I found the post about the film on the MIA-POW families really disturbing
and distorted.
As H. Bruce Franklin has amply demonstrated in his book M.I.A. OR
MYTHMAKING IN AMERICA (Rutgers), these women were organized by the Nixon
White House
and the Pentagon. It was hardly the case that their sudden impassioned
appeals happened to lead to a groundswell of controversy. They were in
fact produced, like the Tonkin Gulf incident, for a political purpose.
And the mythology of Americans hidden away somewhere in Vietnam has been
kept alive all these eons for similar right-wing purposes.
See also Prisoners of hope : exploiting the POW/MIA myth in
America by Susan Katz Keating (Random House).
It's sad that many genuinely distressed people were--and are--used
for very cynical political purposes. The American line now in Vietnam,
articulated by the ambassador among others, is that it's time to move on.
But it remains the case that it is the Vietnamese who are still searching
for the remains of THEIR relatives--not to speak of more recent victims of
mines and defoliants.
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