Posted on 08/11/2015 11:44:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
You know that racist flag? The one that supposedly honors history but actually spreads a pernicious myth? And is useful only to venal right-wing politicians who wish to exploit hatred by calling it heritage? It’s past time to pull it down.
Oh, wait. You thought I was referring to the Confederate flag. Actually, I’m talking about the POW/MIA flag.
I told the story in the first chapter of my 2014 book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan: how Richard Nixon invented the cult of the “POW/MIA” in order to justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim.
Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week
It began, as cultural historian H. Bruce Franklin has documented, with an opportunistic shift in terminology. Downed pilots whose bodies were not recovered—which, in the dense jungle of a place like Vietnam meant most pilots—had once been classified “Killed in Action/Body Unrecovered.”
During the Nixon years, the Pentagon moved them into a newly invented “Missing in Action” column. That proved convenient, for, after years of playing down the existence of American prisoners in Vietnam, in 1969, the new president suddenly decided to play them up.
He declared their treatment, and the enemy’s refusal to provide a list of their names, violations of the Geneva Conventions—the better to paint the North Vietnamese as uniquely cruel and inhumane. He also demanded the release of American prisoners as a precondition to ending the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Next will be the U.S. Flag then eventually even the concept of a nation.
Wow, Newsweek sure has jumped the shark with this bilge.
The author has far too much free time on his hands and is in need of a job that involves long hours of manual labour.
I didn’t even know Newsweek was still being published. Shows how completely unimportant their opinion pieces are.
A good old fashioned caning might straighten his thinking out.
Eric S. "Rick" Perlstein (1969-) is an American historian and journalist - former [staff] writer for The Village Voice & The New Republic and a political columnist for RollingStone.com in 2012. He has written articles for Mother Jones, The Nation, and many other magazines.
Birds of a feather you know!
Wow, what a profanity filled hate screed. Hard to believe that Newsweek was once a respected news source. I actually subscribed to it for 25 years.
Commies have always been about hauling down flags and icons of systems they seek to replace with their totalitarian kleptocracy disguised as a ‘workers paradise’.
Right you are. When I first read the headline, I thought it was satire. But it's not satire. It's actually (among other things) a shot at Nixon.
What's next? Perhaps they will call for a ban on using red flags as a sign of distress, because that unfairly links communists to bad things.
Well, certainly a “middle of the road” resume there, no possible bias could creep into his work?
Filthy leftist bastards.
Who is this idiot? The classification MIA was in use long before the Vietnam War.
How ab out a good old fashioned ass-kicking by a Viet Nam Vet, or, better yet a former POW? I am sure some of these older folks could still give the author, from this going out of business publication,author a good beating....
The printed trash called “Newsweek” was sold by the Washington Post, its then owner, for $ 1, I believe. I didn’t know this dungheap was still around; apparently employing scumbo “writers” who can’t get a job anywhere else but at a bankrupt former magazine that exists only in cyberspace. As far as the POW-MIA flag is concerned, it also represents many black, Hispanic and Asian missing US soldiers as well. I think you are the real racist here, Mr. Pearlstein.
Let me guess, Perlstein never served in the military. Probable reason is that it was before Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell."
5.56mm
RE: Who is this idiot?
See Post #14 :)
Newsweek hates America.
More accurately, Newsweek is a leftist front for the NWO and exists solely to push their agenda.
It is no secret.
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