dunno about terrorists, but I wouldn’t call the archetypal leftist protestor a coward. If anything, back then they were up against an openly hostile majority and were willing to fight the police who were not always treating them with kid-gloves. In a sense they were braver than the more familiar, to us, vocal Muslim radicals in Europe of today because American government in the 60s was not operating under “commie-phobia will not be tolerated” restrictions.
First-hand accounts = anecdotes, not proof. Why would I believe that sort of uncorroborated ‘evidence’?
Fair enough. However, I have 23 years of military experience during which a whole hell of a lot of Vietnam veterans’ experiences were related to me. Since I didn’t record them, I can’t provide their accounts as evidence. It would seem that out of all those hundreds of people there would be some incidences of being on the receiving end of aggression, but that’s not what I was hearing. A negative can’t be proven, so the argument is pointless in that regard. Nobody has yet proven that it happened, which where the burden lies.
What kind of evidence would convince you, then?
Not too many folks had their iPhones handy during the Vietnam era for video confirmation.
From the New York Times:
Are we to believe that the Vietnam era protesters were too civil, refined, and genteel to do what at least one Iraq war protester did?
I was 21 in 1972. I went to anti-war protests in Washington in 1969 and 1970, and got tear-gassed a time or two. (Later on, although I still opposed the war, I was turned off to demonstrations by the participation of some who expressed support for North Vietnam, a la Jane Fonda. While I didn’t think the US policy was right, the North Vietnamese were also assholes.)
In my experience, the general feeling towards soldiers was “there but for the grace of a high grade point average or a good lottery number go I.” If draftees, they were caught between a rock and a hard place; if they enlisted, then they were dupes of a misguided US policy. I never saw any hostility expressed toward GIs, aside from those like Lt. Calley.
Yes. It was my first presidential vote. The fact that he lost so badly to a lying scumbag like Nixon contributed to my lasting cynicism about politics.
I came back from Vietnam 3 times between 1970 and 1972. once to Honolulu (on leave) and twice to a military base in California (end of tour). The two to California were contract flights filled with only soldiers. No spitting was involved after any of these flights landed. I think it is possible that the guys who were the real spitting targets might have been the ones who were on emergency leave. They went on regular commercial flights and were still in jungle fatigues. They landed and changed planes at regular (not military) airfields.
But if I met Jane Fonda today, there would be spitting involved.
We are to believe the evidence that is presented to us. Got any?
Bricker’s arguments in the alternative not withstanding, my dad came home in '71 from the Army (1st Cav) with a broken arm as a result of an airport run in.
He started it, though. By his own admission, called some guy a dirty hippie. Fight ensued, guy broke dad’s arm, cops broke it up, both went to the station house.
He never said if there was spitting.
I’ve heard many Vietnam vets say that they were spat upon. They always say it in a way that if, had they been born 100 years earlier, they’d insist that they were the soldier who planted the flag atop Lookout Mountain. To have been spat upon completes the fullness of the Vietnam vet’s experience: “I fought and suffered, and then I was betrayed and abused!”
Betrayed and abused by Liberals if you are right-wing; betrayed and abused by the government if left-wing (compared to what war’s veterans? WWII, with the GI Bill education and home loans was an anomaly. Shay’s Rebellion, where the government confiscated farms for taxes unpaid while the farmers were off fighting for the government was the norm. If veterans want respect, having fought wars in the past means nothing to a government. Delivering blocks of votes now means everything, so it’s advisable to gang up on the pols like the Grand Army of the Republic did after the CW, and the American Legion after WWI)
The need to have been spat upon is it’s own form of stolen valor: a decoration on his uniform the veteran believed he earned. So much of the polarization of our current political climate can be traced back to those dubious gobs of flying spit. Somehow that much seems appropriate.
There could have been protesters so stupid as not to be able to realize that those soldiers were victims too. But I never heard of any such incident. Why would anyone believe a word that Nixon said anyway?
As an aside, my mother, no radical said that when Nixon walked down the street he should have been required to ring a bell and say, “Unclean, unclean!” Her enmity for him went right back to the 1946 election when he beat Helen G. Douglas, by circulating a fake photo of her embracing Earl Browder, the head of the US Communist party.
Good post. I believe that “spit on” started as a metaphor. “I went and fought for my country, then I come back and see the flag get spit on by those hippy motherfuckers.” “Spit on” in this case meaning people demonstrating against the very war you just risked your life fighting in. It’s not a huge jump in logic to me.
Or, like me, enlisted to avoid being drafted into the Army.
code_grey writes:
> What, you don’t believe that there were some traitor Commies who hated the
> military for being lackeys of the bourgeoisie, oppressors of people of color and
> stuff?
There were very few people who could have been called Communists at the time. I was at a college from 1971-1974 that was about as liberal as any in the U.S. at the time in opposition to Nixon, in anti-Vietnam-War sentiment, in being pro-legalization of marijuana, in being pro-women’s liberation, in being against racism, in acceptance of homosexuality, etc. There was no one, to my knowledge, who would call themself a Communist or felt any solidarity with the Communist nations. There were a few who would call themselves socialists. There were a few who would use Marxist terminology like “bourgeoisie,” but most of the rest of the students considered them somewhat of a joke. American Communists at that time were people in (at least) their sixties who had chosen their political orientation in the 1930’s or earlier and hadn’t kept up with what was going on in the world.
It would seem the alternative is to believe that the New York Times reporters of 1970 were, along with all other reporters in the world, too lazy to report on what the NYT reporters of 2007 reported on. What do you think accounts for the complete absence of contemporaneous news accounts of spitting on soldiers in Vietnam, when there’s not such an absence more recently?
So, an account of one anti-Iraq war protester spitting on the ground near a veteran after an unspecified verbal confrontation proves the meme that anti-Vietnam war protesters habitually spat upon helpless veterans returning home? You actually believe that?
Interestingly, misconceptions about the Vietnam war era afflict both the Right and Left. There’s an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times in which the author claims that Vietnam vets were “demonized” in this country (this claim serves as counterpoint to his belief that we are too praiseworthy of members of the military in this day and age).
There are a lot of people with selective/deficient memories of the Vietnam War era (or who uncritically believe what they’ve been told about it). They ignore the fact that for most of the war, a majority of Americans supported it, and even as its unpopularity grew, resentment was overwhelmingly directed towards the Administrations which led it, the Congresses that kept funding it and the generals who continually assured us that we were winning and the Commies were on the run. There was no campaign of hate against individual soldiers. Even those who were involved in atrocities (like William Calley) had considerable public support.
I don’t agree with the notion that Vietnam vets were demonized; however, I do agree that this country has gone overboard with the hero worship of soldiers today. They’re guys and gals doing jobs they hired on to do. War is not noble and killing other humans is against every religious and moral tenet on the planet. Respect for doing the job well is, I guess, appropriate, but losing a leg for a politically expedient cause is just sad.
In some ways I agree with this, especially because they have all volunteered to be in the military, not drafted like so many were during Vietnam.
That said, it’s pretty fucked up for so many of our young veterans to be unable to find a job these days, (some ending up homeless within a year or two from discharge) and it would be fine with me if the government would give huge financial subsidies/incentives to companies who are willing to hire Iraq War vets…
As someone pointed out there were no cameraphones back then. I don’t see how any spitting incident would make the paper unless one of the principles was famous or it happened to happen in front of a reporter. Why would a reporter think spitting was more newsworthy and credible then than you think it is now? If the letters to Bob Greene aren’t credible, why should a phone call be treated differently?
you don’t always get to choose how other people call you. I don’t think that most unhinged serial baby killer maniacs think of themselves as “unhinged serial baby killer maniacs”. So if those Commies you have described in your post did not and still do not describe themselves as “Commie”, it does not prevent other people from seeing them as such.
When everyone tells you how special you are, calls you a hero, and celebrates your every homecoming on the national and local news, you’re expectations are going to be unreasonably elevated. The wretched truth is that there is no civilian counterpart to a door gunner on a chopper, and despite the adulation and support for these people when they are on active duty, companies are not going to hire unskilled workers. The fact that they were in a combat zone for nearly the whole time counts for bupkus.
The military used to have what they called “Project Transition”, but that was for people getting ready to retire. The military and the government doesn’t owe these guys anything for a four-year hitch unless they are injured. The best thing someone getting ready to separate from the Army could do would be to search out a good technical school (or join a union that provides training) and learn to become an equipment operator, an electrican, or some other tradesman skill.