09-06-2012, 06:55 PM
Keith Millea Wrote:In his exhaustive book entitled "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam," Vietnam vet and Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembcke documents veterans who claim they were spat on by antiwar protestors, but he found no physical evidence (photographs, news reports, etc.) that these transgressions actually occurred. His findings are supported by surveys of his fellow Vietnam veterans as they came home.
For instance, Lembcke notes that "a U.S. Senate study, based on data collected in August 1971 by Harris Associates, found that 75 percent of Vietnam-era veterans polled disagreed with the statement, 'Those people at home who opposed the Vietnam war often blame veterans for our involvement there'" while "94 percent said their reception by people their own age who had not served in the armed forces was friendly." Meanwhile, the Veterans' World Project at Southern Illinois University found that many Vietnam vets supported the antiwar protest, with researchers finding almost no veterans "finish(ing) their service in Vietnam believing that what the United States has done there has served to forward our nation's purposes."
In the face of such data, why would the current president nonetheless repeat the apocryphal myth about spat-on Vietnam veterans? Because facts be damned it serves a purpose: to suppress protest and perpetuate the ideology of militarism.
This objective is achieved through the narrative's preposterous assumptions.
Metaphorically, if not explicitly, the mythology equates antiwar activism with dishonoring the troops; implies that such protest is kryptonite to the Pentagon's Superman; and therefore insinuates that America loses wars not when policies are wrong, but when dissent is tolerated.
As political memes go, this 30-year Vietnam storyline has been wildly successful, helping presidents silence opposition to the Iraq War, the continued Afghanistan occupation, our expanding drone wars, and, of course, our ever-increasing defense budgets.
Yet, as much as the propaganda is cast as a genuflection to veterans, it's anything but. For one thing, it ignores the fact that the many troops enlist specifically to defend our freedoms among them the freedom to dissent. Additionally, in manufacturing falsehoods out of the painful Vietnam experience, it insults many Vietnam vets by writing their opposition to that war out of history. Unchecked, the mythology ultimately uses the revised history of yesteryear's soldiers to vaporize the very dissent that might prevent tomorrow's soldiers from facing another Vietnam-like quagmire.
That's not respectful or supportive of veterans - it's the opposite.
© 2012 David Sirota
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/01-7
Amen to that.
I may stop appearing at local Memorial Day observances in the future. While I go there to support the families with loved ones all over the planet many at these shows are war hawks. Especially the speakers.