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MIAs: The Final Chapter of the Vietnam War
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20189 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1992 |
2,033 Words |
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John McCain
Sen. John McCain, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, was a
prisoner of war in Vietnam for five and a half years. He was
elected to the Senate in 1986. |
More than 2,000 Americans remain missing in action in Southeast Asia. No remains were recovered for 22 percent of all Americans killed in World War II and Korea. But it is the unresolved fate of our POW/MIAs from the war we did not win that greatly troubles the American people. Unlike our experiences in other wars, we have been unable to move beyond our losses and close the final chapter of our war with Vietnam.
For many, perhaps most, Americans, the question of whether Americans remain in captivity in Indochina has been answered in the affirmative: They do. That belief has percolated throughout our popular culture. It is frequently featured in movies, television shows, popular fiction, and music.
More troubling, however, are the allegations directed against the U.S. government that have apparently found increased resonance with the American people lately. I refer to the conviction that not only do the Vietnamese continue to hold Americans in captivity, but that successive American presidential administrations have known of this crime and have, in effect, collaborated with the Vietnamese in hiding this information from the families of our POW/MIAs and from the American people.
I doubt that the number of those who believe in this transcending conspiracy even comes close to the number of Americans who have reasonable suspicions that Vietnam has not been forthcoming about the fate of American POW/MIAs. However, the fact that any American believes that officials of five separate administrations could be co-conspirators in a crime of such enormous magnitude astonishes me. And it has, in all candor, greatly disturbed me.
Even if the number of Americans who accept this conspiracy theory as the truth are excluded from consideration, it is still glaringly apparent that the American public's trust and confidence in the integrity of our government's efforts to resolve the questions surrounding the fate of American POW/MIAs is waning.
Credibility Questioned
The process by which we seek information on our POWs and MIAs has become so clouded by doubt and suspicion that the people involved in the process--many good and honorable people--have had not only their competency, but even their reputations called into question. At a minimum, the government's proclamations that accounting for our POW/MIAs was the highest national priority is no longer
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