>Yoshie:
>> What is true, though, is that the POW/MIA issue had been exploited by
>> the U.S. ruling class & governing elite to impose & maintain economic
>> _sanctions_ on Vietnam _until very recently_, adding insult to injury
>> so to speak. Never mind _reparations_ for Vietnam!
>>
>> The POW/MIA issue has become a medium of rewriting the history of the
>> Vietnam War, portraying Vietnam as _victimizer_ & the USA as
>> _victim_. Working-class Americans have been asked to target their
>> grief & anger not against the U.S. government but against the
>> Vietnamese. They are still lied to about the war. They remain grist
>> for the ideological mill that manufactures consent, as long as they
>> think that it's appropriate to coerce the Vietnamese (& others) into
>> _serving_ American & only American needs.
>
>The believers I've discussed the issue with were extremely
>suspicious of and hostile to the American ruling class as well
>as of opponent ruling classes. However, the Left, in general,
>takes the bourgeois side, in which the ruling classes' purported
>views of events are valid and the views of ordinary people
>are invalid. Thus most of the Left can't speak to this suspicion
>and hostility: it's contrary to the word of _The_New_York_Times_.
***** Rethinking Camelot Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press. Introduction: Contours and Context Segment 13/17
...."Through the 1980s, U.S. officials emphasized that Vietnam should end its occupation of Cambodia before the U.S. embargo could be lifted," Robert Greenberger reports in the Wall Street Journal: "After Vietnam withdrew its troops, the U.S. then stressed the need to resolve the MIA and POW issues before relations could be restored," and now Washington "is under pressure from American companies to resolve the [MIA] issue so that they... [will not]...be left behind in the race for access to Vietnam's markets and resources, including potentially rich offshore oil deposits." No conclusion is drawn from this transparent charade.
Like a good and loyal trooper, Steven Holmes reports in the New York Times that the Bush Administration is moving to ease the trade embargo in "response to what the Administration sees as greater Vietnamese cooperation in the search for American servicemen still missing from the Vietnam war." The headline reads: "Hanoi's Help With M.I.A's Leads to Easing of Embargo." True, "business and trade organizations have also been lobbying the Administration to loosen the embargo," fearing that "they will lose out to Japanese companies in the Vietnam market"; and they "believe that there is more money to be made in Vietnam in the next 10 years" than in China. But the doctrinal truths are unshaken: it is Vietnam's greater willingness to face up to its crimes against us that led Mr. Bush to ease the trade embargo, an act that "signals a clear warming toward Vietnam after decades of bitterness and distrust spawned by Hanoi's invasion of Cambodia, its unwillingness to be forthcoming about the fate of missing Americans and lingering resentment toward Vietnam for having defeated the United States" -- the last, an interesting departure from ritual.
Though Administration officials "have praised Hanoi for meeting a number of the conditions set by the president last year," Pamela Constable reports, "to many Americans...none of these arguments carry enough weight to overcome the deep bitterness, mistrust and hostility that linger" towards "an adversary that has delayed, deceived, and resisted legitimate US demands on the missing servicemen for years." Eager to resume ties with the US, the Vietnamese Government "is careful not to offend American visitors by suggesting directly that the sacrifice of Vietnamese families was greater than that of families in the United States," Philip Shenon adds.30
The drama continued through 1992. A year after he celebrated JFK's aggression by extending the US embargo, President Bush announced, in properly statesmanlike terms, that "It was a bitter conflict, but Hanoi knows today that we seek only answers without the threat of retribution for the past." We can never forgive them for what they have done to us, but "we can begin writing the last chapter of the Vietnam war" if they turn from other pursuits to locating the remains of missing Americans. The adjacent front-page story reports the visit of the Japanese Emperor to China, where he failed to "unambiguously" accept the blame "for [Japan's] wartime aggression," revealing again the deep flaw in the Japanese character that so sorely puzzles American commentators.31...
<http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/rc/rc-intro-s13.html> *****
Is what Chomsky says above too subtle or too "bourgeois" for you?
Yoshie