Why did the Vietnam US POW rumors stay alive so long?

[Algher]

@elucidator

Did you actually see any? Or did somebody tell you? And does it make sense, given the number of people involved, that we would hate our drafted friends and relations? Myself, a couple of cousins (one drafted, one volunteer) and about half a dozen friends of varying closeness. And that was nothing special.

My uncle, a protestor, still hates my father, a veteran, for going to Vietnam.

So, yes, the animosity towards those in uniform existed. Was it as bad as portrayed in the popular media of the 80s? No, it was not. However, it was bad enough to make veteran status a protected class for job discrimination.

As for the POWs, there was just enough rumor and sightings to keep the interest going. I was peripheral to some of the groups involved in that activity. I met with the author of this book in his office in DC:

Scars & Stripes: The True Story of One Man's Courage in Facing Death as a...

So, take the perspective of the Vietnam veteran feeling less than welcome. Add in some good rumors of sightings. Add in some random statistics that makes things sound worse (e.g. pilots tended to be found, but back seaters were not - perhaps because their knowledge was worth more?)/

All of that is enough to create a nice cottage industry of both well meaning people who want to bring the boys home, and professional searchers for random bits of data just simply making money off of misery.

Final part of my ramble - my grandfather was an intel officer. Among other things, he debriefed POWs from our Korean debacle - including 2 who escaped AFTER the war was over and all POWs had supposedly been returned. So if you ask me whether or not I believe that it was possible that all POWs were not returned? Absolutely possible.

Are any left now? I sincerely doubt it.

[Algher]

Follow-up: Here is the information on the laws about veteran status and employment discrimination:

Veterans

[elucidator]

…(yes elucidator, ONLY in airports, cuz that’s the only prong of attack!)…

…You’ll notice that even many of the arguments on this thread(I.E. most of the stories taking place at airports, the stories not starting until the 80s) come from the book and have been fairly thoroughly discredited…

Can you guys sort this out and get back to me? Because we have two rock-solid experts in apparent disagreement.

[elucidator]

…Incidentally, his book was written in 1974, long before the 80s where, according to Eluci the “spitting stories” started…

Oh, never said this either. But as long as we have experts on the subject, when did the stories start? What is the first documented incident? Where and when did it take place? It seems as nobody really knows, even people who are totally sure when it didn’t start. Isn’t that a bit odd?

[Algher]

@elucidator

Oh, never said this either. But as long as we have experts on the subject, when did the stories start? What is the first documented incident? Where and when did it take place? It seems as nobody really knows, even people who are totally sure when it didn’t start. Isn’t that a bit odd?

For what it is worth - in the comments someone pulled a bunch of the recounted incidents from Homecoming:

http://mydd.com/users/crablaw/posts/spitting-on-vietnam-vets-the-evidence

[Captain_Amazing]

@elucidator

Fair question deserves a fair warning: I suck at sincere, but here goes…

They are my people. I have danced at their weddings and mourned their funerals. Roughly a dozen of them are still the dearest people in my life, old wine is nothing compared to old friendship. Hearing them slandered, hearing us slandered…chaps my hide.

And besides, I’m most likely going to bitch about something, might as well be something I care about.

While it’s obviously not for me to suggest who are and are not or should or should not be the people you care about, and while I don’t doubt that you made lifelong friendships in your anti-war activism, I’ll point out objectively that when you talk about “people opposed to the Vietnam war” or “anti-Vietnam war activists”, you’re talking about a large group of people who don’t have anything in common other than a single political view forty years ago, and that they range the gamut from good to evil, from idealists to cynics, from religious to atheists, and pretty much every range you can think of. I don’t think that anyone, even the people who argue that spitting on of veterans happened, argue that every antiwar protestor spat on a veteran, so I don’t think slander of you and your friends are intended.

[elucidator]

Shit, I’d almost prefer of it *were *intentional. But its offhand, casual, one of those things the speaker presumes everybody knows.

These people who are sure it happened can’t seem to answer simple questions. Was it '68 when it started? '69? Where was the first documented incident. A thing like that is very likely to provoke a reprisal. Any records of arrests? Letters to the editor decrying this disrespect for our troops? Any record of the responses from our major airports, steps that might be taken to prevent such occurrences? If not, why not?

If this shit were really happening, the hawk right would have been all over it like ugly on a Nixon.

[Captain_Amazing]

Well, there’s this:

http://volokh.com/posts/1170928927.shtml

which seems to document spitting incidents and other acts of disrespect to soldiers from the time period, in newspapers stories at the time.

[elucidator]

…One Guardsman is quoted describing how one male demonstrator went down the line spitting in servicemen’s faces, flicking ashes and lit cigarettes at them, and making religious slurs (Rights in Conflict, p. 213)…

From the cited location

Wow. They stood in line, and let this guy go down the line, spitting in their faces and flicking ashes and lit cigarettes at them. What, he stopped very few feet, lit another cigarette long enough for come flickable ashes… spit, flick repeat?

If you find this Volokh fellow convincing, well, ok, then. But what he’s offering is another round of this guys said, this other guy said, and so forth.

But why even do that? Why not just lay out the archived stories? Must be dozens and dozens of them, easy to do…if they exist. If they don’t, well, then you are reduced to anecdote and the solemn assurance that those archived stories exist, but oops! left them in your other pants…

Just for comparisons sake, I rate Daily Kos about 90% accurate and truthful. How does your opinion of Volokh stack. No snark intended or implied, straight question.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@elucidator

From the cited location

Wow. They stood in line, and let this guy go down the line, spitting in their faces and flicking ashes and lit cigarettes at them. What, he stopped very few feet, lit another cigarette long enough for come flickable ashes… spit, flick repeat?

If you find this Volokh fellow convincing, well, ok, then. But what he’s offering is another round of this guys said, this other guy said, and so forth.

The above is one of the most moronic posts I’ve ever read on this site.

The quote you’re linking to does not come from “this Volokh fellow” but from the Walker Report on the Chicago convention in which many anti-War activists did heap enormous amounts of abuse, including spitting on the National Guardsmen.

It should be noted that this same report you’ve rather moronically decided to dismiss without a shred of rational explanation also harshly criticizes the Chicago police for their behavior and referred to “a police riot.”

In fact, the report was widely cited on college campuses by left-wing professors for it’s criticism of the Chicago police. For those not aware of what I’m referring to.

On September 4, 1968, Milton Eisenhower, chair of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, announced that the commission would investigate the violence at the Chicago convention and report its findings to President Lyndon Johnson. A Chicago lawyer, Daniel Walker, headed the team of over 200 members, who interviewed more than 1,400 witnesses to the events and studied FBI reports and film of the confrontations. The report released on December 1, 1968, characterized the convention violence as a “police riot” and recommended prosecution of police who used indiscriminate violence. The report made clear that the vast majority of police had behaved responsibly, but it said that failure to prosecute the police who misbehaved would further damage public confidence in law enforcement. Chief Judge William Campbell criticized the release of the report before the completion of the grand jury investigation and suggested that the grand jury might need to investigate the motivation for the release. Milton Eisenhower, however, defended the commission’s decision to publish the report because of “widespread interest” in the findings. The report was unvarnished in its presentation of the language used by demonstrators and their provocation of the police, but it also blamed the violence on the city government’s refusal to allow permits.

[Document Source: Rights in Conflict. Convention Week in Chicago, August 25–29, 1968. A Report submitted by Daniel Walker, Director of the Chicago Study Team, to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Introduction by Max Frankel. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968. pp. 1, 10–11.]

And yes, the guardsmen were disciplined and did not respond the repeated attempts by the protesters to provoke them into attacking while the guardsman did.
http://volokh.com/posts/1172052305.shtml

The 1968 Walker Report—Rights in Conflict, the official federal commission report on the 1968 Democratic Convention that came out a couple months after it ended—was made famous by its initial branding of the Chicago police’s spectacular brutality during several periods in the long week as a “police riot.” The behavior of the Chicago police was indeed appalling; the police even targeted the press for beatings (63 of the 300 press working the street were beaten by police).

Antiwar demonstrators spat and threw urine at both police and National Guardsmen. Spitting on police is recounted several times in the book. The Walker Report also describes a torrent of abuse heaped directly at National Guardsmen in uniform in an apparent attempt to goad them into violence. According to accounts, many of the demonstrators were holding cameras, ready to take pictures of guardsmen who reacted violently.

Interestingly, given Professor Jerry Lembcke’s prior stereotyping of women, one policeman stationed at the Hilton reported that the obscene abuses shouted by “women hippies” outnumbered those by men “four to one.” (Rights in Conflict, p. 235) (Of course, it might have been that the police officer just wasn’t accustomed to women being as foul-mouthed as men.) One Guardsman is quoted describing how one male demonstrator went down the line spitting in servicemen’s faces, flicking ashes and lit cigarettes at them, and making religious slurs (Rights in Conflict, p. 213). This represents yet another story debunking Jerry Lembcke’s claim that there were no contemporaneous accounts of servicemen being spat upon (the Walker Report was completed just 53 days after the late August, 1968 convention).

A September 1, 1968 Chicago Tribune account praised the guardsmen who (unlike the police) were credited with showing extreme restraint in the face of extraordinary taunting:

“Newsmen observed that the demonstrators hurled insults at the guardsmen and some spit on them in an attempt to provoke them into action.” (p. 2)

These two accounts tend corroborate in an indirect way one of Bob Greene’s spitting stories in Homecoming. John Kelly, a national guardsman in uniform, was guarding the Conrad Hilton during the 1968 Democratic Convention (p. 130). When a young 2d lieutenant “gave us hell” for joking with the “young female hippies” who were putting flowers in the barrels of their guns, “one of the girls spat right in the lieutenant’s face.” She “melted into the crowd” before they could carry out the order to arrest her. Interestingly, Kelly was pleased with the young woman’s spitting; he wrote: “What she did was just as good as fragging the son of a bitch.”

And it shows that spitting stories do not necessarily feed some psychological need to account for the U.S. losing the war. Further, spitting was claimed to be witnessed by someone who had the anti-brass orientation that Lembcke for some reason thinks is being denied by those who claim that servicemen were spat upon.

Also, more examples from the Walker Report.

Some abuse of guardsmen:
As Guardsmen arrive for the first time at the Hilton: chant of “Pigs, pigs, fascist pigs!” 212
Then chant of “Oink, oink, oink.” 212
Then jeers of “Pigs … sons-a-bitches … f–king pigs … f–king son-of-a-bitching pigs”
Then “Sieg-HEIL! Sieg-HEIL! Sieg-HEIL!” 212
African-American guardsman lt. taunted “mercilessly” as a “tool” of the “bad guys” 213
Calling several Jewish-named guardsmen “Kike” 213
Walking down the line and spitting in guardsmen’s faces 213
Flicking lighted cigarettes at guardsmen 213
Guard subjected to unbelievable abuse without any significant response. 214
To troops: “F–king draft dodgers, too chicken to serve your time in the regular army.” (Walker Report: “Though such taunts went on for about 20 minutes at a time, no response by the Guard was reported.”) 338

Other abuse, mostly of police:
“Pig! …Pig! … Pig!”
“Who’s your wife with now?” 247
“Where’s your wife tonight?” 247
“We’re f–king your wives and daughters while you guys are protecting your city.” 209
Young female pulls up her skirt and says to cop: “You haven’t had a piece in a long time.” 248
To citizens in cars on the street: “How would you like me to f–k your wife?” 276
Chants of “F–k, f–k, f–k.”
“F–k you, pig.”
“Co-k s–kers.”
“Mother f–kers.”
“Fascist Pigs!” 210
“Pig f–kers.” 154
“Shitheads.” 155
“Police are pigs.” 164
“Kill the pigs.” 173
“F–k the pigs.” 173
“Sieg heil, schwein!” 174
“Pigs, Oink, Oink!” 179
“Kill the pig, flush him out, bring him in!” [apparently from Lord of the Flies] 144
“F–k you.” 166
“F–k the pigs.” 224
“Dirty pigs.” 224
“You dirty son-of-a-bitch.” 166
Spitting and screaming insults at the police 235
Spitting on a policeman 338
Police bombarded by Pepsi cans “filled with urine”
Plastic bags full of urine and feces dropped from a 15th floor Hilton suite rented out to some of Eugene McCarthy’s staff and supporters

Anyway, Eluc, apparently believes that not only was Ron Kovic, who is generally viewed as a hero by the anti-war movement, lying when he describes such behavior directed at him.

Now he also believes that the government report on the Chicago convention, which blamed the police for the violence can’t be trusted.

I’m reminded of the truthers condemning the 911 Commission Report or the Kennedy Assassination theorists insisting that Oswald was a patsy.

For his sake Eluc had never ridiculed the truthers.

[Ibn_Warraq]

Anyway, Eluc, I’ll bite.

Exactly why do you think Ron Kovic was lying in Born on the Fourth of July and why do you think the stories chronicled in the Walker report, including those witnessed by Chicago Tribune reporters are false.

Thanks

[Captain_Amazing]

@elucidator

Just for comparisons sake, I rate Daily Kos about 90% accurate and truthful. How does your opinion of Volokh stack. No snark intended or implied, straight question.

That’s not Volokh himself. That’s Jim Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern. As for how the website goes, I’ve found the Volokh Conspiracy to be a fairly fair and accurate, if conservative, legal blog. Volokh tries to discourage too much rhetoric and stick pretty close to the facts, and he provides a pretty good analysis of legal issues.

[Condescending_Robot]

@Ibn_Warraq

Anyway, Eluc, I’ll bite.

Exactly why do you think Ron Kovic was lying in Born on the Fourth of July and why do you think the stories chronicled in the Walker report, including those witnessed by Chicago Tribune reporters are false.

Thanks

Why do you think a report of someone yelling “pig” or “Nazi” at a Chicago police officer proves the claim that a Vietnam veteran was spit on?

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Condescending_Robot

Why do you think a report of someone yelling “pig” or “Nazi” at a Chicago police officer proves the claim that a Vietnam veteran was spit on?

The report refers to soldiers being spat upon. Did you actually read it?

Anyway, Eluc made it clear he doesn’t believe the report, I’m asking him to explain his reasoning.

Anyway, wouldn’t you agree it’s safe to say that people who support Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban probably hate American soldiers who fight in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and are happy to express their displeasure towards them, or do you think it’s absurd to think such a thing?

[Ibn_Warraq]

Anyway, I’m more than a little bored with this argument for a variety of reasons, amongst others that I’m tired about arguing about a war rich white kids made a party out of protesting while poorer and minority kids did the fighting and dying.

Back to the OP,

To a large extent the MIA myth was created by the government which was trying to find a justification to stay in the war long after it had become unpopular.

Starting around IIRC, 1970, the government started reclassifying a lot of people who’d previously been classified as KIA/BNR(killed in action/body not recovered) as MIA.

As a result Americans came to dramatically overestimate the amount of prisoners kept in North Vietnam and consequently when the war ended it became easy to believe that the North Vietnamese had kept 2500 POWs.

Anyone who starts looking at the situation recognizes that the initial classification of KIA/BNR was the correct one.

The majority of the MIAs were airmen who’d been shot down over a dirt poor jungle country. In the movies bailing out of a fighter jet is little problem, but in real life just 15% of all airmen who were captured after bailing out of American aircraft and were repatriated escaped serious injury. The NVA soldiers who captured downed American were, with rare exceptions, not only their captors, but also their saviors who prevented them from dying in the jungle of their injuries or, in some cases, being murdered by furious Vietnamese peasants.

If we were to include all the people who bailed out(including people who never were rescued by the NVA) then the percentage would probably drop well below that.

Activists regularly demanded of North Vietnam a “full accounting” but Vietnam was a dirt-poor jungle country with fairly limited resources. Europe and the US are vastly more urban countries and vastly less forested and they still every now and again stumble upon the bodies or graves of people who died in the Civil War or World War II.

Back home, the POW/MIA myth became a powerful myth because it A)allowed many to see themselves as the good guys rather than the alien invaders and B)played into the anti-government sentiment that flourished after Watergate.

I’d recommend anyone interested in this read MIA, or Mythmaking In America by H. Bruce Franklin.

http://www.amazon.com/MIA-Mythmaking-America-Bruce-Franklin/dp/0813520010/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330412821&sr=8-1

[elucidator]

Ibn, I don’t know Volokh from Adam, nor do I that much care. The story was there, from the cited source, and I only ask the obvious question, being “What the fuck?”. My post was moronic? No, the story is moronic, on the face of it, to anyone who took a moment to think about it.

I notice you spend not a second on that actual story, trying to explain how it might be plausible, but instantly change the subject. Still, its ridiculous! Laughable. In case you missed it…

…One Guardsman is quoted describing how one male demonstrator went down the line spitting in servicemen’s faces, flicking ashes and lit cigarettes at them, and making religious slurs (Rights in Conflict, p. 213)…

This guy lit how many cigarettes? One for each flick of ashes? Well, no, but he’d have to have another one after he launched into somebody’s face, now wouldn’t he? And these guys just stood there and let it happen, as this guy went down the line (how long? We don’t know.). Light, flick, flick, spit, repeat. Ridiculous.

Yet this gem of non-critical thinking is offered with, apparently, a straight face. Not so much as a hint that the creator of this web piece has the least capacity for critical thought, nor expects any from his reader.

Do you buy it? Of course you don’t, as I am willing to accept that you are possessed of the good sense that God gave a goose. So, whats it doing there? This guy must not be blessed with wife and/or girlfriend, they can be very useful in telling someone when they are being an idiot.

…It should be noted that this same report you’ve rather moronically decided to dismiss without a shred of rational explanation…

Didn’t say anything about the Walker Report. And do I really need a rational explanation for dismissing the absurd? Seriously?

And would you mind terribly not stuffing words in my mouth and pulling them back out again? I haven’t said anything about Ron Kovic, don’t intend to, don’t know that much about him. So, if you don’t mind, would you please stop telling me what I think about him? There’s a good fellow.

[Acsenray]

@No_Wikipedia_Cites

I remember news stories from the 1990’s when John MCCain Jr went to Vietnam (back to) to investigate any remaining US POWs there.

Nitpick: I think you mean John McCain III. John McCain Jr. died in 1981.

[Algher]

@elucidator

This guy lit how many cigarettes? One for each flick of ashes? Well, no, but he’d have to have another one after he launched into somebody’s face, now wouldn’t he? And these guys just stood there and let it happen, as this guy went down the line (how long? We don’t know.). Light, flick, flick, spit, repeat. Ridiculous.

Yet this gem of non-critical thinking is offered with, apparently, a straight face. Not so much as a hint that the creator of this web piece has the least capacity for critical thought, nor expects any from his reader.

elucidator - what is so implausible about this?

Quote:
…One Guardsman is quoted describing how one male demonstrator went down the line spitting in servicemen’s faces, flicking ashes and lit cigarettes at them, and making religious slurs (Rights in Conflict, p. 213)…

Protestor walks down a row of Guardsmen who have been told to stay in ranks and not react. This is something they teach you in boot, by the way. You stand in ranks while a DI yells, screams, makes comments about your mom, etc.

Protestor spits on one, keeps walking, flicks some ashes on another, takes another drag, flicks ashes again, and as his cigarette gets to the end flicks the butt at yet another Guardsman. Perfectly plausible.

By the 80s, the worst I had yelled at me was Nazi. There MIGHT have been some trash tossed my platoon’s way as well, but it was hard to tell since we were running in ranks. When a few of us started to react to a little trash and a few choice words, we got our asses chewed by our Sergeant for letting it get to us, for breaking ranks, and for being stupid. So when I read that a Guardsman stood there and took it? Perfectly plausible, and it fits with my experience.

So to cover how poorly the Veteran’s were treated upon return, we have the Homecoming book (I posted a link to excerpts). We have Ron Kovic’s words as well. We have other reports on how Veterans were treated. Is it that hard for you to envision a protestor taking their anger at the war out on the visible symbol of that war? There will ALWAYS be a percentage of a group that goes too far.

That issue is another reason why people would be so quick to believe that POWs were left behind. If veterans were ignored and looked down on at home, if we could do our best to try to forget the war, and if Congress was doing its damnedest to completely withdraw and forget about it, why so implausible that we would leave a few behind. Its not like we knew where they were, nor were we willing to actually conquer the North to find them. So when someone gives a scrap of information from a Buddhist monk that he saw white guys in a prison camp in the 80s - you get Veterans reacting strongly and a cottage industry is born.

[elucidator]

Your explanation for this one incident is strained, but plausible. I would, however, point out that in the context we were offered, no such explanation was deemed necessary. I submit that the most likely explanation is that the reader was expected to swallow the story whole, without any such explanation, as none was offered.

My point is not that no one ever spit on anybody, ever. My point is that the meme that offers this has a common occurrence, one deemed acceptable by the anti-war movement in general, is false and slanderous, and serves a political purpose that gains by portraying dissent as unpatriotic and disloyal. When “spitting on our troops” can be offered offhandedly, casually, as an accepted fact and a common sentiment amongst the anti-war movement, good and honest people are slandered .

If it were so, our political enemies would have trumpeted it to the skies at the time! They would not have waited, the “letters to the editors” pages would have been swamped with outrage. I ask Dopers who are of an age to try and recall if that ever happened. Like Sherlock Holme’s question about the dog that didn’t bark in the night, it is a small but telling point.

And I don’t think this is a manufactured meme, constructed out of whole cloth for nefarious purpose, but nothing more than people believing what they are already inclined to believe.

If it was as you say, then these National Guardsmen reflect the very finest military tradition, in my view, to train for violence and restrain from its use. The irony would be, as you probably already know, that so many young men clamored to be in the National Guard to avoid induction (including a young Yale grad of quite good family). I knew several such myself. So it is entirely possible that the DFH in question was harassing young men who were sympathetic to his position.

But such is the way when a nation goes mad.

[Algher]

Our nation was mad. Why, only recently another Yale grad had to backpedal madly from the slander and libel (since he published a book) that he had repeated about Vietnam Veterans. Amazing how those words and actions of his helped propel him to the Congress, yet would later be dredged up to keep him from higher office.

Our Veterans were scorned at VFW hall. They were scorned in the halls of Congress. They were scorned when applying for jobs. They were scorned by the protestors.

Two veterans in my immediate family (who are still alive) fight both the war and how they were treated on a regular basis. One deals with it in anger towards all things Army, the other in anger towards all things in government. Both lost money, career opportunitiess and respect due to their service. Both remember the lack of support upon return from all areas. Both remember the protestors protesting THEM, not the war.