Hello Miss American Pie
(An essay for Veterans Day, 1992)

by J Eldon Yates

It is not uncommon for the collective magnanimity of the United States of America to foster trade with former enemy nations.  In post World War II Europe, under the Marshall Plan, enemy nations formed new government.  When we rebuilt Japan under the Macarthur army of occupation, we assisted the Japanese to develop a new constitution and a parliamentary form of government.  Following the end of the Korean War, we worked with the South Korean Government and they are now an emerging Third World industrial power.  We rightly left the “Peck’s Bad boy” of nations, North Korea, to its own devices. 

Divisiveness has been a political way of life for the communist Government of Vietnam.  They have milked the POW/MIA issue again and again, sadistically withholding information on remains and the disposition of missing Americans, while families have continued to traumatized and heartbroken.

This year, the Vietnamese Communists released over 500 photographs of dead U.S. Servicemen—photographs held hostage for over 25 years.  To date, only a handful of the photographs has confirmed the death of American MIAs.  The information that has come to light in the last several months on the MIA issue has given credence to those camouflaged, bearded centurions with thinning hair and a thousand-meter-stare—veterans who were scorned for questioning our national priorities, again. 

Whether there are live MIAs or not, doesn’t change the fact that cruel games have been played with the hearts and minds of those who served and the families of the missing.  Had it not been for their passion, we would have had normalized relations with Vietnam years ago, without an explanation and without considering the plight of the MIAs.  At the very least vets deserve a rationale as to why it is so important to normalize relations with an enemy government that’s still in power.  Vets deserve to know why we would embrace a nation whose post-war human rights violations have been monumental.  Vets deserve to know why we would favor a nation that has reduced Amerasian children to pariahs.  Vets deserve to know why we as a nation wish to embellish a government who committed atrocities on a daily basis and, as a matter of policy, on their own people. 

Some Americans are naïve and misinformed, but those who served in Vietnam are not.  Our Vietnam veterans witnessed villages of Vietnamese who had been disemboweled by the Communist because they accepted a little food from the Americans.  Vietnam veterans witnessed the horror of finding the remains of American kids decapitated; their heads plunged on fixed bayonets.  These repulsive acts were not isolated incidents.  The American kids in uniform patrolled through these living nightmares day after day.  Now in middle age, long term underemployment is a reality of life they have become as familiar with as the nightmares of Vietnam. 

Who will sympathize with our Viet vets’ concerns with a government that perpetrated atrocities on their citizens and ours?  Why is it in our national interest to create prosperity for those who ordered the atrocities, while many of own vets are jobless, homeless, or struggling with long term underemployment? 

Ho Chi Minh rest in peace.