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From: Ed McGloin
T1: Rubyiat@Aol.com
Date: 10/6/97
Time: 6:25:34 PM
Remote Name: 152.163.207.138
Bye The Numbers
On page 11 of the book, Franklin puts forth interesting statistics on the war in vietnam. In the little research I have done on the war before this class led me to some of his points. Wars are inherently messy, violent, crude and have always been a logical though at times barbaric extension of policy foreign and domestic. The number of casualties during the vietnam war has always had some mythical qualities given to it as I myself have found during my previous research. In ten years of official war(65-75) less than 60 thousand americans lost their lives as opposed to 80 thousand missing for WWII in 6 years of warfare or for even more stark comparison 55 thousand in the 3 days at Gettsburg. And yet the total missing set at 4 percent is far less for any war in the last one hundred years. In addition it raises the point what would the rationale be for holding onto the captives. Also if their conditions were so terrible how could they possibly survive into the late 80's much less the late 90's of today. Case in point the allied prisoners-of-war in WWII and the condition they were in with less than 2 years in the war camps of Western europe. Or to further illustrate the work camps of german prisoners in the Soviet Union after WWII. Men cannot and will not survive isolation, malnutrition, torture at the levels ascribed to the MIA's of vietnam for extremely lengthy periods of time. Getting back to the rationale part I cannot logicly defend any reasoning for the vietnamese to hold onto captives for such a lengthy period of time. It would be self-defeating to them in that it would be used to discredit them and in addition it has been my personal experience that prisoners you have no intention of returning and are mistreating would be more of a hinderance alive than dead. In some ways I think you can draw these conclusions out just by the statistics presented and some historical context to view these numbers.