The POW-MIA flag used to represent a renegade popular sentiment that our military wasn’t taking seriously the American soldiers left behind in Vietnam. Now the same flag flies from the flapoles of federal buildings like VA facilities. I think the cultural fixation on foresaken warriors is a Freudian reflection of our nation’s moral conscience. Indead our better self is a Prisoner Of War. Likewise Missing In Action. America you ARE forgotten, and I’ll add not forgiven.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
the ongoing theme is the DRVN, Russia or China have held them prisoner for 45 years with no proof. For that matter, downed pilots who were publicly displayed as prisoners of war showed the DRVN morally superior to the Pentagram and the Police State Dept. because the U.S. military turned the Viet Minh (cong, charlie etc) over to the ARVN secret police to be tortured and murdered. No “prisoner of war” status for them. No appeal to the Geneva and Hague conventions. The Soviets, also with veto power in the Security Council, didn’t block the POW status (as opposed to “terrorists” who used aircraft to kill DRVN civilians, like 9/11 only every damn day) of U.S. airmen. The U.S. sure squashed any appeal for the Viet Minh prisoners. The ARVN had the same tiger cages that H. Ross Perot and McCain whined about, but their tiger cages opened into the execution chamber. (metaphoric) where the VC prisoners were shot, beheaded or hanged.
The DRVN showed themselves to be far more civilized than the U.S. military. Maybe they had ulterior motives, so what? St Paul said “some preach the Gospel in all sincerity and zeal, others preach the Gospel for vainglory or gain, but in either case the Gospel is preached” The Pentagram and State Dept. deliberately cast away their chance to be seen as The Good Guys.
I know, sincerely I do, that the brainwashing of which we were subjected is very strong and many otherwise moral and intelligent people succumbed, and I never had that non-choice forced upon me, to kill or be a ‘traitor’ , but when I think about it, many times a day, I hope that I would have the strength to defy such an order. And I surely don’t know that I would or could. The indoctrination is that deep.
The Air Farts offered as my first option for MOS to be an SP. That’s Mode of Service and Security Police. Their psych charts said that would be my “best fit”. Does anybody who has ever met me think I would make an efficient cop? I sure don’t.
but that’s the dehumanizing training and its effects. The AFEES specialists (armed forces entrance and evaluation station, this one was in Dallas (still is) , think “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre”) were themselves conditioned to think that way. To the point they actually mistook me for Cop material.
The theme here is I don’t know if I would have made the right choice, I know what the Air Force opinion is. And I’m glad every day that I never took a human life.