Doug
---I was just rereading H Bruce Franklin's "MIA: Mythmaking in America" about how the US concocted the myth of unaccounted for POW/MIAs in Vietnam as one of the rationale for staying in Vietnam for 5 years under Nixon, even though polls in the US indicated that antiwar sentiment was the majority position. The extent to which the US was willing to stay in for the long haul (5 years later they withdraw and under the same conditions as could have been negotiated if the US leadership/politicians didn't stick to its illogical obsession with the "POW"s) is sometimes mindboggling for a person of my age (nearly 43) who has no real memories of the war from the time it was being conducted.
The US appears to be in no mood [despite that article from CNN that I just forwarded] to seriously negotiate with the resistance in Iraq, unless they're willing to hand over the country to whoever wins a civil war? There have been overtures to Iran and Syria of late from both sides of the aisles in the US, it is possible. Will the fear that negotiations will signify defeat for US foreign policy put the breaks on US withdrawal as it did during Vietnam?
Stephen Philion Assistant Professor St. Cloud State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology
http://stephenphilion.efoliomn2.com/
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