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The Reasonable Solution: POW's - MIA's?By Barry RomoStaring out of the newspaper pages is an ex-special forces officer carrying out secret penetrations into Communist-held jungles of Southeast Asia in search of Americans still held as POW's by Vietnamese. This comic book hero would be laughable, but these theatrics can only serve to delay accounting for the MIA's in Laos, Vietnam and Kampuchea (Cambodia). The MIA/POW question became a major political issue well before the end of the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon built up the issue as an excuse to continue that hapless war as the American people were becoming tired of pouring money and men down the rat hole of Vietnam, particularly to support a bunch of pimps, gangsters and drug pushers masquerading as a government in Saigon. To get over, the focus was switched to Americans missing or held prisoner. Releasing pilots while bombs were dropping on their heads did not make sense to the people of Hanoi, but it did serve to divert eyes in the U.S. Simply, Nixon and Kissinger and Company played upon the real sorrow of MIA/POW families to continue making more MIA's and POW's. Hope is a vital human emotion; it got most of us through our tour in Vietnam. Hope, combined with the love of family which looks for the return of loved ones is more than understandable; they want an accounting of the missing. The pain that families feel is real. But the U.S. government has taken these emotions and this pain to use for its own cynical purposes and political ends. The families, the POW's and MIA's become pawns in both a propaganda and a real war with Vietnam. While the rest of the world saw photos of bombed-out cities and hospitals, Nixon used pictures of captured American airmen to condemn American anti-war protestors and continue his bombing. The families of the missing were used to shore up the Nixon position. It could never be easy to tell families of the missing that there was little or no hope for the return of their loved ones as long as U.S. bombing continued and until a peace agreements was signed, the cynical position of Nixon and friends was to use more bombs as the answer to the families pain. When the Paris Peace Agreements were finally signed, Nixon and Kissinger forgot about the MIA's--the value of the MIA's and the use of the families of the MIA's was no longer essential; the issue of the families was cast aside. Instead the U.S. government, after signing the Paris Agreements, reneged on its promises, both public and secret, signed with the government of Vietnam. There was no action about the $5 billion in aid promised to rebuild the country devastated by U.S. bombings. The U.S. also continued its CIA and other clandestine operations against the Hanoi government. It's not hard to understand why the Hanoi government would find it hard to allow U.S. teams into their country to wander around. This was not just paranoia but was based on the concrete experience with the U.S. government and the CIA. The Hanoi government believed--with justification--that these teams would have the function of sabotage and stirring up trouble instead of finding bodies. The probability of possibility of MIA's being alive in Vietnam is remote at best. There is no valid reason, aside from racist notions of the unscrupulous oriental, for there to be serious expectations that the Vietnamese are still holding prisoners at this point. Yet the issue stays alive, partly because of the activities of the families, but also because of the activities of the way out far right groups who have taken up where Nixon left off. Among these far-right groups is the "Liberty Lobby," a bunch of loonies most noted for pushing the notion that Jews were not massacred by Nazis in World War II. This "The Holocaust is a Hoax" grouping has come up with totally fabricated lies about fresh POW's being held 20 years after their war was over. They use the MIA issue and some of the families to push their political line and sell their paper. Politicians use the issue to keep their names in the papers. Ex-military men use it to take vacations abroad and then sell their stories to Hollywood. In fact every two-bit hustler seems to see a couple of bucks to be made in the issue. That is, everyone--except the families who have to live with the constant pain of wondering. There is no answer to the MIA question; the answer lies in reasonableness and ability to talk, not in rhetoric about half-baked schemes. One step might be the recognition by the U.S. government of the government of Vietnam (it is already recognized by the UN and most of the rest of the world)--the U.S. government already recognizes dozens of governments that it doesn't like. Second, the U.S. government can stop the activities, both private and governmental, of groups into the internal affairs of the countries of Southeast Asia; send Bo Gritz and his troops back to their well-deserved obscurity. Finally, there can be real talks with the possibility of using some of the money paid by the U.S. to the government of Vietnam for the purpose of searching out and finding the remains of American MIA's. The way in which the U.S. government has used the issue of POW's/MIA's underlines some of the worst propaganda features of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. There has never been any hesitation to use families and the emotional impact of the issue to the utmost in support of whatever position the U.S. government wanted to support at that moment. Enough: let us be honest with all concerned, and get on with the business of normal relations with Vietnam which will lead to a resolution--cooperative--of the problem of POW's/MIA's. The sooner the better! Barry Romo
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