Um, Jeralyn ...

by hilzoy

Barack Obama:

"One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country's call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated."

Jeralyn Merritt:

"In other words, Obama intends to battle the war-hero McCain by throwing us under the bus."

Um: no. Not unless you were one of the people who did, in fact, shun, demonize, and neglect soldiers who served in an unpopular war.

Look: it was shameful that anyone, anywhere took out their opposition to the war on the troops who fought in it. I thought this was common ground among liberals: we looked back, and while we were proud that we opposed the war in Vietnam, we deeply regretted that anyone had ever confused kids who were drafted, and who didn't have the means to go to college or the connections to pull a stint in the National Guard or whatever, with the people who deserved the blame: namely, those who set the policy. And whether that confusion was common or not, if it existed at all, there was too much of it.

I have been very proud that we have, by and large, not repeated that mistake. I would have thought that we could all just agree that it was a mistake, and get on with the task of not repeating it. Apparently, I was wrong.

***

Also: this is not about throwing boomers under the bus. Obama was making a speech about veterans' benefits. He was moving from a general discussion of troops, their service, and how it should be respected, to a more particular criticism of particular ways in which we have not supported veterans: from Walter Reed and Fort Bragg to homeless vets to excessive bureaucracy at the VA, and ending up with John McCain's failure to support Sen. Webb's 21st Century GI Bill of Rights.

If you happen to be talking to a group of veterans in West Virginia, it's probably a pretty decent bet that your audience tilts conservative, both politically and culturally. If you want them to think again about John McCain, you could do a lot worse than to start with a point they are likely to agree on -- like the claim that it was sad if any returning vets were shunned, demonized and neglected by anyone -- and then link it to what John McCain is doing right now:

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.

McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service. (...)

Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college."

Be very clear about what the concern is here: if we provide enough benefits and opportunities to veterans, they will leave the service.

I might find this convincing if I were sure that we had already done what we owed for our veterans. If, for instance, there were no problems at all with the VA, if we provided generous benefits to everyone, including full college with living expenses, health care, flat screen TVs, whatever anyone might think was necessary, and we were now considering giving each veteran an additional $1,000,000 cash grant on leaving the service, then I might be open to the idea that there is such a thing as making leaving too attractive.

But that's not where we are, and that's not what we're talking about. Presently, benefits don't cover anything like a decent college education. Webb is proposing to cover college at the level of four year public universities. This is not about providing some extra-fancy benefit over and above the requirements of justice and gratitude and decency, which we have already fulfilled. This is about meeting our basic obligations.

That being the case, to worry that meeting them -- doing right by veterans -- might affect retention is all wrong. The way to keep people in the armed forces is by making it an attractive place to be, not by pretending we don't owe veterans more than we are now providing.

Obama's point is: doing this to our veterans is neglecting them, shunning them. If you minded the way veterans were treated before, then mind this as well. It's a good point to make. I cannot believe that Jeralyn is objecting to it.

***

I also liked this, from Obama's speech:

"Abraham Lincoln once said, "I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. But I also like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."

There is no doubt that we are a nation that is deeply proud of where we live. But it is now our generation's task to live in a way that Stanley Dunham lived; to live the way that those heroes at Walter Reed have lived; the way that all those men and women who put on this nation's uniform live each and every day. It is now our task to live so that America will be proud of us. That is true test of patriotism - the test that all of us must meet in the days and years to come."

Amen.

Comments

[jwo]

I have not waded through all the comments, but got far enough to want to yell loudly: "The point that Obama was dealing with is the new phrasing from the right that 'to oppose the war is to be against the troops.'" I am afraid that taking all the references to VN so seriously is really missing what he was trying to do. Both of these right-wing contentions has made great inroads with the audience to whom he was speaking.

I am not giving Obama a free pass here, but have you considered what it must be like to have to go out and speak several times a day for months on end without saying the same things over and over? And to try to tailor your message so that the group that you are speaking to will understand what you are trying to say, all the while worrying about how other groups are going to 'hear' it? I am willing to grant both he and Hillary some slack in this department. (Although I do take the Bosnian-sniper-fire story out of this context.....That seemed to have been a great deal more than 'misspoke.')

[Jon H]

Gary,

For a list of shows with off-kilter Vietnam Vets in their plots, you could always search IMDB. Like this.

Episodes of Barney Miller, Hill Street Blues, and Tales of the Unexpected. Black Sunday (movie), Tracks (1976 movie). Probably more, the search only returned the first 100 matches (though most are false positives and don't really fit.)

[thebewilderness]

No one is blaming the troops now any more than we DFH blamed them then.
It was an accusation made of straw then as now.
The media was just as much a propaganda tool then as it is now.

[Jon H]

"No one is blaming the troops now any more than we DFH blamed them then."

Yeah, I'm sure that never happened, especially not after Kent State.

[duffy]

Well, I got Duffy over here saying a lot of soldiers would like to adopt a "nazi-like approach" to Muslims.

I'm talking specifically about the kill'em all let God sort'em out mentality. Are you saying that this is rarely held view in the military when it comes to Arabs/Muslims?

And unless I'm misremembering, I feel like on several occasions I've read/heard U.S. citizens call for "nuking" Iraqi cities.

Also, what is the point of the hundreds of thousands of tons (and constantly escalating amount) of ordinance dropped on Iraqi cities?

[dr ngo]

Since this thread is generally weaving in and around my areas of experience and expertise, I feel I should say something, but am not quite sure what . . .

(FWIW: Experience - I was in the US Army most of 1968-69, but not in Vietnam, though I had orders there once. Expertise: I taught courses on the Vietnam War intermittently from the mid-1970s to a few years ago.)

Nell: I understand that this pushed your button, but I really think (as you have admitted) that it pushed you into over-reaction, to making statements that you can't fully defend:

But Obama didn't refer to Viet Nam war vets being shunned by just anyone, or by Americans in general (which was what actually happened). He specifically blamed those who opposed the war. No, that's not what he actually said, as others have pointed out.

No one spit on returning troops, period. Again, this is simply not something that you can prove, as others have pointed out.

I hope you can understand that some of the response you presumably hoped to achieve by expressing your genuine, and understandable, discomfort over the political genuflection in the direction of "blame the protestors" is undercut by these rhetorical excesses. I'm certainly not arguing for general self-censorship in ObWi comments, but a little self-awareness might be useful here. What seems to be a more provocative underlying point - that this is an example of how in a political campaign, certain truths are simply "unsayable" - gets lost in the flames. Which is too bad.

Gary: I agree as usual with most of your close reading of what people actually say (we editors have to stick together) and your insistence on documentation. But I hope you realize by now that in asking for proof of the myth of the "crazy/villainous vet" in the postwar decade you are very close to asking for proof that the sun in fact sets in the west. (Of course, if you watched the end of The Green Berets, with John Wayne, where the sun sinks slowly into the South China Sea to the east, you might well be confused.)

If it counts as evidence, in conjunction with my teaching I probably saw just about every Vietnam-related film in the period 1974-1982, and a substantial proportion of primetime TV in those years, and I can vouch for what others have mentioned above: the crazed vet was very much a plot staple in those days. Sometimes more sympathetic, sometimes less, but always terribly terribly affected by what he had gone through.

To be fair to Nell et al., most of these depictions, AFAIK, were NOT in any way directly connected with war protestors or the anti-war left. They were rather the media's effort to exploit what they thought society wanted to hear: that the war had Gone Wrong - carefully ducking the question of whether it was wrong in the first place - and that we, not the Vietnamese, were the primary victims of it.

And besides, scriptwriters are essential lazy, and their imagination gets squeezed dry after a few years of them, so they grab for gimmicks - Amnesia! PSTD! Forgotten Child Abuse - that will explain otherwise nuanced or inexplicable villainy. The crazy vet just happened to be the Flavor Du Decade then.

Finally, some have attempted to distinguish between those US troops who were volunteers and those who were draftees. For those in "the movement," I cannot speak, but looked at from ground/grunt level, it's pretty much a distinction without difference. The majority of "volunteers" that I knew were draft-eligible, and "volunteered" not because they wanted to be in the military (much less because they wanted to kill "gooks") but because that way they had some chance to control the terms under which they were in the service. You could try first for branches of the service less likely to see combat - National Guard (Quayle, Bush), Reserves, Air Force, Navy - but even within the Army and Marines you might be able to specify at the time of enlistment what particular training you would get OR where your first overseas posting would be (but not both).

Thus I - a selective sample of one - after receiving my induction notice from Uncle Sam at Thanksgiving 1967 (FWIW: It started "Greeting," not "Greetings." Odd.) had time to (1) inquire about enlisting in the Air Force (too late); (2) apply to enlist in the Navy (accepted - though I tend to seasickness); and (3) actually enlist in the Army under the Officer Candidate option then available.

So I was technically an "RA" [Regular Army] rather than a "US" [draftee], but only technically. And I was not alone.

I don't know if any of this helps. Sorry.

[hilzoy]

dr ngo: it does. And thanks so much.

(ps: if you want to critique my attempt at a quick explanation of why Marcos was so dreadful, go for it. ;) If you haven't found it yet, it's in McCain and Charlie Black 1.)

[Dwight Whayle]

This nonsense that any of us "peace, love waterbed" types spit on returning Nam vets has all the earmarks of a disinformation campaign. My guess: it got concocted at a late night CReEP mentoring session between Donald Segretti and proteges Karl Rove and Lee Atwater -- probably over pizza charged to McGovern ("As in 'screaming memie', Don ?" "I read it as 'memo' in your memo, now I don't know what you're talking about.")

It certainly resonates with the "ultragame" mindset portrayed in Rick Perlstein's Nixonland.

[Gary Farber]

Is Gary really asking for cites for the Vietnam Vet who can't fit into society?

The A team.

That is all.

You found the portrayal of vets in The A Team to be offensively harsh, and you feel that Vietnam vets should have found the program offensive in that regard?

Okay.

[Gary Farber]

"I sincerely doubt that people will blame soldiers for the war after January 20, 2009."

To be clear about my opinion, that idea makes no sense whatever to me, and I see no basis in fact for it, and about 1% possibility of translating into reality. Offhand, I can't think of a situation in history in which a democratic society ever put the blame for a bad war on the grunts.

If someone can name three examples of that, or even one, ever taking place, I might start to think the notion had some connection to reality, but absent that, I think it's as likely that we'll start storming gun factories because we want to blame M-4s for instigating a war.

The whole point of the Dolchstoßlegende is that it was the soldiers, and the citizenry they were part of, and their families, that blamed the civilian and military leadership for letting them down by "not letting us win the war."

Not, you know, vice versa.

Historically, responsibility for a war is seen as held by those with responsibility for it, whether it be the king, the lord, the Prime Minister's cabinet, the President, or the overall government.

"Jesus Christ, if people are going to resort now to line-by-line 'fisking' of each others' comments every single time they post"

Phil, if I might observe, "fisking" is doing running sarcastic commentary on a piece, not asking questions and engaging in a dialogue with the writer. Those are two very different things. One could be offensive, and the other is what we're here for.

(Sure, someone could combine the two approaches, and lean in the direction of being too obnoxious, but that's yet a third thing.)

"While I was looking for this on the Web, I did notice the definite pattern that I assume motivates Gary's demand"

I beg your pardon, but I made no "demand." I wrote: "What programs, specifically? I assume that with a "whole decade of prime-time television" to call upon, naming three specific programs will be no problem whatever. I may wish to Netflix them, or Hulu.com them. Thanks for your help!"

That's a query, and an invitation to help me. Not a "demand." It's perfectly fine if you didn't wish to respond; you merely would not have made an assertion that you could support. People do that all the time, and we each draw whatever conclusions that we draw. It's a free choice.

"As I said, I am against blanket condemnations, but it is important to acknowledge that behaviour similar to that of Calley's unit was widespread."

It's even more important to be specific about accusations, and not tar innocent people with assumptions of guilt and accusations of unspecified war crimes. That's libelous and offensive and irresponsible.

I am, for whatever good my word does me, quite well read on war crimes, a little hobby of mine, including in the Vietnam war, a subject I do know a fair amount about, and I first acquired the original hardcover copy of the "Winter Soldier Report" in 1971; I'm about as familiar as any lay person with the details of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam, and I have a pretty close idea of which units were doing what, when, during which month, every year of the war.

And I know just how ludicrous it is to assert that a division, for god's sake, as opposed to a company, or a regimental combat team, or any number of smaller units, was homogenously engaged in anything.

If you'd like to educate people about U.S. war crimes, great: be specific. Don't slur everyone in a division just because you don't actually know what specifics you're talking about, I suggest. Want to educate people? Educate them about the details all you like. More power to you.

But indict those there's reason to indict, and don't indict people you don't know were guilty of anything, I suggest; that's usually how we approach this whole "justice" thing, as I understand it.

Incidentally, does the middle section of this seem at all familiar? The piece with this link and story excerpted?

"As I said, I am against blanket condemnations,"

Good; that's all I'm saying one should be careful not to engage in.

[Gary Farber]

Also, the Tiger Force.

Tangentially. (Even more more tangentially, but a piece of informative good writing. Oh, drat, now only a sample of the piece is available.)

[Gary Farber]

"Christian Appy and Alexander Bloom, in Long Time Gone, cite Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, and Ironside as shows that used the Vietnam vet as a stock villian."

Thanks. I'd be curious to see the episodes (again, in some cases), to see how often the vet is a villain, and how often the vet is blamed and found to be innocent.

"Magnum PI episode Wave Goodbye - A Vietnam veteran, who's suffering terrible psychological pain from the war, is the lead suspect in the murder of a young female surf champion."

I'll bet a nicket he turned out to be innocent. Which would be the opposite of your claim. How many tv episodes dealt with Vietnam vets who turned out to be good people, after initially being assumed to be villains, or troubled souls who couldn't be helped? Surely if we're looking at the image of the Vietnam vet on American tv in the Seventies and Eighties, we want to look at the whole picture, and not just cherry-pick, right? So what's the overall balance of portrayals, to your knowledge? Do you have a pointer to some clear information on this, or at least, what would your own opinion be, absent actual data?

[Gary Farber]

"This is wrong. It doesn't matter what some dude from Finland says on the internets; the US is going to treat its vets like crap because we've always done that in the last half century."

"Half century"? Go longer. Further. (Tangentially.) At least this far back for the U.S.

[Gary Farber]

"For a list of shows with off-kilter Vietnam Vets in their plots, you could always search IMDB. Like this."

That's not the question, thanks. At issue isn't the existence of Vietnam vets in U.S. tv shows in the Seventies/Eighties. It's how often was the Vietnam vet portrayed unfairly and unsympathetically as a crazed psycho, rather than as a good guy or sympathetic character.

"Are those who make the demand unfailingly supportive of teachers? Of DMV workers? Of cops? Of EMTs?"

Bruce, only one of those categories puts their life at risk every time they go out to work (not all soldiers do, of course, but those in Iraq and Afghanistan do, though still to quite different degrees depending on their job, to be sure), and cops still are at vastly lesser order of risk of wounding or death, by orders of magnitude, than a soldier is.

That's the difference. Not that there aren't many invaluable and underappreciated and necessary jobs in society.

I tend to think a DMV worker puts themselves not quite at the same risk as someone going on an excursion in Afghanistan.

[Frank]

Wow Gary 5 comments in a row. Is that a record for you?

[Gary Farber]

"No one is blaming the troops now any more than we DFH blamed them then."

Yeah, I'm sure that never happened, especially not after Kent State.

We blamed the Ohio National Guard, and/or its members, for engaging the U.S. in Vietnam?

Really?

I remember "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today," and I don't recall any protests demanding that the Ohio National Guard lead us out of the war. I don't recall any such blaming of the war's existence on any individual state's National Guard commanders, or the troops as a whole.

Were there marches demanding that the troops decide to get out, rather than that Congress and the President get us out, that I missed?

There are two different questions here:

1) Were troops individually at times assumed to be guilty of war crimes, and treated as such by some people purely by assumption, during the later Vietnam War era? The answer to that is "yes."

2) Were individual members of the military, or units as a whole, held responsiblity for the decision to go to war, or the decision to not withdraw sooner?

Not hardly much, so far as I know, though obviously there are always some individual cases of anything. But did the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens, and U.S. war protesters, a) primarily blame the President and Congress for the war as a whole, or did they b) blame the troops as individuals? The answer is clearly "a," they blamed Johnson, Nixon, and Congress.

duffy: "I'm talking specifically about the kill'em all let God sort'em out mentality. Are you saying that this is rarely held view in the military when it comes to Arabs/Muslims?"

Are you saying this is a view held more widely by members of the military than by U.S. citizens? Do you have any data to point to on that?

"Also, what is the point of the hundreds of thousands of tons (and constantly escalating amount) of ordinance dropped on Iraqi cities?"

Rightly or wrongly, wisely or not, they're decided on as individual fire missions. We're not randomly carpet-bombing, so far as I know. HTH.

"(FWIW: It started "Greeting," not "Greetings." Odd.)"

Looooxury! There was a war on. There was a shortage. Be grateful you got at least a single greeting. Why, when my grandfather fought in the Great War, he had to make do with just a "g," and he was glad to have it! He had to go to war before the war began, and he liked it!

"Wow Gary 5 comments in a row. Is that a record for you?"

No.

[Gary Farber]

"...and cops still are at vastly lesser order of risk of wounding or death, by orders of magnitude, than a soldier is."

"Than a soldier in a war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan is," that should read. A U.S. soldier stationed in South Korea or Germany or Okinawa, etc., isn't at remotely as much risk, of course, despite training accidents.

[liberal japonicus]

After a farbercommentfest (it seems more appropriate as a single lexical item without spaces), it might be a mistake to note that I merely meant the A team comment to be an amusing aside. I thought that the brevity might act as a signal that it was not meant as a serious comment, so my apologies that it was unclear. Offensively harsh, no, offensively stupid, well, a little.

[CharleyCarp]

I was going to remind Gary of the time George Washington put on his glasses to read a speech, and thereby prevented a military coup, but his links will undoubtedly cover that.

The man who engages in violence for a noble cause but is in the course of doing so desensitized that he is unable to resume normal civilian life, is probably as old as literature. And for good reason: the human animal is such that a non-trivial percentage of those engaged in war end up with psychological scars. As the Doc notes above, it's easy, and Hollywood is all about easy.

Speaking of which: Easy Rider.

[Gary Farber]

On The A-Team: "Offensively harsh, no, offensively stupid, well, a little."

I always thought the premise of the show could have made for a pretty neat tv show, if only it had been aimed at grown-ups, rather than 11-year-olds.

(For instance, nobody was ever actually shot or hurt; weapons universally caused cars to have a piledriver shoot out from under them and cause them to flip, but the driver and passengers always climbed safely out; guns could only shoot over people's heads and around their feet. Etc.,etc.)

The final season did take the concept a tad more seriously, but by then it was too late.

I would have liked to have seen, say, Steven Bochco, or David Milch, as show runner, rather than Stephen J. Cannell.

But nobody asked my opinion, more's the pity.

[liberal japonicus]

The man who engages in violence for a noble cause but is in the course of doing so desensitized that he is unable to resume normal civilian life, is probably as old as literature...As the Doc notes above, it's easy, and Hollywood is all about easy.

Though it is interesting that _The Best Years of our Lives_ might be considered to be a pioneer in that regard. Of course, I think films about the cost of war are relatively late arrivals on the Hollywood scene, though La Grande Illusion was nominated for the Oscar for best picture in 1938. Double checking that, I find that the whole movie is downloadable at tesla.liketelevision.com

[Jim Parish]

All Quiet on the Western Front won the Best Picture Oscar in 1930.

[Jim Parish]

Although, come to think of it, the costs of war it depicts aren't quite the ones under discussion. Sorry.

[Bruce Baugh]

Gary, the lethality depends a lot on circumstances. Certainly, for instance, our family friends who taught in Watts routinely faced much more violence than, say, the vast majority of quartermasters - and this isn't hypothetical, given the damage our friends suffered themselves, and that their colleagues did. Which was my point, really.

[felix culpa]

I’ve thought of linking this a number of times, but since I can’t bear to watch it myself and didn’t want to cause unnecessary distress, I held off. (Originally came my way from a couple of facebook friends.)
It seems (remotely) pertinent here, and I imagine my sensibilities are more delicate than most, so here, FWIW, scenes from Iraq.

[Mis En Place]

No one spit on returning troops, period. Again, this is simply not something that you can prove, as others have pointed out.

Many misrepresent what Lembcke has said. His thesis wasn't that spitting on vets never, ever happened. I'm sure there is an instance where a protester may have spat on a returning vet. Instead, his research found the 'spat upon vet' was largely a myth or urban legend.

He also found this myth to have existed in other wars; French troops after the loss of Indochina, German soldiers after WWI, etc.

[Slartibartfast]

German soldiers after WWI, etc

Well, I dunno about spitting, but in Borchert's Draußen vor der Tür a soldier comes home to his wife and finds that she's got a strapping young man moved in with her, doing the laundry.

I think I'd prefer to be spitted.

[Slartibartfast]

All of the above is based on a memory from high school German class, roughly 30 years ago. So it might be accuracy-challenged.

[Sebastian]

"Instead, his research found the 'spat upon vet' was largely a myth or urban legend."

No. He claims to have found that incidents of spitting on vets didn't find their way into newspaper reports, which is a rather more narrow claim. And also wrong.

I linked above quotes from a book of interviews with vets who were spat upon. here it is again.

After what he says was a short attempt at research, Lindgren found a number of contemporaneous accounts which he documents here :

Contrary to Lembcke�s claims there were many accounts in the 1966-1972 period claiming spitting on servicemen.

For example, on October 6, 1967, John F. Geyer and Bill Bowers, two sailors in uniform on a ten-day leave before shipping out, were accosted and taunted by a group of about ten young men while leaving a high-school football game in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Bowers heard one of them say, �We�re going to get a couple of sailors.� Then one of the band of attackers spat at Geyer, hitting both Geyer and Bowers. Geyer, who was a former high-school football lineman, swung at his attacker. The attacker then stabbed Geyer in the side with a knife. After two hospital stays, Geyer fully recovered. In January and February1968, Geyer�s 18-year-old attacker was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced
to a reformatory. All this is laid out in a series of stories in the
local newspaper, the Bucks County Courier Times.

This was one of many stories published in American newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which American servicemen were spat on by citizens or anti-war protesters or the opposite: pro-war servicemen or citizens spitting on anti-war protesters. (Because Lembcke recognizes the existence of the stories of people spitting on protesters, I'll leave that substantial body of evidence out of this post.)

Among the journalists who gave first-hand accounts of spitting on soldiers was James Reston, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Spitting was one of the actions tame enough for Reston to describe in his New York Times front page story covering the October 21-22, 1967 Washington anti-war demonstrations: It is difficult to report publicly the ugly and vulgar provocation of many of the militants.
They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. Many of the signs carried by a small number of militants . . . are too obscene to print.�

A May 16, 1970 story in the Pomona Progress Bulletin recounted how on May 15, Col. Bowen Smith, head of Claremont Men�s College�s ROTC program, was spat on by protesters as he went to his campus office.

Many newspapers carried a July 21, 1971 AP story about a Northwestern University student, apparently under surveillance by the FBI for many months, who had been observed spitting on a mid-shipmen in uniform.

She denied that she had done it (not that a mid-shipman wasn�t spat upon by a woman).

Several newspapers, including the June 18, 1969 Panama News, printed an interview with General Chapman of the U.S. Marines, in which he confirmed stories of physical abuse, including spitting. According to Chapman, a recruiter is invited on campus by the administration, but students have been allowed to enter the area set aside for the Marine recruiter. They stepped on his hat, smashed cigarettes, spit at him and insulted him. Frequently the recruiters are young officers or NCOs who have served in Vietnam. They are trained to suffer this
abuse in silence. �Marines are under very strict orders not to react, not to talk back, not to fight back. Just to stand in dignified silence.

Indeed, according to an August 27, 1967 New York Times article by Neil Sheehan, as part of military training in the national guard, soldiers were actually being drilled by being spat on, abuse to which they were instructed not to respond.

One of the more amazing stories of protester abuse of veterans (and one veteran�s violent response) were the attacks on Congressional Medal of Honor winners. In a March 14, 1968 column in the Bucks County Courier Times (and elsewhere), the head of the Congressional Medal of
Honor Society, WWII Medalist Thomas J. Kelly, reveals that even Medal of Honor winners have been abused and spat upon as �monsters. Kelly recounts how, in an appalling lack of decency, about 200
anti-war protesters showed up to harass the Medal of Honor winners at
their annual dinner, held one year in Beverly Hills. Most Medalists were able to dodge the hecklers, but WWII Medalist James Conners was unable to avoid a particularly obnoxious man yelling, �Killer, killer,
killer.� Conners decked him.

Several articles, such as in the August 3, 1969 Odessa American, refer to anti-war students spitting on ROTC uniforms, without being entirely clear whether the students are in them at the time.

With all this documented spitting going on, not surprisingly there were many more discussions by politicians and writers of letters to the editor complaining about militants spitting on the military.
Indeed, one might say that people at the time were almost obsessed with spitting: in just a day of searching, I found dozens of stories about spitting on flags, spitting on police, spitting on the military, and spitting on protesters. Responsible anti-war activists, such as Allard Lowenstein implored students who opposed the war to stop all the spitting (May 14, 1969 WAPO). When California Governor Ronald Reagan insulted another politician with a crack about spitting on the sidewalk, columnist Drew Pearson (November 25, 1967) suggested that perhaps Reagan had a �spitting gap� as big as his �credibility gap.�

The tipping point seemed to come with the White House�s efforts to found a counterforce to John Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In early June 1971, there was a huge press push to trumpet the new organization headed by (among others) John O�Neill (later of Swift
Boat fame) and Jim Minarik. The first paragraph of the most common story included a claim by Minarik that he walked out of doors in his uniform and he was twice spat upon.

Over the following eight months, there was an explosion of concern about the shabby treatment of veterans returning from Vietnam, discussions in which some version of Minarik's story seemed to resonate. In July 1971, a month after Minarik's story hit, Birch Bayh was spat on in a Florida airport by a man reported to be a pro-war
Vietnam veteran. Bayh's attacker was neither arrested, nor(apparently) questioned by the police.

In August, under a contract with the Veterans Administration, Harris conducted a poll of Vietnam-era veterans, employers, and the general public to assess how veterans were adjusting to life at home. The
study would be released in January 1972 to much handwringing.

In the December 11, 1971, Stars and Stripes, the brilliant behavioral
scientist Norman Zinberg wrote about the three weeks he spent that fall in Vietnam studying heroin addiction for the DOD. By then, the stories of harassment and spitting were so engrained in the minds of
soldiers that they used them as excuses for their addictions. Zinberg writes about a difference from earlier wars:

The society which sent the soldier to fight not only does not reward him for his participation, but in fact is often hostile to him. EM (Enlisted men) repeatedly told me bitter and poignant stories (some of them undoubtedly apocryphal about two types of letters they received from home).

One would be from a buddy who would report that he had walked down a street in �The World� still in uniform and somebody had harassed or even spat on him. The other type of letter, described even more bitterly, would be from a civilian wanting to know, Have you really killed any babies?�

Note that by late 1971, the spitting story (in a form much like Minarik�s) had become such a cliche that Zinberg probably correctly surmised that more a few tellings of it are not literally true.

In any event, by the fall of 1971 the story of the spat upon serviceman was both well known and much written about. Lembcke's first and second arguments are simply wrong: Stories of gob-covered servicemen started appearing in the press when anti-war protesters started spitting on them in the late 1960s, not around 1980

Lindgren also has a large number of other posts on the subject here

In short, the idea that the Vietnam-era spitting reports were a myth created in the 1980s appears to be effectively an urban legend.

There were numerous contemperaneous reports. Why Lembke couldn't find them is mysterious but Lindgren has a good guess here:

In my first, somewhat speculative post on the stories about servicemen and veterans being spat upon during the Vietnam era, I suggested that perhaps Professor Jerry Lembcke had not fully understood the limitations of LEXIS/NEXIS, the most popular service for news searches (a problem NEXIS shares with WESTLAW). Because in NEXIS the full texts of most of the major newspapers start about 1982, NEXIS is effective for searching 1983 to the present, but is usually not useful for pre-1979 events and is of only marginal utility for 1979-82 searches.

[Gary Farber]

"I linked above quotes from a book of interviews with vets who were spat upon. here it is again."

Sebastian, the only accounts that are worth a spit as historical testimony are contemporary accounts. Not accounts written thirty years later by partisans of any side.

Do you have any cites that mean anything, that is, accounts written the week or month an event happened?

I'm not sure what's actually at issue. The claim that "No one spit on returning troops, period" is deranged, and who would argue that seriously? As to how frequently it did or didn't happen, has anyone here made a serious or relevant argument on that issue, one way or another?

It's like people see the word "spit" in proximity to "Vietnam" and start reflexively reguritating some past argument they had on some tape loop. What's the actual debate here in this thread on this topic?

[Sebastian]

Gary, you apparently didn't bother reading the whole comment unless you believe that newspaper reports from 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1971 don't count as contemporary accounts. I understand it was long, but snarky 'the only accounts that are worth a spit as historical testimony' responses look rather silly unless you have an odd view of contemporary accounts.

And you're wrong in any case. Interviews of people actually spit on would count as primary research historical testimony in any history department.

[hilzoy]

I guess I just assume that it is overwhelmingly likely that some vets were spit on, and also that some accounts of vets being spit on were false. (My basic view of human nature: for any claim of the form: someone did X, where X is something that a lot of people would have had an opportunity to do, X is likely to be true; likewise, for any claim Y that has been made with any frequency, and that fits in with and sort of gratifies a deeply held view, it is very likely that the claim "someone claimed Y when Y was not true" is quite likely to be right.)

[Mis En Place]

Not to put too fine point on it, I find many of the instances cited by Lindgren to be inconclusive, at best. An altercation at a HS football game? It happens, there appears to be little to indicate this might have been driven by anti-war fervor. Sit in the cheap seats at MSG wearing some other jersey than the Rangers and you'll understand.

What I find incredible is the notion of returning servicemen--some combat veterans--meekly accepting being spat upon or otherwise abused without an altercation.

Lembcke's response to Lindgren:

http://www.slate.com/id/2159470/sidebar/2159648/

[dnfree]

I personally did not blame soldiers during the Viet Nam era, but do you remember the Buffy Sainte-Marie song "The Universal Soldier"? It blames the soldiers but also those who send the soldiers to fight, both leaders and citizens.

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Buffy Sainte-Marie
© Caleb Music-ASCAP

I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

[Dan]

Maybe Jeralyn forgot that answering a call to duty includes the draft. When a citizen joins after being drafted they are answering their call to duty. Instead of running away like some coward. This just reminds me of how selfish the boomers are. I wish Obama would throw you all under the bus. The sooner the boomers start collecting their pensions and social security checks and gets out stops their endless bickering the better for all of us.

[hilzoy]

Dan: the posting rules here ban incivility to commenters. Please respect them.

Boomers, like vets, are a large and disparate group of people. No doubt some of them are selfish, but making a claim like that about an entire group of people is, to my mind, exactly as indefensible as saying that vets are all selfish, and it's indefensible for the same reasons.

[Gary Farber]

"Gary, you apparently didn't bother reading the whole comment"

I read what you linked to, Sebastian.

It's a pretty long comment, so I'll resist the temptation to paste all of it in. But I read all of it. Did I miss the contemporary accounts, or did you not, in fact, direct us to spend our time reading that whole comment?

If the former, my apologies, and please direct my attention to them. If the latter, and there aren't any there, I'd like my time back, please.

"And you're wrong in any case. Interviews of people actually spit on would count as primary research historical testimony in any history department."

Sure, we should all just solicit as many accounts as possible of what people with axes to grind have to say about what allegedly happened to them thirty years ago about a controversial claim. That'll settle it.

MMVaries on that.

As it happens, unless someone can put forward a statistically reliable method for giving any kind of remotely accurate clue as to just how often or infrequently spitting happened, I fail to understand the significance of anecdotes. Can you explain it to me, please?

Again: I'm not sure what's actually at issue. The claim that "No one spit on returning troops, period" is deranged, and who would argue that seriously? As to how frequently it did or didn't happen, has anyone here made a serious or relevant argument on that issue, one way or another?

It's like people see the word "spit" in proximity to "Vietnam" and start reflexively reguritating some past argument they had on some tape loop. What's the actual debate here in this thread on this topic?

[Sebastian]

"Not to put too fine point on it, I find many of the instances cited by Lindgren to be inconclusive, at best. An altercation at a HS football game? It happens, there appears to be little to indicate this might have been driven by anti-war fervor."

Except that they were identified as looking to get some sailors. And that the local reporter, who might be expected to know about local customs, seemed to think otherwise.

And that's one. How did you get to 'many'?

Did you discount the NYT report? (reported 1967)

The General's interview? (reported 1969)

Zinberg's account of what multiple GIs told him? (reported 1971)

The Medal of Honor incident? (reported 1968)

The Minarik account? (reported 1971)

The Northwestern incident? (reported 1971)

The Bowen Smith incident? (reported 1970)

Are you discounting anti-war activist Allard Lowenstein asking students who opposed the war to stop the spitting? (reported 1969)

And that is just what made the newspaper and that Lindgren could later find.

"What I find incredible is the notion of returning servicemen--some combat veterans--meekly accepting being spat upon or otherwise abused without an altercation."

This suggests you didn't read the whole thing as there are two incidents reported as involving non-meek responses.

[Sebastian]

"It's a pretty long comment, so I'll resist the temptation to paste all of it in. But I read all of it. Did I miss the contemporary accounts, or did you not, in fact, direct us to spend our time reading that whole comment?"

You missed the contemporary accounts. They are found in the blockquoted portion here . I don't really know how you missed it, as they are found immediately below the section of my comment that you quoted.

And I have no idea why you are being so snarky when I have already provided the information you requested, and in fact did so before you requested it.

[david kilmer]

"My basic view of human nature: for any claim of the form: someone did X, where X is something that a lot of people would have had an opportunity to do, X is likely to be true; likewise, for any claim Y that has been made with any frequency, and that fits in with and sort of gratifies a deeply held view, it is very likely that the claim "someone claimed Y when Y was not true" is quite likely to be right."

That is so true. I'd also say that if you call the claim about Y Z, then the claim that someone claimed Z when Z wasn't true is also likely to be true. As long as you're not talking about a particular instance.

[Nell]

@dr ngo at 12:15am: Thanks, I needed that.

Slarti, thanks for the Lindgren excerpts. The claim that no one opposing the war ever spit on a Viet Nam vet was rash and unnecessarily strong. I retract it.

Far up the thread, I acknowledged that Charley Carp articulated the essence of what rankled in Obama's comments, that a lot more disrespect and violence were directed to opponents of the war than to supporters of or participants in it..

It's a seemingly unavoidable feature of electoral politics, especially on the presidential level, that no candidate with a realistic chance to win is ever going to tell unpleasant truths about our wars of aggression once they've begun. (Or unpleasant truths in general, but the war issue is particularly sensitive because of its scale and the way it cuts against the whole national self-image.)

Anyone who's done electoral work as long as I have should have learned that by now. So I'm never really surprised or disappointed when it happens -- but I can't seem to let go of the anger.

Reflecting on it, it seems that the source is a wound that's never healed in my mind and heart. With my generation, I grew up wholeheartedly believing in the national narrative of the best country in the world, which not only enjoys freedom and democracy at home but supports it around the world.

Contradictions in the inspiring story appeared to me at an early age, starting with the legally racially segregated schools I attended. Other events during my childhood raised more questions (Bay of Pigs, Kennedy assassination and subsequent live-on-TV murder of Oswald, assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.). The Viet Nam war, and the response of the government and political system to opposition to it, ripped the story into little shreds and made it impossible for me to believe it ever again.

The collaborative effort in the post-Viet Nam war years by politicians, media, and much of American society to rebuild the story and bury not only the questions but especially the answers briefly visible in the mid-1970s -- well, that flushed the shreds of the story down the toilet. At the same time, that remarkable backlash/transformation made clear that U.S. political work of any kind had to contend with extremely powerful forces of self-deception.

That tricky dance gets maximally difficult in a presidential election year, when the selective focus necessary to maintain enthusiasm for the process spreads beyond the candidates themselves and affects one's friends, previously respected writers and commenters, and, ultimately, to the extent one takes part in campaigning -- one's own self.

That's true for any presidential campaign; it goes double for elections taking place in the context of yet another "unpopular" war (read: unwinnable, costly and seemingly endless war of choice about which the public has a bad conscience).

[Mis En Place]

Sebastian: I assure you I read Lindgren's screed and I find it underwhelming. Soldiers in basic getting spat upon as part of their training? If--and it's a big if--this actually occured, it has exactly no bearing on Lembke's research.

As to citing two instances where there were altercations, one is vague as to the actual intent and the other is quite doubtful.

I'm sure some traveller has awakened in a tub of ice in a hotel room with a fresh bandage over where one of his kidneys used to be, but it's not the all-pervasive threat so many have claimed.

[Gary Farber]

"You missed the contemporary accounts."

Sebastian, you wrote:

We've had this discussion a number of times before. The spitting thing may or may not have been common, but it wasn't a myth. See the discussion in this comment which quotes a large number of Vietnam vets who claim that they were personally spit on,

Then you again wrote:

I linked above quotes from a book of interviews with vets who were spat upon. here it is again.

I read through the whole damn thing. And then, since you've now repeatedly insisted again and again that there are contemporary accounts there, I've skimmed it again, and again, and again. That's a read, and four returns.

Did you or did you not repeatedly direct us to these cites as relevant?

Yes, I didn't go on with the rest of your cites, after having spent all this time, since I'm waiting for you to clarify what the relevance is, before I waste yet more of my time reading irrelevant stuff that goes on at great length.

And if you think it's not long, I'll just paste the damn thing in here and ask yet again why you keep insisting we should read it, over and over and over again.

If you're now saying it's a waste of time to read what you've repeatedly said we should read, fine. And, as I said, you owe me a small chunk of time that I gave over to trusting that your links were relevant.

I'm snarky because I've got better things to do with my time than go round and round like this.

And since twice wasn't enough to get you to answer, let's try a third time: I'm not sure what's actually at issue. The claim that "No one spit on returning troops, period" is deranged, and who would argue that seriously? As to how frequently it did or didn't happen, has anyone here made a serious or relevant argument on that issue, one way or another?

It's like people see the word "spit" in proximity to "Vietnam" and start reflexively reguritating some past argument they had on some tape loop. What's the actual debate here in this thread on this topic?

And for the second time: Sure, we should all just solicit as many accounts as possible of what people with axes to grind have to say about what allegedly happened to them thirty years ago about a controversial claim. That'll settle it.

MMVaries on that.

As it happens, unless someone can put forward a statistically reliable method for giving any kind of remotely accurate clue as to just how often or infrequently spitting happened, I fail to understand the significance of anecdotes. Can you explain it to me?

Thanks.

[Sebastian]

Gary, it is in the first blockquoted section of my 12:57 comment. Not the first link of the 12:57 comment, the first blockquoted section.

You have now been a complete A@$#% 3 times now when I have already provided summaries of 8 separate newspaper accounts from the 1960s and 1970s. And I did so before you even asked the first time.

Other people on the thread have commented on it, and I linked the comment on this thread at 2:41 so I know it isn't all just my imagination.

I really can't help you any more than that.

"Sure, we should all just solicit as many accounts as possible of what people with axes to grind have to say about what allegedly happened to them thirty years ago about a controversial claim."

I didn't. I provided 10 contemporaneous newspaper accounts, 8 of which are clearly pertinent. I ALSO provided a link to quotes from researched and published book in which a Chicago Times journalist interviewed over 60 vets who said they were spit upon. You seem to be focusing exclusively on the book. I have no idea why.

Even if I had only provided the book, a journalist interviewing 60+ people for their first hand accounts is exactly what you do for good history. When it is joined by 8-10 contemporaneous accounts--which I provided even before you raised the issue--you willingness to engage in repeated snark is just mystifying.

[Nell]

I posted the comment at 3:16 above before I'd seen dr ngo's excellent guest post.

(Had I copied and saved my comment before hitting 'post', I'd probably have posted before dr ngo's essay appeared and not had to make this note. But as happens too often, I had to recompose it after it was eaten by some combination of Typepad failure and the loss of connection to my crappy dialup provider.)

Note to self: copy and save any comment longer than four lines before hitting 'preview' or 'post'.

[Ugh]

Breaking - Edwards to endorse Obama.

[dr ngo]

I hope that a little of the confusion and rancor may be taken out of this discussion if it is pointed out, gently, that Gary and Sebastian place themselves at different junctures in this lengthy discourse.

Gary says: The claim that "No one spit on returning troops, period" is deranged, and who would argue that seriously?

The answer was, clearly, Nell. Although she has since withdrawn this statement, she put it out there, and it gathered enough support to make it seem worth confuting.

Gary himself confuted it briefly at 10:08 AM on the 13th: This is a claim that obviously can't be made. It just can't. Nell, are you feeling okay this morning?

With that, he seems to feel that the topic is no longer on the table. End of story. If there were a Chairman of this Board, s/he could rule all other comments on it out of order. This - if I may temporarily violate the prohibition on mind-reading - is what Gary appears to feel has been done, or ought to have been done.

However Sebastian, among others, feels/felt that the statement, or something like it, is still out there and requires a more detailed rebuttal, which he has thoughtfully provided. It does the job, IMHO.

If one feels that particular claim is dead ("not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead") then Sebastian's efforts are a work of superogation indeed, which Gary's later remarks imply. Out of order!

If, however, it still floats around, zombie-like, even after Nell's retraction, then Sebastian has a point. More precisely, he is hammering home a point previously made by Gary himself (inter alia), and we all know that Hammering Home a Point is what the Interwubs were created for.

My advice to both - hardly new on ObWi - is to accept these differences in situational perspective and lighten up.

Gary: Sebastian is trying to put to rest a view which, however "deranged" it may be, has actually been expressed on this thread. If you've moved on, fine; let him do it. No harm, no foul.

Sebastian: Gary is just being Gary. Need anything more be said? (And yes, newspaper accounts from the period are sufficient to refute Lembke's claim, at least the extreme version of it, and thus call into question his research. The interviews are in a slightly different category.) He has moved on, and queries, querulously, whether your intervention gets us farther ahead, whereas you are still back there Hammering Home. Different locations, but both reasonable perspectives.

I for one am willing to: (1) stipulate that it cannot be reasonably held that NO spitting on Vietnam vets (by anti-war activists) took place; and (2) posit that we simply don't have enough information to assess how often such incidents occured, except that they were almost undoubtedly rarer in reality than in "memory." (Especially when "memory" is augmented, as it has been over the past 30+ years, by political as well as personal agendas.)

Could you both agree on those propositions?

And then go on to a Group Hug?

Followed - nay, accompanied - by Refreshments?

[hilzoy]

Group hug! Yes!

*hugs group*

*especially hugs dr ngo*

[section9]

Just a quick prediction.

You won't have to worry about any separation from the military and society. Obama is going to bring back the Draft.

I can almost guarantee this. It will be called "National Service" (a la "Starship Troopers", people out of High School will have choices, but there will be lots of goodies for people who carry M-4's) and people will have other options (Teacher Corps, CCC, etc). But I guarantee you, the Obama Administration will bring back the Draft.

Naturally, this won't happen until we are out of Iraq, or down to a managable level, say, two or three maneuver brigades. By the way, you'll all be for it, since a Democratic President will be proposing it. It will be like Nixon going to China.

Not until after Midterms, though. It will be peddled as a way to "reconnect" young people to their country and to "each other". Antiwar Baby Boomers will be all for sending their grandkids to Boot Camp because they think it will "straighten them out" and get them away from the X-Box. Besides, it will be one less mouth for them to feed.

Hey LTNixon, did you finish those MRE's yet?

[Sebastian]

Actually I think it is just that Gary is confusing the stuff in the first link (the book) with stuff in the second link (the description of the newspaper articles). I quoted only from the articles, but I suspect he didn't bother to read the blockquoted material at all thinking that it was the same as in the first link.

And I have no idea why Nell, kind of off white, Thomas Nephew, Cala, and Mis in Place seem to think it is important to believe (and repeatedly assert) that the spitting on vets thing was a myth. But they seemed to think it was really important enough to their point to repeat it again and again.

I'm just pointing out that their assertion is wrong. And there is a kind of irony in Gary insisting on explanations for why I bother correcting a point in a discussion...

I don't know. It seemed like they thought it was a super-important point and I knew that they were misinformed on the issue. I figured that if it was so important, they might like knowing that they were wrong. It was probably silly of me. I don't really have an interesting comment beyond that.

[Ugh]

section9 - you're one number too high.

[hilzoy]

Section9: "By the way, you'll all be for it, since a Democratic President will be proposing it."

If you had said a little more directly that you think that everyone here is braindead, and takes their marching orders from the Democratic Party (even Sebastian?), you'd be in violation of the posting rules. As it is, it's just a silly thing to say.

[david kilmer]

"Obama is going to bring back the Draft."

And WSJ is hiring Op-Ed columnists.

[Nell]

Sebastian,

Sure you don't want to take a rest from Hammering It Home (even if that's what the interwubs are for) and join the group hug?

Cala not only didn't repeat the claim again and again, (s)he never made it at all that I can see.

off white not only didn't make the claim, (s)he explicitly made the opposite point: I think it's fair to say that they did, in fact, exist.

Thomas Nephew did not make the claim that no antiwar person spit on vets ever, he said the effect of this statement is plainly to revive the "widespread spitting on soldiers etc." myth. This is the far more defensible claim that there was some spitting on soldiers, but it was not widespread. He did not repeat that claim.

As dr ngo said (sure you don't want to join the hug?), there is one candidate for the person who made that claim -- and, yes, repeated it. It was me. I retracted it, acknowledging that it was rash to have made it.

I now acknowledge that it was foolish as well as rash to have repeated it, and express the hope that it does not "float around, zombie-like", any longer. From the comments at dr ngo's guest post I see that it may, and that you have followed it there to drive in the silver stake of Lindgren. Having done so, please rest now, accept a hug, and stop attributing to others a rash, extreme claim that I alone have made.

Let's say it together:

(1) it cannot be reasonably held that NO spitting on Vietnam vets (by anti-war activists) took place; and (2) ... we simply don't have enough information to assess how often such incidents occur[r]ed, except that they were almost undoubtedly rarer in reality than in "memory." (Especially when "memory" is augmented, as it has been over the past 30+ years, by political as well as personal agendas.)

[Sebastian]

Hugs are fine. And the only reason I linked here from the other thread was because it came up yet again from yet another person.

:)

[Gary Farber]

"Gary, it is in the first blockquoted section of my 12:57 comment. Not the first link of the 12:57 comment, the first blockquoted section."

That's nice, but irrelevant. Did you or did you not repeatedly direct us to the first link, or not? Was it relevant, or was it, in fact, a complete waste of our time?

If it was relevant, please respond to my comments in response to it. If it wasn't relevant, how about an apology for wasting the time of anyone who trusted you to give a relevant link that was worth reading in full?

If we can settle that question, than I'll be willing to trust you enough to spend more time considering whatever else you have to say on the topic.

Not before. I already trusted you and spent a good chunk of time reading, and then rereading again, and then rereading again, your first link, and I see no relevance to it. Why should I waste more time on your claims until we've clarified what went wrong or not with your first repeated assertion that we had to, no, had to read all that stuff that seems to have no contemporary accounts in in whatever?

Life is short.

And I'm an extremely linear person. Extremely.

Further, I'm now forced to ask you for the fourth time: I'm not sure what's actually at issue. The claim that "No one spit on returning troops, period" is deranged, and who would argue that seriously? As to how frequently it did or didn't happen, has anyone here made a serious or relevant argument on that issue, one way or another?

As for the relevance of non-contemporary accounts, I'll ask you for the third time: Sure, we should all just solicit as many accounts as possible of what people with axes to grind have to say about what allegedly happened to them thirty years ago about a controversial claim. That'll settle it.

MMVaries on that.

As it happens, unless someone can put forward a statistically reliable method for giving any kind of remotely accurate clue as to just how often or infrequently spitting happened, I fail to understand the significance of anecdotes. Can you explain it to me?

Sebastian: "You have now been a complete A@$#% 3 times now"

dr ngo:

I for one am willing to: (1) stipulate that it cannot be reasonably held that NO spitting on Vietnam vets (by anti-war activists) took place; and (2) posit that we simply don't have enough information to assess how often such incidents occured, except that they were almost undoubtedly rarer in reality than in "memory." (Especially when "memory" is augmented, as it has been over the past 30+ years, by political as well as personal agendas.)

Could you both agree on those propositions?

I've never said anything other than these propositions, insofar as I've made any positive assertion at all, so of course I agree.

What I continue to fail to understand is why anyone is interested in arguing over frequency of spitting: what large point is being argued? So far as I can see, Sebastian simply has a tape loop that's automatically triggered when he sees the words "spitting" and "Vietnam" in proximity: what's the actual argument, and why should I care, other than I trusted Sebastian to respond in good faith, and I'd like to restore my trust in his good faith in trying to keep discussion productive and relevant?

Why is there an argument over how many people were or weren't spit on, exactly? Why should I, or anyone, care?

"And then go on to a Group Hug?"

Sebastian to me: "You have now been a complete A@$#% 3 times now"

I'm unaware of what I've written to earn this. I'm not all that huggy feeling when I've been called names, simply because I've done Sebastian the favor of spending time reading his long long long link thorough, and then repeatedly, as per his repeated urgent emphasis that we should, and then I've politely spent a considerable amount of time responding over and over, when he won't even do me the courtesy of responding to the simplest question as to why are you arguing this?

I'm also unclear what sort of example of civil discourse Sebastian believes he's setting as a blogowner here by calling commenters names. (I take "You have now been a complete A@$#% 3 times now" to be synonymous with calling me an a**hole three times. Doesn't make me feel very huggy, no.)

[Gary Farber]

"what large point is being argued?" should be "what larger point is being argued?"

Sorry.

[Mis En Place]

Sebastian deems it necessary to misrepresent my position. I'm unsure if it is my poor writing skills or simply bad faith on Sebastian's part.

I believe (and Lembcke notes) it is quite likely returning Vietnam vets may have been spat upon somewhere, sometime. However, I do not believe (and the evidence shows) incidents of spitting were not widespread and, frankly, quite rare and isolated incidents. I'm also very certain the entire 'spitting on returning vets' has assumed mythological status.

My rationale for these beliefs is based on personal experience (military), alack of evidence to the contrary, and the fact history is filled with similar examples of the alienation and resentment of losing armies. Case in point, there were many vets who were willing to claim a 25 y.o. John Kerry was able to con the US Navy into awarding him some of the nation's highest decorations.

I think it's important we understand what mythology means. Traditionally, we think of mythology as Hercules prancing about with satyrs and a lot of pan flute music. But mythology also means a perception that exaggerates or inflates the truth.