p.o.w./m.i.a.

dong ha, vietnam

one of my high school history teachers was an all right-enough guy. he too liked the colorado buffaloes and said that everyone who took his class was "touching grace." he had a buzzcut and coached one of the lower levels of scholastic baseball and i remember him as being a bit of a benign tool. his classroom was the first place i had ever seen a p.o.w./m.i.a. flag.

it was hung above the door. you probably know what it looks like. it's white on black with the silhouette of a young man and some military camp with barbed wire in the background. it spells out the initialism, "prisoner of war, missing in action" and says something akin to "gone, but not forgotten." when taken with a certain chuck norris series, i looked at this flag and thought that there were still american soldiers being held captive in vietnam. if you presently find yourself having the same thought, i would like like to gently cut in and have this proverbial dance.

let's say you want to find the lost camps where the captive american soldiers are still being held forty years later. you're clearly not as amazed as i am that a developing country would spare the food and manpower to continue such an operation, but i'll leave that aside for now. it sounds like you need an audacious search party and some big guns. you could lease an aircraft carrier and have some helicopters on standby, ready for the cover of night and fog to get the job done. or, maybe it would be more cost effective just to fly into vietnam. you'll need a visa, but you can get that in washington d.c. (or have it mail-ordered or even fill out the paperwork online) then you can take united or delta or any number of airlines into ho chi minh city. or hanoi. as you prefer. you'll get fed a couple times going over the water.

then, once in vietnam, you could organize the cavalry, get some tanks ready upon arrival, right? or maybe you should just take a flight up to danang. or the train. or the bus. again, as you prefer. that way, you could have your forward operations base closer to where the soldiers, the missing soldiers, that is, are. now that you're in danang, you can organize the assault. or go a little further north to hue, maybe dong ha. it might even be a good idea to book one of the dmz tours, you can even organize a specific one for yourself (like we did.)

of course, the tours will only take you so many places because they don't want you to see where the prisoners are, right? if you test that theory, you'll find that the real reason certain territory is not shown is because it is: 1) jungle and/or 2) littered with unexploded ordnance that could still explode. if you still believe vietnam is holding americans captive, i invite you to test this theory for yourself.

i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but since noone else will tell you: those soldiers are dead. i have no idea as to how, i just know that 30 days in this country has shown me that vietnam has moved on, even if you haven't. for some in denial, this is a bitter pill to swallow, as those six letters represent someone very near and dear to them. you have both right and reason to experience whatever range of emotions tinge your waking hours and dreams. for a few others, you are wasting your goddamn time. take up a new hobby. talk to a girl (the internet does not count.) yours is part and parcel the denial and ignorance that has left every american generation for over a century depositing some of its best blood in foreign soil.

i'll admit that, before arriving, i was prepared to rekindle my american guilt (hello, old friend.) i was sure i would encounter some bitter sentiment from the fact that we, you know, bombed the ever living shit out of their country because of something called "containment." i've spent the past month seeking conversations about the war and looking for any form of physical evidence forty years after the fact. what i've found is hard to classify. the ubiquitous craters in certain parts of the country still bring a shutter. it was definitely not fun to be sworn out at that petrol station near the my son ruins nor to be told that americans had to pay five times the rate for one moto ride in hoi an. i don't know what they have seen or what happened to their families, so i am in no position to judge.

but what if i told you that those were the only two instances of backlash? what if i told you about the veteran i spoke with who returned to the village he fought in and was told to leave his western guilt behind because that was not his war? what if i told you that even the museums here are able to draw a distinction between the young kids on the ground and the robert mcnamaras? what if i told you that the vietnamese people have forgiven and are ready to move on? i, for one, would not have believed such proclamations.

but it's true. and so is the truth that none of it had to happen. i could only shake my head in conversations with u.s. veterans. for one, i couldn't believe what they endured, both in combat and in the subsuming guilt that many experience even today. for another, i couldn't help but feel so proud to be in their presence. mostly, it was just an utterly wrenching sensation to listen as they spoke about their experiences and wondered what they were fighting for. the security of the united states? vietnam posed no threat whatsoever. so that even if the war in vietnam was a mistake, at least the next generation would not have to relearn the lesson? i need not remind you of iraq and afghanistan.

and so i leave the country at a crossroads. on one hand, i come away with an enormous respect for the fighters on both sides of the conflict here. they gave their all for something they believed in and that is more than i will ever do in my life. i also come away with a stronger disdain for the trumper-blowers and jingoists whom i call my fellow citizens. if they could stand on the foggy hilltop that was khe san combat base and tell me that all the neckless dogtags, the empty helmets, the names that were subsequently etched on to a wall in d.c.; if they could do that and tell me that some barren plateau on another continent was worth all that valor and sacrifice, i would consider them worthy of being committed.

do you care about the troops? i mean, truly care about them? do you shake their hands in an airport or have a bumper sticker or did you start a facebook page? congratulations, you haven't done a fuckin' thing.

if you truly cared about the young men and women serving the armed forces, you would march in a protest the next time somebody proclaims some bogus reason for conflict. you would go visit a wounded warrior at a hospital. you would spit in a lying politician's face and do everything in your power so that these young souls would be the ones inventing the cure for cancer or the solution to oil dependency instead of putting their lives on the line for something they'll be regretting for the rest of their lives so soon as they get home.

if that's what we can do for our own, there's also something we can do from the comfort of our couch: leave the vietnamese out of it. leave them alone, even if it's only in our minds. we can start by not flying those stupid p.o.w./m.i.a. flags and wearing those stupid t-shirts. i am truly sorry for every soldier who died and every family that has an absence, but the blame does not lie here. the fear factory in washington carelessly sent those boys into slaughter, as it did again and is probably trying to once more. the vietnamese defended their homeland and they defended it well, as anyone would do. they earned their sovereignty and our respect. let's give them both. we can then free ourselves to let their fighting inspire our own. we can elect the alternatives to the aggressors, grieve for our departed, tend to the wounded, and otherwise free ourselves from unmerited victimhood.

i have more work to do. we all do. since i've put my words down, you can hold me accountable. and since this is my platform, i would like to issue you a challenge:

come to vietnam. eat this delicious food. relax on these pristine beaches. tour the museums that will surely make you uncomfortable and challenge your identity. but mostly, speak with the people. learn the basic greetings. smile til your face melts. take it on the chin when someone offers a mildly acerbic comment. relearn forgiveness from the most resilient people i have ever had the pleasure to meet.