Letters to the Editor
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POW/MIA movement
I never understood the whole POW/MIA campaign. Vietnam still has over 300,000 MIA from that war. Why should its government give higher priority to finding the small number (by comparison)of unfound remains left from soldiers of the country that invaded them?
Yet you still those POW/MIA flags flying everywhere. What do they even stand for now?
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What?
Someone please tell me the point of this article. Is it that there are crackpots that question McCain's patriotism just as they did John Kerry's? If these nutcases form a political action committee and start producing commericials like the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth", then they might be newsworthy. Otherwise, they shouldn't be given a mouthpiece.
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The POW/MIA Has Become a Form of Marbleized Grief
These people can't let go, and frankly whenever I see one of those ridiculous black flags I assume the person who raised it is completely irrational if not insane. The last soldiers to go MIA or to be captured would have been in 1973. That's thirty-five years ago. Considering the brutality of their treatment, and how many POWs died in captivity, how can anyone imagine for one second that a soldier "held in captivity" for that long would have survived? And therein lies the rub.
Let us assume for the sake of argument that some POWs were kept after 1973. If they are alive it would only be because they had decided to stay in Vietnam and make whatever life they could for themselves, the "Stockholm Syndrome" writ large. But I think even this is extremely unlikely if not impossible. When Vietnam War veterans started making pilgrimages to that country in the mid-90s, reuniting with old comrades, embracing old enemy soldiers, at least ONE of these hypotheticla surviving former POWs would have made themselves known, if not all of them. Not one did, except the guy who was tried for desertion after, ironically, being arrested by the Vietnamese themselves and handed over to the U.S. authorities.
These people who raise the black flag and whear the bracelets, they are grasping at phantoms of men long dead. It is tragic, really, but they're antipathy towards McCain is dangerously close to delusional farce. And I'm hereby calling them on it.
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I'm sure John McCain is dying to know what I think
I used to give McCain a lot of room. The guy was a POW for like five years, I'll pretty much let him do or say whatever the hell he wants. I always thought he was the real deal, and even though I am a democrat and seldom agreed with McCain, I'd always resppected him.
Then we invaded Iraq. His constant and unwavering support for that chickenhawk, draft-dodging war criminal and the war he lied us into has really made me wonder. I mean, how can McCain, a war hero, schill for this clown with a straight face? Didn't all of that time in combat and in the Hanoi Hilton teach him anything about war? Maybe that we should only engage in it as a last resort? Doesn't he find it is a shame to waste young lives on a pile of lies ginned up by a bloodthirsty zealot? It makes me weep. I'll probably be investigated by Homeland Security now for these comments, because the current administration assumes that dissent equals treason. And there's John McCain, nodding his head in agreement.
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Casualities of war
Unfortunately there are always casualties of war, and some of those casualties are the families of brave soldiers who were lost--quite probably blown to pieces--in combat, and whose remains cannot be recovered.
This is the same in every war. This is why we have things like the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Sometimes families are especially grief-stricken, perhaps because they encouraged the loved one to go to war and now feel guilty.
Rudyard Kipling was very keen for his son to serve in the military in World War I. He believed it would make a man of him. When his son John was rejected for military service because of poor eyesight, Kipling used his personal influence to get his son a commission in the Irish Guards.
Shortly after John Kipling arrived at the front, his head was blown off.
A grief-stricken Kipling subsequently wrote:
If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
Kipling subsequently became a member of the War Graves Commission, and coined the phase Known Unto God for use on the graves of unidentified soldiers.
The best way forward for family members of those who were lost in war is to use their votes to select leaders who will ensure that the US only fights just wars, so that other families will not lose sons and daughters in unnecessary wars.
If they are angry with McCain, they may wish to vote for Obama.
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How is John McCain like John Kerry?
Neither will be president.
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Salon is complicit in global warming
By refusing to stop publishing articles written by the utterly unscientific hack, Camille Paglia, Salon.com is complicit in spreading the lie that global warming doesn't exist.
If Salon.com gives a fuck, why not nix this trite bafoon from the lineup, then apologize to us all. But then, what really matters at Salon.com? The bottom line? Advertising dollars? You tell us.
Until then, consider your hands bloody.
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Letter from Anonymous
Once again, Anonymous hide. He/she could at least have been creative with another screen name.
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MIA pimps and panderers, Black Flags, Wrist Bracelets, and the finger-pointing tomb vultures
I would take exception to Mr. Marker's contempt for the KIA/MIA black flag that seems to even pop up on federal government flagpoles, but I will instead remind him that the original sentiment was one of honest grief for missing soldiers of all wars.
But the problem is, where ever there is an emotionally charged circumstance, there will be no shortage of ghoulish entrepreneurs and self-aggrandizing charlatans who want to stand on top of the pile of American KIA and MIA and make either some political statement, or a nice living or both, out of the dead and missing they are stepping on.
Back in the '90s I had business in Washington D.C. on a regular basis and I never failed on each of my visits to go down to the Vietnam War Memorial. But if you've been there, you can't miss the tomb vultures who hang out there, selling MIA bracelets and black flags and all manner of crap from black velvet paintings with Jesus looking down on the Wall, to black leather Harley jackets with American flags and the slogan "These Colors Don't Run." You might find the raggedy-looking old drunk chick who wants to sell you a rose to lay on the stone of the memorial beneath the etched name of someone you knew. In short, it's a goddamned circus down there night and day. If I had my way, I'd open up on them with an M-60 and hose the whole place down to get rid of the scum who hang out there and trade on our dead comrades. You like war so fuckin' much? Have a taste on me!
But they are just the sideshow. The real pimps and panderers, the finger pointing vultures, are to be found in the American Legion and the V.F.W. These bar stool commandos who once served their country never learned the real lesson of war, and that is you try your best to make sure there isn't another one.
But where's the fun in that? The whole premise of the hero-worshipers and flag wavers would be moot if there weren't a fresh war every ten years or so to keep their legion post supplied with new replacements as the old fuckers eventually fall off their bar stools and answer that final call to that big mess hall in the sky.
So they have latched on to that KIA/MIA black flag and all that bracelet nonsense because it's a sure way to garner sympathy and money from the average American dumbass. It's not that the American Legion and the V.F.W. don't do some good things, like help returning vets with their problems with the VA. It's that they are so gung ho for more war. They never saw a war they didn't like! They say, "Oh we hate war. Nobody hates war as much as the veteran!" Yeah? Well if you hate war so fucking much, then how come you stand up and jerk off every time there's a war?
So with all that said, Mr. Marker, there's still a kid missing in Iraq. His name is Matt Maupin. Because I was a soldier once and I feel like he is my brother in some way, I grieve for him and I suffer for his parents, especially his mom. I want Matt to come home, if only it is just his bones, I do not want him left out there so far from home.
Maybe a black flag flapping from the nearest post office doesn't do much. But it's something. It's still better than nothing at all. It's a symbol, how ever futile, that we have not forgotten and we are still trying to get him and others back home. It might even serve to some as a symbol that maybe we ought to not make war as a matter of expediency. It would be like that, if the war pimps and tomb vultures had not hijacked our dead and missing for their own purposes.