[Peace-discuss] Welcome home

[C. G. Estabrook]

Bob Illyes wrote:
> ...
> I remember well the ugly reception the returning Vietnam vets
> received. This was incredibly inappropriate and counterproductive.
> ...

That's a right-wing urban myth, Bob, and not an innocent one.

It was not the left or the anti-war movement that excoriated returning 
soldiers during Vietnam.  In fact, the attacks on soldiers came from the 
political right, who blamed the conscript soldiers for not fighting 
harder.  And in that they were at least partially correct (by their own 
lights), because the American army in Vietnam essentially revolted -- 
doing drugs, refusing to go on patrol, fragging officers -- to the point 
that the Pentagon found it necessary to withdraw the troops and end the 
draft.  They thought that that was the only way to get a reliable 
"professional" military (and incidentally, that's why the draft won't be 
back).

But the Vietnam era anti-war movement is quite falsely condemned for 
spitting on the troops -- everyone "knows" it happened -- as a way to 
make propaganda about that anti-war movement, and this one.  It's the 
same old "support the troops" malarkey.

There's actually a good study of this malign urban myth:

	Jerry Lembcke, "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory
	and the Legacy of Vietnam" (New York UP 2000).

There's a review at <http://www.warresisters.org/nva0301-7.htm>: the 
book centers on "...the image of spat-upon veterans assailed by antiwar 
protesters upon their return to their homeland.

	"That myth still affects people, particularly those too young to 
remember the actual events of the Vietnam era, and motivates activists 
on both sides of the lines ... Lembcke’s book tells the fascinating 
story of the creation of this myth -— and presents hard evidence that 
refutes it. Examining media coverage of protests and veterans’ 
activities during the era, public opinion polls, film and popular 
culture of the period and personal correspondence of dozens of vets, 
Lembcke could not find a single report of an antiwar protester spitting 
upon a returning soldier! ... The more textured story Lembcke tells 
relates the development of an antiwar movement by pacifists, liberals, 
students, radicals and veterans. He traces the relationship between the 
antiwar veterans and other antiwar activists from a 1965 march organized 
by the Fifth Avenue Peace Committee -— which drew significant 
participation from veterans (including WW II and Vietnam veterans) -— 
through the establishment of organizations like Veterans for Peace and 
Vietnam Veterans Against the War. One of the most important expressions 
of vets’ opposition to the war was the veteran-organized Winter Soldier 
investigation of U.S. atrocities in Southeast Asia held in 1971. In 
addition, the peace movement organized coffeehouses near military bases 
as support centers for soldiers and resistance by GIs in Vietnam. 
Soldiers’ resistance to the war ran from political education and 
organizing among the ranks to refusal to obey orders through desertion 
and 'fragging' -— killing -— officers at the battlefront.

	"Lembcke asserts that the image of antiwar veterans was so threatening 
to the political establishment (represented in the later years of the 
war by the Nixon administration) that creating a counter-image became a 
political necessity. 'The trick here,' said Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman, 
'is to try to find a way to drive the black sheep from the white sheep 
within the group that participated in the Moratorium yesterday'... 	

	"To make his case, he draws on experiences similar to those of the 
United States in Vietnam, particularly Germany after World War I and 
France after its defeat in Vietnam. In both instances, stories of 
spat-upon veterans circulated widely after military defeat. The common 
thread is that the war was lost not on distant battlefields, but by 
betrayal at home. The Third Reich’s Hermann Goering claimed that young 
men, deserters and prostitutes ripped the insignia off the uniforms and 
spat on the returning soldiers. But in fact (and in striking parallel to 
the U.S. experience in Vietnam), by the end of World War I, thousands of 
German soldiers revolted against their officers and 'to express their 
solidarity with a left-wing revolutionary movement that was growing 
across the land, … ripped the insignia from the uniforms of their own 
officers'...

	"In both Germany and France, the myth of the abused veteran allowed 
these European societies to understand their military defeat at the 
hands of foreign enemies. Not surprisingly, the ideologies of militarism 
are deeply tied to notions of empire and racial superiority. The same 
dynamic was at play in the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s (as 
reflected most prominently in film productions about the Vietnam war and 
its veterans). By implication, Lembcke suggests one explanation for the 
rise of xenophobia and racism in the United States following the war. 
Referring again to France and Germany, he writes:

     [T]he armies represented the expansionist interest of nations with 
ideologies of cultural, ethnic, or racial superiority. Unable to deal 
with their defeat by ‘inferior’ peoples or societies, the losing 
colonizers look for the reasons for their defeat at home. The myth of 
the betrayed, abused veteran is a classic form of scapegoating.

	"...the book’s exposition of the legacy of Vietnam and the legacy of 
Nixon administration efforts to discredit the antiwar movement make this 
essential reading for any activist today, especially for those who, like 
me, were born during or after the U.S. war in Indochina. Dirty tricks 
and lies don’t go away -— they just get recycled and return."

--CGE