M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America: How and why belief in live POWs has possessed a nation - Softcover

Franklin, H. Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813520010 ISBN 13: 9780813520018

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1993

Synopsis

This paperback edition of M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America adds major new material about Ross Perot's role, the 1991-1992 Senate investigation, and illegal operations authorized by Ronald Reagan.

“An important and compelling book. . . . Franklin raises and answers all of the hardest questions about an enduring piece of political mythology.”--The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A calm and thoughtful book on a firestorm of a subject. . . . Intelligent, provocative, and courageous.”--Kirkus Reviews

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Almost two decades after the Vietnam War, most Americans remain convinced that U.S. prisoners are still being held captive in Southeast Asia, and many even accuse the government of concealing their existence. But as H. Bruce Franklin demonstrates in his startling investigation, there is no plausible basis for the belief in live POWs. Through scrupulous research, he shows for the first time how this illusion was fabricated and then converted into a powerful myth. Franklin reveals that in 1969 the Nixon administration, aided by militant pro-war forces, manufactured the POW/MIA issue to deflect attention from American atrocities in Vietnam, to undermine the burgeoning anti-war movement, and to stymie the Paris peace talks, resulting in the prolongation of the Vietnam War for another four years. Successive administrations, in an effort to mobilize public support for their continued economic and political warfare against Vietnam, asserted the possibility of live POWs at great emotional cost to both family members of the missing and countless Americans distressed about the fate of those supposedly left behind in Indochina. Born of political expediency, the POW/MIA issue was transformed in the 1980s into a potent myth. American culture was transfigured as movies and novels designed to reimage the Vietnam War turned the imagined post-war POWs into crucial symbols of betrayed American manhood and honor. Finally the myth began to turn against its creators when many Americans became convinced that the government itself was conspiring to betray the missing men. As he traces the evolution of the POW/MIA myth, Franklin not only exposes it as an elaborate hoax at the highest levels of government, butalso explains why the myth has penetrated to the heart of American life. By confronting the "true tragedy of the missing in Vietnam", Franklin helps us to understand how to heal the terrible psychological and spiritual wounds of the Vietnam War.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A calm and thoughtful book on a firestorm of a subject, by Franklin (English and American Studies/Rutgers; War Stars, 1988, etc.). Are there any POWs in Vietnam now? Does it matter to those who have made political capital of the POW cause? Franklin observes that while the US blatantly violated the Paris Agreement ending the war, ``about the only proviso...scrupulously carried out...was Hanoi's implementation with respect to POWs.'' He points out that there were proportionately far more MIAs in WW II and Korea, and that the Viet Cong had nothing to gain in holding postwar prisoners. Franklin suggests we consider, in proportion to this handful of ``supposed victims,'' the devastation of an entire land, civilians included, by state-of-the-art weapons. Going to specific cases, he concludes that there are no POWs, and he undercuts the demonizing of North Vietnam with anecdotal evidence that Vietnamese, despite being bombed out of their homes, took captured airmen to safety and performed other kind acts. As in his earlier work, Franklin digs deep: Why is the POW/MIA flag, he wonders, the only one other than Old Glory ever to fly over the White House? Why does every state fly this flag at capitals, toll plazas, and rest areas, and mandate observance of National POW/MIA Recognition Day- -when a 1976 Congressional committee concluded that ``no Americans are still being held.'' Because, says Franklin, quoting David Cline, left for dead on a Vietnam battlefield, ``Americans want to believe that we were the good guys....'' And also because, the author adds, of the power of a myth, now embodied in such culture- heroes as Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone--''a story of ostensibly historic events...that...no matter how bizarre...appears as essential truth to its believers.'' Intelligent, provocative, and courageous. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0813520010
• ISBN 13: 9780813520018
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272