Permanent POW

    I don't know about any other US state, but in South Carolina, former POWs get permanent license tags. This means a lot less than it once did. Back in the day, you got a new license tag every year. Nowadays, you just put a sticker for this year on the old tag. I don't know if permanent tags mean that you don't have to pay taxes or registration fees annually, but I hope so. Point of all this blithering is what the tags actually say: at the top, "PERMANENT," and then the tag number, starting with POW. This struck me as almost alarming, certainly ill-advised. I don't know if these are just for Vietnam-era POWs (in which case "permanent" has already meant 40 years) or if they also cover combatants in our subsequent more-or-less perpetual wars. If it were me, I wouldn't want to be defined by having been a POW. I remember that Vietnam vets sometimes wore as a badge of honor what might have been a stigma in other generations, but still. If you're going to put PERMANENT on the tag, maybe HERO would be more appropriate for the tag number part. Wouldn't it?