The Newsweek website was so impressed by historian Rick Perlstein of The Washington Spectator declaring war on a historic flag that they republished him. He’s talking about a flag that is deemed as racist, “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….”
Surely he means the Confederate flag, given the uproar over the past two months for something that has been around since the Civil War. Wrong. Perlstein is talking about the POW/MIA flag, and in an attempt to remain newsworthy, Newsweek actually published this pile of manure.
Perlstein vents that the flag was a creation of Richard Nixon in order to “justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim…” He claims that it was a tool used for an “opportunistic shift in terminology” for the many downed pilots who were never recovered in the jungles of Vietnam who were once classified as “Killed in Action/Body Unrecovered” to a more “softer” classification of “Missing in Action.”
He claims that this illusion was used to paint the North Vietnamese as cruel and inhumane given their refusal to provide a list of names of American prisoners, and the release of American prisoners as a requirement for ending the war. Perlstein thinks it’s all BS:
“This was bullshit four times over: first, because in every other conflict in human history, the release of prisoners had been something settled at the close of a war; second, because these prisoners only existed because of America’s antecedent violations of the Geneva Conventions in bombing civilians in an undeclared war; third, because, as bad as their torture of prisoners was, rather than representing some species of Oriental despotism, the Vietnam Communists were only borrowing techniques practiced on them by their French colonists…And finally, our South Vietnamese allies’ treatment of their prisoners, who lived manacled to the floors in crippling underground bamboo “tiger cages” in prison camps built by us, was far worse than the torture our personnel suffered.”
Continuing to verbally stomp on the POW/MIA flag, Perlstein went on to “explain” how the flag was the creation of the National League of Families of Prisoners of War and founded by the wife of a POW during the LBJ administration as a means to humiliate Johnson and his views that the war was going well. He contends that most of the POW’s were actually anti-war activists working for peace organizations and that the flag itself is “…a shroud. It smothers the complexity, the reality, of what really happened in Vietnam.”
If Perlstein were there during the Vietnam War, my guess is he probably wouldn’t have been one of the brave soldiers on the front lines, rather a member in one of those “peace organizations” he previously mentioned that ended up being a POW. His argument is lame and like any good Democrat, he does nothing but blame the Republican establishments from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan for the rise and pride of the POW/MIA flag.
Perlstein should do a follow up story – only this time, he should repeat those same statements he made in the article to military veterans and members of Rolling Thunder to get their point of view. I’d love to see what he came back with…. if he came back at all.
After the initial uproar, Newsweek appended this: "This piece was updated by the Spectator on August 13 to remove the word "racist" from the headline, and has been similarly adjusted here." At bottom was an apology from Perlstein on both pages:
I sincerely regret the use of the word “racist” to describe how the POW/MIA flag distorts the history of the Vietnam War. The word was over the top and not called for.
I’m deeply sorry it hurt people—especially people who’ve selflessly served their country. Most of all, I’m sorry because many of the people offended by the word “racist” are the same people who were hurt when the experiences and feelings of common soldiers and veterans were manipulated to serve the powerful interests and individuals who blithely and perennially send men and women to war, then don’t take care of them when they return home. And, of course, I regret the pain caused to the families of those who gave the last full measure of devotion to their country in Southeast Asia.
