants release prisoners as a condition of peace. Conventional peace negotiations usually call for prisoner of war releases as a result of ceasing hostilities. By claiming that the POWs were "hostages" of the North Vietnamese, Franklin argues that Nixon stalled peace negotiations. The counterweight to this scenario was built in its very premise. As one wife of a POW stated, "[i]f it is true that they [the POWs] will not be released until the U.S. gets out, then why don't they set a date and get out now? . . . Why should one more man die on the battlefield or in the prisons?" (Franklin, 60-61)
Once the Paris Peace Accords were signed, Operation Homecoming was staged to welcome home the POWs. President Nixon received the returned POWs at a White House dinner to boast the all the prisoners of war had been returned. (Franklin, 75) As far as Richard Nixon was concerned, the POW/MIA story was finished. He had been reelected, the war was over and the prisoners were home. But myths like POW/MIA are like Pandora's Box, once created they tend to take on a life of their own. The myth of abandoned servicemen in Asia was only just building steam in 1973. In the 1980s, the myth reached its zenith in popular culture, especially as seen by the "Rambo" movies starring Sylvester Stallone as a Vietnam veteran on a mission to rescue his abandoned brothers in arms.
The rise of the Rambo myth in popular culture is another phenomenon examined by Franklin. By pitting decent, brave American GIs against their own government, the American people could acknowledge that the war was a mistake, but still not feel guilty about their own involvement. This myth works for the American people in the same fashion as Hiroshima works for the Japanese, it turns aggressors into victims. The American POWs are double victims, captured by the "evil Vietnamese communists" and then abandoned by their own government. The American people are only guilty of believing their own officials (whom they elected), not of destroying an entire culture and of killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Media attention to mythical POWs in Vietnam during the 1980s diverted attention from a very real group of abandoned servicemen. In the 1970s and '80s significant numbers of Vietnam veterans began to fall ill with cancers and other diseases and found they were begetting deformed children at an alarming rate. When they turned to the government that flew the MIA/POW flag and had pledged to go to any lengths to return even one POW from Asia, these equally brave men were told to get lost.
I am against free trade with China and Vietnam, Nimrod. I am the go to guy for anti-free trade posts. Bush, not I is hosting the Commie and it give me no joy. Putin is a Christian Russian patriot who wants a strong Christian Russia free to be a power from any international strangle holds.
PS: You are a known Pro-Chechen Muslim jihadist poster.
North Vietnam was absolutely ruthless with our P.O.W.s. For all the talk about prison camps today, hardly a peep was made regarding our P.O.W.s by the usual suspects.
I can't say for sure if some P.O.W.s were left behind. My gutt says some may have been. The possibility haunts me.
Some of the people you would have thought would have been the strongest advocates to investige the likelihood, couldn't have cared less. May they rot in hell.
Hey, guys have a laugh - the Nimrodic Chechen lover angry that I support Russia over the Chechen rebels slanders me with the claim that I am for Free Trade with the likes of China and Vietnam.
I mean let us say the POW/MIA issue it is not true - but my God - how they treated our war prisoners is deserving of war crimes tribunals. Why are we hosting in the White House past torturers of American soldiers????
U.S.(esp. Pentagon) recruiting Viet Nam and India against recalcitrant China. Bush said before his inauguration there would be less unilateralism and more international cooperation. I knew something like this would happen.
Nice attempt at a save. If you are so against US trade with Vietnam/Communist countries, then why poor salt on old wounds by trying to prove that the POW-MIA issue is a sham when you should be focused on that abomination of a (Communist) human being entering the White House. You tear this country down every chance you get. Like I said, I see right through you.
I attended a meeting with Joint Task Force Full Accounting (they are a special DoD unit that operates in Vietnam) in Hanoi last summer. Their records indicate that the only men not accounted for are those lost in action (mostly USAF pilots and aircrew shot down over the vast jungles of that nation). There are about 5% of the MIA/KIA for whom they are searching (the other 95% have been accounted for).
Destro, you're right. Vietnam has gotten a pass for many years. They 'erased' whole villages. Did you see any Vietnam 'Mi Lai' tribunals? Did you hear any of the usual suspects say anthing regarding the 2 million slaughtered in Cambodia or the 1 million slaughtered in Vietnam? No.
Jane couldn't be bothered. The peaceniks who wanted to 'save the Vietcong' couldn't have cared less.
The war dead is counted to the head in the war, and the millions afterwards are almost never mentioned by the media unless they want to pin that on Nixon.
The void created by the media and leftist blitz, was responsible for three million deaths. Not a peep bud. Not a peep!
I am not seeing Viet Nam getting off the hook on its communist power structure. They are next after China.
==I knew something like this would happen.
I did too...but I'm shocked that your average conservative is taken in by this crap as somehow representing progress. Conservatives would do well to take a refresher course on the unmitigated evil that is Communism...the Black Book of Communism (published by Harvard University Press of all places) would be a great place to start.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4362.html
Review of M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America
Only a fool rather not ask questions because the searching may prove painful.
==Putin is a Christian Russian patriot
A kingdom cannot be devided against itself, Destro. That means Putin couldn't possibly be a Christian patriot. He's a KGB man through and through.
Thank you. I appreciate the information. What would worry me the most, is a guy shot down in a remote area, that might not have been turned over to the government. (not to imply the government would care for them well) The likelihood is that the government probably turned over who they had, unless it was a remote area that they had not admitted to. I'd put nothing past the ones that executed the war from the North.
Agreed. Viet Nam is less harmful than China because Viet Nam is smaller. Their communist system has to be gone, too. If Chinese and N. Korean are gone, I hope they earnestly head into slow disintegration. As I said, Viet Nam is next after China.
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