Sarah Palin attracted a lot of media attention today to the 24th Memorial Day ride of Rolling Thunder, a group of mostly Vietnam veterans with motorcycles.
While the cameras and reporters swarmed over Palin and her family, few, if any, media reports of today's ride will explain what Rolling Thunder is, and what they're doing in Washington on Memorial Day weekend.
Here's what they say they are:
Rolling Thunder, Inc.'s major function is to publicize the POW-MIA issue. To educate the public of the fact that many American prisoners of war were left behind after all past wars. To help correct the past and to protect the future veterans from being left behind should they become Prisoners Of War/Missing In Action. We are committed to helping American veterans from all wars. Rolling Thunder, Inc. is a non-profit organization and everyone donates his or her time because they believe in the POW/MIA issue.
That's right, these guys believe that our government, under administrations of both parties, abandoned live prisoners of war in Vietnam and covered that up for 38 years.
Look at the flag they fly, which absurdly flies over thousands of public buildings -- what else can that image possibly mean?
Details, below.
First, let's be clear, Rolling Thunder is not that concerned with MIAs, which occur in all wars. (For the U.S. military, there were more than 70,000 MIAs in World War II and more than 8,000 in the Korean War. For the Vietnam War, our number is around 2,000; Vietnam estimates that the Communist side had about 300,000 MIAs.)
As their National Executive Director Artie Muller put it in his most recent letter:
We have for many years been pressuring our government to do the right thing and account for the live American Prisoners of War/Missing in Action that were left behind from all past wars. What is the problem with asking these foreign countries involved to search for and release any POW/MIA's from their respective countries during all past wars? (emphases added)
The political allies of Rolling Thunder and other POW/MIA groups have always been conservative Republicans like late North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms and former Congressman-turned-minor-wingut-pundit John LeBoutillier of New York.
And the "liberal" media have also played along -- Newsweek put a photo of live POWs on its cover in 1991. This photo was, of course, a hoax.
Congressional and Department of Defense investigations over the decades did not turn up any credible evidence that Vietnam continued to hold American POWs after the war.
Among some conservatives and Vietnam vets, the live POW issue is a corollary of the general "stab-in-the-back" theory about how we lost the Vietnam War -- a conspiracy corollary that has never had any factual basis.
Aside from the total lack of confirmable evidence of live POWs, there is the basic question of what the Vietnamese Communists hoped to gain.
Conspiracists argue that they wanted to trade live POWs for reparations, but such a fantasy deal could not be kept secret, and would not have been politically possible under any U.S. administration.
Rolling Thunder does do some worthy work, lobbying for improved veterans' benefits.
But Rolling Thunder is essentially conservative and reactionary, obsessed with the fiction of live POWs in Vietnam and the flag symbol of that obsession.
Another part of Artie Muller's letter shows why they welcomed fellow conservative reactionary Palin to their Memorial Day ride, and also updates the stab-in-the-back slur and adds an Oath Keeper dog whistle:
Did you ever think of why we have Generals in charge of our Military, when those in Washington, DC who have never put on a military uniform, are telling the Generals how to run a War?
Those politicians are getting our Military personnel killed and putting charges against some of our Troops. Our Troops are not police, they are trained to kill or to be killed in a split second decision.
Remember the oath you took when you entered the Military and don't forget it. We were sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and to defend our Country from foreign and domestic enemy.
Muller swore to uphold the Constitution, but evidently does not care for the part that makes a politician Commander-in-Chief of the military.
I doubt he was making that argument in his 2008 letter.