Assumption? It's a conclusion and one that's being arbitrarily played here. Just for the sake of argument, if I'm convinced that there are unaccounted for POWs, it doesn't automatically default to viewing their captors as "subhuman slime." Case in point: the American Embassy in Tehran during Carter's administration. While we mistakenly meddled in installing the Shah in '54 (just like playing "6th man" for France in 'Nam) and while that engendered anti-US sentiment that Ayatollah Sean Connery Khomeini's followers acted upon, I still view them as wild-eyed scumbags, not as subhuman slime, or 'brown-skinned' zealots. As MLK once said, "judge on character not color." Simply put, a contrarian viewpoint does not give one license to labeling people as you (or I) would see fit. If not racist, it's cynical and presumptuous.
Brad, I have no idea what party you favor or if you favor any but for this line to be used by any Republican hater or someone that disagrees with that party? I mean, we cant start using that line for O while he campaigned for 2 years against everything going on over there..while our troops were coming home in body bags..while every night that pyscho Pelosi was on the air destroying our military and that legally retarded nut job from Nevada was doing the same. You even had our leader of defense...Kerry calling our troops rapists. While I agree its a horrible practice...that started in earnest a decade ago.
That's easy to say but we called the Vietnamese gooks during the Vietnam war and treated them as though they were a lower form of life. Go look at the US propaganda films during WWII and see how they differentiated between the Germans and the Japanese. On the Tehran thing. The Iranians are caucasian. They're white. I believe that the primary motivator in the POW/MIA thing is that we lost the war. America is used to being in control of events when things settle down and we wound up flying the last people out as the embassy fell in this case. What we miss in the argument is that Vietnam was the first big US military engagement that had very few MIA's as of the end of the war. It was actually the beginning of a better process for accounting for our missing and dead in war time. WWII - 73,000 people still MIA and unaccounted for. Korea - 7,800 people MIA and unaccounted for. Vietnam - uncertain but under a thousand still MIA and unaccounted for. All US wars since Vietnam - 6 people MIA and unaccounted for. To put that in percentages so it really stands out: WWII - 18% of all casualties are MIA/unaccounted for. Korea - 22% of all casualties are MIA/unaccounted for. Vietnam - 2.8% of all casualties are MIA/unaccounted for. All conflicts since - .08% casualties are MIA/unaccounted for.
You don't deflect, right? That's why you keep bringing up WWII. You're basically declaring anyone that the government hasn't been diligent in confirming the existence of in any given conflict to be dead, to support your fucking weak sauce argument. We CAN know that for sure if the government bothered to find out instead of trading with our "good friends" the Communist government of Vietnam. Over the course of about 10 years, our "good friends" the Communist government of Vietnam allowed American forces to recover (exhume) the graves of dead soldiers in their country in exchange for the great favor of allowing our stupid ass tourists the luxury of vacationing in specially designated tourist attractions and pumping the American dollar into their shitty fucking economy. I invented it, huh? Yeah, that was all me, I even hand-knitted those neato POW/MIA flags you see flying in front of the houses of any Vietnam/Korean War veteran's house. Since you appear to be tapped out, I'd like to summarize your amazing arguments in this thread: - The idea that American soldiers captured during the Vietnam war is as likely as the existence of Bigfoot - Anybody that thinks someone in Vietnam could harbor an American captive in Vietnam is a racist - The US government is diligently searching the rice patties of Vietnam for American captives with satellites - You can go anywhere you want in Communist Vietnam - Because we didn't have the wherewithal to find captives in WWII and WWI makes it okay not to bother looking for US captives in Vietnam - John McCain gives a shit about anything but political gain - The POW/MIA effort is a meme invented by abyzmul
And if we find them, we readily trade terrorism suspects for them by the handful, without bothering to figure out if they were against our country and also deserters. And have celebratory press conferences.
I have to say I'm pretty disappointed to see Br4dw4y5ux, one of the people I have more respect for on here, break out the race card in the same vein as is the liberal/democrat meme that has come to pass. I thought you would be above that.
Yeah we called them gooks, and Chinese chinks and we also called Germans krauts, 'Huns' and Heinies <-- (considered very 'white-on-white' offensive). But beyond that, what I don't understand is why this POW issue's core is being so inextricably tied to some racial dynamic and not simply "those s.o.b.'s. who didn't return all our POWs" period (regardless of whether you believe in the POW issue or not). As for the Tehran thing, yes I know they're caucasian but I meant not in the "lilly white Main St., 3.2 children, Beaver Cleaver, Euro-Anglo" sense (thus the 'brown-skinned' zealot comment, however dermis-inaccurate that was).....and curiously, fwiw, the Ayatollah did make it a point to have only the African-Americans (and females) released shortly after the embassy take over. Next up: The Gadsden Flag: historic flag designed by Gen. Christopher Gadsden in 1775 during the American Revolution or racist Tea Party banner? : )
You know what's funny? I called Br4d an asshole, which is obviously a bannable offense, but someone accused of being an asshole will rarely get banned, lose their job, almost never lose their career, and almost certainly never lose a sports franchise valued at 2 billion dollars. Being falsely accused of racism is far worse than being correctly accused of being an asshole.
I see what you did there. Btw, great little summer read/novel on US pilots being shot down over Vietnam and still being held as POWs in Soviet Russia--The Charm School by Nelson DeMille. _
The mentally incompetent cannot be guilty of desertion, or even AWOL. There are very strong indications Bergdahl's state of mind was less than solid dating to his Coast Guard days. Is anyone really surprised the Department of Defense has an increasingly high percentage of troops with mental problems and PTSD?
Of course not, they rely on them stuff government approved pills down their throats and go loco after service and shoot places up with weapons they want to make illegal to own, same with "hyperactive" children and college students.
