Posted on 08/16/2015 10:10:35 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax
“An essay published in Newsweek, The Washington Spectator and at least one other website argues that a flag honoring U.S. troops who have been captured or gone missing is actually ‘racist’ and deserves to be treated with the same hostility as the Confederate flag.
‘You know that racist flag?’ writes Rick Perlstein. ‘The 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? It’s past time to pull it down.’
No, Perlstein isn’t talking about the Confederate flag, but actually the POW/MIA flag, which can be seen at countless veterans’ events and outside the offices of many congressmen.
The problem lies with the flag’s origins. ‘Missing in action’ soldiers, Perlstein says, were simply invented out of thin air by Richard Nixon in an effort to ‘justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim.’
Perlstein expresses outrage at Nixon’s administration for inaugurating a ‘newly invented’ missing-in-action category to describe pilots who were shot down and never had their bodies recovered. Perlstein seems to imply that Nixon invented the idea of ‘missing’ soldiers out of whole cloth, though this is quite untrue. Soldiers have been going missing for as long as wars have been fought, and official ‘missing’ classifications were famously applied to thousands of soldiers in both world wars whose fates were impossible to determine.
Whatever the origins of the term itself, Perlstein says the flag is obviously racist, because, well, it implies that being a POW under the North Vietnamese was bad:
‘The moral confusion was abetted by the flag: the barbed-wire misery of...
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
Surely, someone is making this up.
Oh Fuck You.
“I see Dead Racists.....Everywhere “
Cognitive Dissonance
They get a rise out of getting away with the most ludicrous claims.
You can Google this Rick Perlstein’s name and see all you’d ever want to know about this putz.
What he ‘essayed’ isn’t even worth comment.
My head hurts trying to figure this out.
If this is not satire then this author should
Be in an institution.
In before the “Fuck You” filter zot! IBTFYZ
Ha! My thought too, actually. :0)
I have sent a personal missive to Vendome in the chance it does not survive the IBTFYZ....:0)
Just ask John Kerry and John McCain about this - they both want everyone to stop talking about POWs/MIAs in Vietnam — how else to normalize relations with a former enemy who want this to all go away? John McCain averted his eyes while John and his minions shredded documentation of men still over there. BFFs!!!
Well....may NOT so personal...my bad....I guess we’re gonna see how the filters work today. :0)
Newsweek?
I do not think anyone has read that rag since the 1990s...
These people are sickos. We are seeing more of this nonsense because their like minded fellow travelers are the people who control both the Democrat Party and the White House who are encouraging crazy behavior.
“Oh FY.”
Exactly. Too demented to argue with in words.
Yep, meets the same ol same ol standard of fake “journ-o-lists” BA private schools, SHJ, angry, immature, hater. Shame on MSM for even giving someone so way out there any kind of forum. He appeals to the like-insane. Mentally ill, filled with rage.
I’m guessing he gets out of bed angry everyday.
Perlstein is an anal orifice. I dare him to walk into a VFW or American Legion post unescorted and try to spew that feces.
America has a deep-seated tradition of honoring its fallen soldiers. We have the military funerals for those recovered, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for those recovered but unidentified, but until Nixon codified the POW / MIA flag, nothing for those who never returned.
This is but one more step by those who hate our military, and by extension hate our country, to tear it down.
A pox on him and his ilk.
PS
Did you know that there are 5 MIA from the Battle of Lexington and Concord?
What is Newsweak’s circulation these days?
I’m guess he don’t get laid - at all.
Sorry, and probably shouldn’t have said in the open but, the absurdity of contrived and pathetic writing was just “two” much...
I’m going there ....
This perlstein guy was writing about, of all things, Nixon, in 2008. i’d say he is 32 years too late on that one, or that a thorn in his side has festered, making him insane, that many years before.
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