I have been looking into these and other claims by Lembcke and they appear to hold about as much water as do his notions about a primal (wet) unconscious.
It is surprising that, without his having done an exhaustive review of published sources in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lembcke would manufacture such a speculative argument, essentially treating hundreds of eyewitnesses as victims of “false memory” (at best).
Contrary to Lembcke’s claims, I quite easily found many accounts published in the 1967-1972 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 February, 1968, 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 spat 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. Perhaps the most famous example is Ron Kovic, who after heckling Richard Nixon's 1972 acceptance speech, was spat on as he was wheeled from the convention hall.)
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-shipman in uniform. She denied that she had done it (presumably she did not deny that some young woman had spat on the mid-shipman).
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 Marine 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.
In the November 14, 1967 New York Times, Pulitzer-Prize winner Max Frankel quoted Jack Risoen, a California Democrat who runs a liquor store: "Last week I took my parents to an American Legion meeting--it was just a memorial service for the First World War dead and outside three kids spit on my father." Imagine that: spitting on a veteran attending a memorial service for dead veterans!
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.
Even the anti-war movement took notice. Several of the fall 1971 demonstrations adopted explicitly pro-troops orientations. And anti-war servicemen had long been welcome in most anti-war organizations, but particularly (of course) Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
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.
+++++++
Lembcke’s 3rd Argument: RETURNING SOLDIERS DID NOT LAND AT SAN FRANCISCO OR LA COMMERCIAL AIRPORTS.
Again, I am amazed that Lembcke would simply state this without checking. The May 7, 1967 New York Times story on re-entry into civilian life states: “Almost all veterans are flown back from Vietnam, usually in commercial jets.” There are many press stories about servicemen flying to and from Vietnam through commercial airports, particularly on the US west coast.
+++++++
Lembcke’s 4th Argument: GIRLS DON’T SPIT”
If you read enough accounts of the vulgarity of some of the anti-war protesters of the period, Lembcke’s notion that “girls don’t spit” is almost laughable. Beyond the two examples I already gave of young female anti-war protesters spitting on servicemen, I found many examples of female Vietnam protesters spitting on police or other authority figures. Here are three of many:
The L.A. Times of February 27, 1969, like many other newspapers that week, recounts an anti-war female student spitting on University of Chicago Dean James Redfield.
Another first-hand account of spitting on police by an anti-war demonstrator was published in the Washington Post under the byline of Pulitzer-Prize winner Carl Bernstein on May 7, 1970. A woman described by Bernstein as a “girl” and a “University of Maryland Coed” “spit at a policeman, then called him a ‘pig’ and a ‘filthy swine.’” Less than an hour later,” the same woman “offered a flower to a different police officer,” saying, “It’s not your fault.”
Ben A. Franklin, writing in the January 26, 1969 New York Times, talks about the “provocatory tactics employed by the children here”: “The spit of a sweet-faced girl ran down a policeman’s jacket. Endless insults and [tiny] burning American flags . . . were thrown at the police on the parade route.”
I guess some young women do spit!
+++++++
On the issues raised by Professor Lembcke, I have to say that I'll take the world of Congressional Medal of Honor winners and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists for the New York Times and Washington Post over the professor's armchair speculations--especially since many of the former actually witnessed the events they described, while the professor appears not to have made a serious attempt to review the available evidence before publishing his book.
There Are More Blockbuster Revelations to Come on Some of Jerry Lembcke’s Other Arguments (in a few days).
. Next week I should have time to answer (if an answer is needed), though on a quick read, there appears to be nothing earth-shattering in his response.
In my first post a few days ago, I was the one who first pointed out that he might have used LEXIS or WESTLAW, which have spotty news coverage before about 1980. Especially by the time of some of his later writings, Lembke could have looked at other collections.
Jim
During my adventures in higher education, I have become deeply skeptical (to put it mildly) of any theory that relies on assuming that "our understandings" consist of "binary" broad-abstract-noun slash broad-abstract-noun "dichotom[ies]."
Perhaps Lembcke is a true postmodernist and believes that actual historical research isn't really that important compared to analyzing the matter with the correct theoretical framework (truthiness?).
Jim, congratulations on some excellent research. A shame that rear-guarding the truth is needed, but I see similar propaganda efforts to rewrite history in my field all the time.
1) I am not denying there are some real morons and obnoxious a****** in the anti-war group. The left is no more immune, but also no more guilty, of this particular trait than the right.
2) I am not denying that spitting on the troops is wrong, abusive, and uncalled for.
3) I am denying that by sitting here and thinking that this is the real atrocity in the political discussion between those who have supported, and those who have opposed, the two prominantly protested wars, is in my view only explained by a fierce inability to come to grips with how wrong and (either) immoral or irresponsible one's political viewpoints and preferences can be - the analogy seems to be with those whho think MLK should be defined by allegations of personal immorality.
4) I'm also denying that it is either fair or unintended by the pro-war movement to discount and minimalize the anti-war movement generally by focusing on the few miscreants who happen to join them, and then paint the whole group with that broad stroke. If the pro-war movement was held to that standards (or, my god, the military), they would revolt in anger and hysteria. To the left, it's just another day at the office, having to defend something some freshman whose parents were too strict and saw a flyer one morning. I don't think anyone who supports the war feels like they have any moral obligation to defend Lynndie England as an attack on their personal character.
You mean like, say, Proquest, which has included the historical NY Times for years? (Though I don't remember whether it did in 1998).
The opposite of war isn't peace but surrender. While it pleases the Left to see itself as the embodiment of virtue, the 'pro-war' element is working for peace too -- but on better terms.
You are not making any sense.
Jim Lindgren is responding to a post/piece of research that Jerry Lembke wrote. In other words, 'pro-war' people aren't focusing on the spitting incidents to discredit the anti-war people: rather, anti-war people are focusing on the spitting incidents in order to discredit them.
short version: the anti-war people started it, and initiated the focus on the spitting incidents. Why aren't you disappointed in them?
Sk
As identified above, the problem with outliers is they are used to impugn the moral character of one's opponents. Andy Sullivan has used Abu Ghraib as an all-purpose totem for anything he disagrees with in the Administration, or anybody who supports trying to bring things to a successful conclusion in Iraq. Yep, support Bush, you are basically either a torturer, or latent torturer in Andy's eyes. Similar thing with Michael Ratner's group and the ACLU - anybody who raises the civil liberties question in the GWOT context immediately gets slammed as being either an America-hater like Ratner, or a blinder-ed civil liberties advocate like ACLU. The same thing happens with the spitters. I think there are principled arguments* to be made in favor of pacifism, but the morons who spit on troops, deface the Capitol or go into a rant about how we need worldwide socialism / Free Mumia / redistribute the wealth at these big anti-war rallies, make it easy to dismiss those who make principled arguments.
At the same time rank partisanship enters into it. The Republicans were all too happy to capitalize on security concerns and boosting the Iraq war when things looked good because it was cost-free; now that there's a potential political cost to be paid, many of them are gutless. The Democrats were happy to go-along-to-get along when opposing the Iraq war could have cost them seats in Congress, but now that they sense there's some gain to be made, they're happy to oppose it. But not enough to do anything about it because defunding would entail risk.
Thus actual dialogue is pretty much cut off, at the national level by truly rank partisan cynicism, and by the somewhat greater numbers of people on either side of the debate who are pretty sure that flinging poo is how you win debates, and if you aren't winning, the answer is to fling more poo.
It's entertaining on the same level Springer is, but is really disappointing when you consider this is supposed to be how we manage the public sphere, not some reality TV show.
Is the ability to speak in vapid, utterly unsubstantiated but authoritative hypotheses the sole requirement for a place in academia? Pretty sweet work, if you can get it.
With all due respect, while I understand your concern (Although please note that in some cases understanding and sympathy can be two very different things!) that is not the point. The real atrocity in the case of Lembcke's book is not against Man but rather against History. The kindest thing that can be said on Lembcke's behalf is that he appears guilty of some very sloppy research in a situation where real information on the matter was not at all hard to find. I repeat, that is the very *kindest* thing that can be said on his behalf or upon the behalf of upon certain of his fellow leftists who also denied so vehemently that these things ever happened. History is universal memory and those who falsify it, whether by intention or not, are guilty of tainting the intellectual waters in which we all swim.
That said, would you really want to make any bets that Lembcke himself thinks this as minor a matter as you state it to be? If so, would he not have been more careful in his research or upon being proven wrong move quickly to acknowledge that wrongness? It is to your credit that you are willing to acknowledge the facts. It is not to the credit of your fellow anti-war activists that so many of them still persist in denial. Perhaps they are more worried about persuading their own conscience rather than the rest of the world? Your phrase, "...a fierce inability to come to grips with how wrong and (either) immoral or irresponsible one's political viewpoints and preferences can be" certainly seems to apply to them quite well. In any event, I feel in this case it is their denial of easily verifiable fact more than the incidents themselves that taints the "anti war" movement. After all, if they are swimming De Nile over this one then why shouldn't we think them as inaccurate on all other matters as well? o_O
FWIW, I went to Vietnam as an individual (not as part of a unit or assigned to any unit) in 1966 on a chartered civilian plane of all military passengers. I returned a year later, as an individual, on a civilian flight and to SeaTac Airport.
Never spit at or hassled in my home town of NYC.
I was in the military in the mid eighties and I heard many stories from veterans who were spit on in airports. The evidence is so prevalent and common place, it's amazing that someone would attempt to deny it. It makes you wonder if this is incompetence or intentional.
I would note that a couple of the stories involve hostility to military recruiters and ROTC personnel, which I think is quite likely to have actually happened (which is not to say that it was at all justified).
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.
I think this is an awfully naive reading of events. There was an active PR campaign attempting to place responsibility for the failure in Vietnam on the anti-war left, and part of that narrative was the idea that the US was not succeeding in Vietnam because the anti-war left was demoralizing the troops. That doesn't mean that the stories are true or untrue, but it's a mistake to read those events as a entirely spontaneous upswell of concern for the treatment of returning troops.
As has been pointed out already, this started when a leftist wrote a book claiming that soldiers were deluded for claiming they were spit upon. Jim is not using the spitters to impugn the character of leftists; a leftist is using the supposed nonexistence of the spitters to impugn the character of supporters of the war. Proving that spitters exist is a defense against these accusations.
Besides, in some cases outliers do tell you something. If a group can't get rid of, or at least disclaim, outliers, that often means that the outliers have a lot of influence in the group but the group wants to hide it. This goes double if the group actually tries to cover up the existence of the outliers.
Where it belongs. The military fact is that the US military defeated the Viet Cong, rendering them unable to threaten the South's government, and then turned back the first major invation by the North. The US policy of Vietnamization worked well enough to allow their army to control the country. What they couldn't do was hold back a major mechanized invasion from the North - Congress reneged on our promise of logistic and air support if the North invaded, leading to the fall of South Vietnam.
"Leftists spitting on soldiers? Never happened ... but we're working on it!"
But I'd like to go back to the myth-or-not that Lembcke seems to be debunking: that it was at least somewhat common for anti-war protesters to physically spit on servicemembers returning from Vietnam.
I insert the word "physically" here because the phrase "spit on" is frequently used as a metaphor for disrespect, and it may sometimes be difficult to determine in a quick text search whether the phrase is being used metaphorically or literally.
Now let's look at the offered counterexamples:
The first, Geyer and Bowers: I don't have the original article, but is there evidence that their attackers were in fact anti-war protesters and not just kids looking for trouble?
The second, the Washington anti-war protest described by Reston: ugly behavior described, to be sure, but "soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon" is not the same as servicemembers returning from Vietnam. Remember the *specific* thing that Lembcke is claiming to "debunk" -- that soldiers *returning from Vietnam* were spit on, at locations such as airports.
The third, from the Pomona Progress-Bulletin: again, the head of an ROTC program is not the same as a soldier "returning from Vietnam".
The fourth, Northwestern student spitting on a midshipman: lets not pass off the denial too quickly. Also, without context, I can't tell if the midshipman was "returning from Vietnam".
The fifth, from the Panama News: obviously, a Marine recruiter is not "returning from Vietnam".
I'll take a break at this point that the attitude of the 1960's antiwar left was likely that ROTC programs and campus recruitment represented the policies supporting the war -- ROTC officers and recruiters make more logical targets than returning servicemembers. I could imagine that midshipmen -- in training to lead sailors into battle -- might fall into the same category.
Sixth example, National Guard training: Suggestive, but obviously not an example of the posited behavior.
Seventh example, the Thomas Kelly column: This is a column and not a contemporaneous news report. It's not at all clear that Kelly's use of "spat upon" here is not metaphorical, and the particular incident described involved verbal heckling (responded to with violence), not spitting. Oh, and Congressional Medal of Honor winners -- even if they served in Vietnam -- can't really be considered to be "returning from Vietnam".
Eighth example, Jack Risoen: Risoen says that "kids" spat on his father, a veteran. Not obviously antiwar protesters, not "returning from Vietnam".
Ninth example, "anti-war students spitting on ROTC uniforms": ROTC uniforms are not servicemembers returning from Vietnam... :-)
I'll skip the comments about "spitting" from politicians and letters to the editor, as it does not appear to be a specific example of the claimed activity.
Tenth example, Jim Minarik: It's not clear from this example who was supposedly doing the spitting, or whether he was returning from Vietnam at the time. Considering that he was being promoted as a leader of a counterforce to the VVAW, you'll forgive me I discount his statement slightly.
Eleventh example, Birch Bayh: I suppose you just put this here to indicate that a whole lotta spittin' goin' on... Obviously, not the claimed behavior.
Twelfth example, Zinberg: Obviously, no specific details here.
To summarize: I think that you've done a pretty good job refuting the claim that no one was talking much about spitting before 1980.
However, I don't believe you've presented a single clear example of an anti-war protester spitting on a returning Vietnam veteran. So far, the story "veteran walks off a plane and is spit on by an anti-war protester", unless you've got a better example in the queue, still looks like an urban myth.
That's not the opposite; I think the latter part of the sentence is supposed to say "the opposite: pro-war servicemen or citizens spat on anti-war protesters."
Alex R: I have read Lembcke's book, although I don't have it at hand now. I don't believe he said that it was not common "for anti-war protesters to physically spit on servicemembers returning from Vietnam." I believe he said that he couldn't find any contemporaneous evidence that it had happened at all.
"Still in uniform, he was strolling through the O'Hare terminal in search of a telephone when a group of hippie girls darted up and spat on him. The shock and pain could have been no more intense if they had slashed him with knives. Reeling with surprise and uncertain what to do, he did nothing. His assailants scampered off through the airport crush as Tom wiped the salive from his face, now aflame with humiliation. That night he got into an argument about the war with his friends' daughter, who was home from college. This is great, he told himself sardonically. I'm back less than twenty-four hours, I get spat on, then I get hassled by my countrymen over a cause for which I got myself shot twice. Welcome home, Johnny."
I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy in 1973 and can tell you that it was common to be called names by hippies in public when you wore your uniform and to be accosted in public places. I distinctly remember being called a baby-killer in an LA bus terminal in the summer of 1974. Such insults and abuse were facts of life for everyone in the military. It happenned to everybody.
In fact, anyone in any kind of a uniform was a target of abuse. Security guards in grocery stores were called pigs. Boy Scouts were called little fascists. The hippie hate for the military was so widespread for the military that it just astounds me that liberals are denying it now and rewriting history.
Just to clear up a few things:
Soldiers went to Vietnam for the most part in civilian airliners, but these were chartered aircraft that flew out of military bases such as Travis AFB (just outside of SF). However, most soldiers flew in or out to Travis via commercial air, then took a bus or cab to Travis. So if you got back you'd take a bus to SF Int'l and then fly commercial from there to wherever.
Lembcke is technically correct that soldiers flew in and out of Vietnam from military bases, but it's also true that they would have gone directly from there to civilian transportation (air, bus, etc.) to get to or from the point of embarkation. So there was plenty of opportunity for interaction with civilians. This would have been simple enough to figure out if he'd bothered to interview any vets.
As for the girls, this was part of a larger strategy one saw at demonstrations and such. "Chicks to the front" was a common cry, because they could get away with confrontational activities (spitting, cursing, etc.) that men could not. If a man approached a vet and spit on him he'd get decked, but it probably would not happen to a girl. So far from being some sort of gendered narrative, it was a considered tactic.
So?
The spitting was motivated by the actual or suspected involvement of the servicemember in military activities, which included the war in Viet Nam. If a service member is spat upon in an airport on his way from Ft. Bragg to Ft. Ord, does that count? If not, why not? Alex would say it does not because the service member was not coming home from Viet Nam. The theme of the entire issue is the active, sometimes physically manifested, dislike, contempt for, and even hate of the military by left-wing wackos. Whether they were on their way home from SEA or not makes what kind of difference, exactly?
It is possible that some kids, hearing about the spitting, might think it's a fun way to make trouble and so forth, the war being secondary. But that's not the way to bet.
And "alkali" had noticed the same thing.
And I noticed the same thing, too.
Look, the claim is this: "Soldiers returning from Vietnam were spat on when they arrived home." Not "ROTC recruiters were spat on." Not "hippie chick war protesters liked to spit." Not "sailors on leave in Allentown, PA got into a scuffle with local kids in 1967."
So far, I haven't seen a single contemporaneous account of any "spitting upon return" claim.
So far, Lindgren's rebuttal is considerably less persuasive than Lembke's point.
Actually, Lindgren's research supports the urban myth theory. By the mid-1970s, the myth had become so ingrained (first in the military itself, later in popular consciousness) that it was used as support for all manner of other purposes, from claims of PTSD to general railing against the anti-war left.
Don't you think we'd be able to find one example of an actual spitter being arrested by airport police? Of one actual spitter getting into an altercation with a returning soldier?
Ask yourself this: could you assemble a similar list of a dozen newspaper references, c. 1967-1980, documenting real alien spaceship sightings? Does this prove that aliens have visited the earth?
Nice try getting to the actual (non)-issues.
In the even broader picture, here's something I've noticed about the hard-right these days. Is man-made global warming becoming even more of a consensus position? Well, let's launch personal attacks on proponents of global warming that don't even go to the merits. For example, "X proponent of global warming is a BIG HYPOCRITE because they fly on certain types of jets," or even, "I'll take global warming seriously when X proponent of it stops doing Y."
Similarly, with the Iraq war, you can't really say things are going well on the ground there, but dang, it must really hurt to think all those lefty-hippie anti-war types we were just calling traitors the other day were right. And there's now enough conservatives opposing the Iraq war so we can't continue to lable all Iraq war opponents as dirty anti-American hippies, so let's go back to the Viet Nam war. . . .
IMO, Lindgren has more than adequately pointed out a very basic point: there IS contemporary stories and accounts that Mr. Lembcke did not find or consider. For Mr. L to make the sweeping claim he does, he really should address why those contemporary accounts are false, inadequate, or should not be considered.
From a methodological standpoint I would suggest Lembcke's work is flawed.
Obduracy is such an ugly thing....
As Tantor informed you:So the real question is, what is your standard of proof?
The idea that "soldiers being spit upon is an urban legend" is a rather recent invention, useful for the coginitive dissonance created by illusory "support for the troops" claimed by the vile Left.
Which disproves Lembcke's claim that "the stories starting appearing around 1980."
Oh.
Nevermind.
What the mythbusters are saying, though, is that if this really did happen sufficiently often that it there were real incidents behind the commonly repeated stories, there would be *contemporaneous* news articles documenting those incidents. I don't think that that should be an unreasonably "high hurdle" as rarango says. The 1989 book Tantor references provides a to-the-point account, but it's still not a contemporaneous source.
By the way: I'm personally an agnostic as to whether incidents matching the story occurred, and I suspect they probably did at least once or twice. But I'd still like to see the contemporaneous evidence.
Lembcke had the audacity to say the following: "Stories of spat-upon Vietnam veterans are bogus." (Emphasis added.)
He did not say "unsubstantiated," "doubtful," or even "half-truths." No, Lembcke went for the full bore and called the stories "bogus."
Did he have any justification for using the term "bogus"? Jim Lindgren's evidence proves otherwise.
Slater, I realize that you are just venting (projecting?)and not making a serious argument, but would it be possible for you to fit any more exaggerations and misrepresentations into less than two sentences?
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
It's amazing how people can still refer to the "left" as if it's some fringe group, yet also somehow use it to refer to over half of our population.
OK, for those who hate us pesky "leftists," or "liberals" or whatever term you prefer: do you really think that this administration and its cheerleaders (Fox being the best example) want people to think otherwise? That soldiers were not spat on? Do you actually believe that they have any incentive to dispell the myth that all those who oppose this occupation are unpatriotic, soldier-haters?
Of course not. They have an agenda that many of us find unconscionable. So instead of debating the real issues, we get sidetracked over nonsense. OK, so let's assume a few soldiers were spat on by a few protesters. AND? So, .00001% of the antiwar movement did some nasty things to the wrong people to vent their frustrations with the government. It's utterly irrelevant, but unfortunately there are so many who will stop at nothing to brand the whole movement---millions of fellow Americans---as bad.
I get it. Someone will now call me dumb b/c (a) I implicitly declared my allegiance to the "left," and (b) b/c the precise issue at hand is the author's faulty research methods. After all, it was he who brought it up.
That's not my point. Time to see the forest through the trees. I hope your as equally outraged by this administration's war on truth as you are by some of these other non-issues.
I doubt there is much newspaper documentation of military people being spit upon because it was too trivial to report. After all, only a fraction of homicides in a big city get covered in the newspaper. Why should a spitting story get any ink?
I was never spat upon, but my experience with the lesser forms of abuse from hippie-types was that it was opportunistic. They would come out of a crowd in a public venue, spout their abuse, and then be gone in the crowd before you had time to process what had just happenned. You're just not going to have a lot of arrest records for this kind of ad hoc harassment.
The first couple years it happenned, I thought it was just random craziness. It took a while to realize it was happenning to other people. It was something like being insulted by a crazy street person. You just shrug it off and press on. It didn't occur to me to report hippie abuse to the police back then just as it doesn't occur to me to report crazy street bums to the police now. It took a few years to realize that this was a widespread pattern of harassment.
It's amazing how laughable some claims by 'gender specialists' become when you start raising children.
Alex, can't you click on the three links Lindgren provides to at least superficially look at what he claims in those? And while I understand you can't look at his sources, Lembcke's generally arguing there is no evidence, thus little source material (or I suppose, that everything is source material, in which case I retract that last bit.)
Now I don't have his book, but I did look at the three links. The impression I got was the while Lembcke tended to focus on assessing stories of vets as they were returning and to an extent while in airports, he couches those assessments within the more general premise and conclusion that vets weren't spat on. I didn't look fully to see if he made any attempt to extrapolate to not vets, i.e., military personnel not yet vets (ROTC, for example), or those who the supposed spitters had no way of knowing had served in Vietnam.
As for the your construction of his premise "... spit on servicemembers returning ..." as opposed to as opposed to his investigation of assertion of others (vets) that 'I was were spat on when I returned', which is what he seems to be debunking, I think a distinction is important. Many people who use the 'when I returned' to mean both the act of returning as well as a period of time after they returned. I ask you consider this distinction.
I ask you consider this when reading at least the links Lindgren provides and reconsider what you think Lembcke is trying to argue.
And I ask this in light of one of his counter assertions (1st link) "The historical record shows that there was widespread solidarity between the anti-war movement and veterans." Does he mean that in the context of only when the returning vets were in the airport or does he plan a proving spitting at Vietnam vets after they returned is another urban myth?
I oppose the "us vs. them" approach as well. However, on this issue, some on the Left (such as Lembcke) feel the need to rewrite history. Why? I don't know. Perhaps it is a reactionary stance against the claims of the Right. Perhaps it is a desire to defend the supposed moral superiority of the anti-war movement.
At any rate, ahistorical claims should be exposed.
Nick
You're very welcome. I see you're attempting to ridicule my point, so please explain how my above-referenced statement is an "us vs. them" statement. Who's the "us" and who's the "them?" Are you not aware of this administration's attempts to fudge the truth about matters as wide-ranging as Medicare to marijuana prohibition? If not, you're not paying attention. If so, then as the reasonably moral and clear-headed citizen I presume you to be, then you too ought be outraged. The only "us vs. them" would be ALL right-thinking Americans who care about this country's (and the Constitution's) future vs. certain nefarious, very powerful people who's motives are not as pure.
CBS Evening News for
Monday, Dec 27, 1971
Headline: Vietnam Veteran
Abstract: (Studio) January, 1971, report on medics in Vietnam recalled; retd. medic featured.
REPORTER: Charles Collingwood
(Manhattan, Kansas) Delmar Pickett, Junior, hero, returns from Vietnam, finds US indifferent to war; vets' unemployment high; returns to school at Kansas State University as better student than before Vietnam experience. [Student Gwyn STEERE - speaks of Pickett's modesty.] [Vietnam film from earlier feature shown.] Pickett home is in Olsburg, Kansas. [PICKETT - tells of being spit on in Seattle, WA.] Disillusioned but not downed by Vietnam experience. [PICKETT - tells of experience as medic in Vietnam.] [Father Delmar PICKETT, Senior - says son more settled.] [MOTHER - says son a much better student than formerly.] Drugs no problem for Pickett. 2 1/2 million Vietnam vets.
REPORTER: Morton Dean
Broadcast Type: Evening News Segment Type: News Content
Header Link 214552
Record Number: 214568
Begin Time: 05:52:20 pm
End Time: 05:58:00 pm
Duration: 05:40
Reporters: Collingwood, Charles; Dean, Morton
If this were at all a commonplace occurrence -- and remember, the claim is essentially that "returning Vietnam vets were often spat upon." -- I think it would be very likely that someone, somewhere, would have been arrested (or at least accosted by) the police. It is an assault, although not particularly injurious except to one's feelings. So I stand by my comment that so far no one has produced a contemporaneous account of a spitting-upon incident. And I find that lack of evidence quite compelling.
Tantor also said:
On the other hand, this strikes me as very likely: Vietnam vets were often made the objects of derision and abuse. And I agree that such behavior was shameful. I am no lefty anti-war nut; after all, my name is Cold Warrior.
But it seems like people can't separate the limited point Lembcke is making -- that there is no evidence that returning vets were spat upon, and that the accounts of such events began appearing around 1980, and that this is consistent with the formation of what we now call an "urban myth" -- from the larger point, that "Vietnam vets were not accorded a hero's welcome on return and were, in fact, often subjected to ridicule and abuse.
I guess you could say (and isn't this what Lindgren is saying?) that they were metaphorically spat upon on many occasions. But that's like saying of an apocryphal story, "Even if it isn't true, well then it ought to be true."
Metaphorical truths are rather different in character than historical truths, wouldn't you say? This is precisely why Ward Churchill, propounder of many historically inaccurate but (to his mind) metaphorically true "histories" got fired. Recognition of historical truth and historical fiction shouldn't be dependent on one's status as pro-war (Vietnam or Iraq) or anti-war.
Or maybe some readers of this blog think that it should??
Sorry, I missed the reference Delmar Pickett being spit upon.
Or are you, like everyone else following Lindgren's lead, confused about the difference between being "spit upon" and high unemployment for returning vets?
And who, specifically, might those people be?
But the professional protesters and Extremely Angry Young People are "the left", not "people who voted Democrat".
Further, I see no reason to believe that anti-war-60s-people-spitting-on-soldiers is a myth. Lembcke is very unconvincing contra Lindgren.
Nobody serious believes that everyone who opposes the Iraq "occupation" (though why it's an occupation when we're there on the permission of the freely elected government, and not running the country's political life or really anything more than physical security, is an interesting exercise in word choice, isn't it?) is an un-patriotic soldier-hater, though plenty of said people consistently express such sentiments.
Serious people believe that most of the opposition is in one of a few camps:
A) people seriously (naively) opposed to war reflexively or on over-broad principle
B) people who oppose anything the President or Republicans support either reflexively or cynically to gain political support
The group C) people who want America to fail because America is always wrong and evil are, while very vocal, acknowledged by serious people as being the minority inside the US.
(Why do you assert that it was only .00001% of the "movement" who did such things?
The "anti-war movement" is not the set of people opposed to a war; the "movement" is the much smaller set of people who oppose it actively or even professionally.
Saying "I hate this war!" doesn't make you part of a movement. Even attending a single protest might not suffice. Attending many of them, organizing, distributing literature, and taking an active part in attempting to end it does.
The proportion of actual movement members who did such things must be over .00001%, since to have even one person do so, at that percentage, you'd need a million people. And no anti-war movement in the US has ever had enough active members to produce even the dozens of incidents documents with that percentage. (The US population was around 200 million in 1968. if every man, woman, and child in the US had been a member of the anti-war movement, only 200 would have done such things, by your math.
If we accept a more reasonable (if still undocumentable) number for the "movement" of perhaps half a million people nationwide, the percentage must be MUCH higher than than a few thousandths of a percent to match the widely documented "nastiness" at protests.
I think the root here is that you seem to confuse opposition to war with membership in a movement. The hard-core are much more likely to do "nasty" things to support their position, and the hard-core are the life of a "movement".)
They Should Have Served Coffee See page 159.
He tells of how his group, which published a nespaper called the Bulkhead, staked out the SF Airport to encounter returning GI's because it was "the first civilian ground they's set foot on back in the states."
They're opening was "Hey, soldier. Welcome home. F**k the Army. Read all about it in this paper. No charge."
Of course I was using hyperbole, but it was to made to back the serious point Justin made, which included the often-interesting issue of why certain questions are asked at certain times. You, of course, are free to disagree with the underlying point.
Serious people believe that most of the opposition is in one of a few camps:
A) people seriously (naively) opposed to war reflexively or on over-broad principle
B) people who oppose anything the President or Republicans support either reflexively or cynically to gain political support
The group C) people who want America to fail because America is always wrong and evil are, while very vocal, acknowledged by serious people as being the minority inside the US.
While I'm glad you think the group (c) is a "minority," I wonder why you don't think "serious people" believe that a good chunk (I personally would say clear majority) of opponents of the war opposed and continue to oppose it because (i) they found most of the rationales for the original invasion (WMDs, e.g.) unconvincing and/or (ii) they believed that the the occupation -- or whatever word you want to use to describe the continuing presence of U.S. troops in a country spiraling into a civil war -- would be a failure.
It's especially odd you don't list that as a possibility, given that a number of war opponents were saying exactly those things (see, e.g., Molly Ivins, RIP), and they turned out to be absolutely right.
Beats me. Try to find one newspaper account of a black person unable to get a cab, or a Jewish person turned down from a country club during the 1950's.
I actually did the latter test with the NY Times archive - they have a story about Nazi, Jews, and country clubs from about 1937, and then Jews began experiencing discrimination in the States in about 1975. Before that, per the Lembcke Method, any belief in discrimination against Jews vis a vis country clubs was merely an urban legend, I guess.
Well. Lembcke is more than a vet - he is also former member of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War, and was (back in 1991, at least) an anti-war activist (That would have been Gulf !).
SO - how hard do you supose Lembcke looked for evidence that would discredit his own glorious past? It was agenda driven "research", and as he explained here, he had the answer even before he did the research:
Knowledge, then research, all to support his agenda. Whatever.
Last puzzle for his apologists - how did spiiters distinguish between returning vets in uniform and regular serviceman? OR how can it be that only one group was spat upon but not the other?
P.S. In his book, Lembcke argues that, logivally, anti-war types could never have spat upon vets becuase the anti-war movement viewed vest as natural allies (as did his organization, the VVAW).
Does anyone care to defend the notion that the anti-war movement was that monolithic and disciplined?
Read the Reston piece from Oct 1972 - moderate anti-war demonstrators were disappointed that a militant faction hijacked the demonstration. Gee, that still happens today.
Sounds pretty "limited" to me. I haven't read Lembcke's book (has anyone here read it? I doubt it), so I don't know if perhaps his claims go deeper. But right now we're discussing this and only this question:
"Is there any evidence that returning Vietnam vets were spat on upon their return, in uniform, at the airport." After all, that's Lembcke's point.
Lindgren's reference to the Kerry/Minarik stuff is a bit ambiguous. If Minarik himself claimed -- in 1971, not in 2004 -- that he himself was spat upon shortly after he arrived at an airport in the United States -- then I guess we have one contemporaneous account. But I'd like to see the exact reference/link. And remember, the claim Lembcke is rebutting is that it was commonplace for returning Vietnam vets to be subjected to spittle upon their return; not that there were a few such incidents over the years.
Kind of different than being spat upon based on one's status as an ordinary uniformed soldier getting off the plane from Vietnam, dontcha think?
The spitting story is a mythology not just a myth. For the American right it has come to symbolize something beyond the physical act of spitting. It has come to be the last defense of their sincere hope, that the left hates soldiers. Lacking any real evidence that the left hates soldiers they must rely on mythology. They can ignore without shame the fact that the Republican Party is cutting veterans health care programs only because they insist the mythology is true. Only then can they claim that the alternative to the Republican party is a soldier hating left.
Lembke points out the obvious in his work: Of the 3 million returning veterans who cycled through Vietnam, not one official report was ever filed with the police or airport authorities that involved "spitting." Of three million drafted veterans not one was ever reported to have beaten the crap out of some hippy for spitting on him, yet there are reports of fights between hippies and vets over other matters. There is no other explanation for this lack of evidence then what Lembke is saying, that leftists spitting on vets is more mythology then fact. As another poster pointed out, it's irrelevant. It only matters to those who can not accept that America can and has been defeated in a war. They NEED to be able to blame failure on the left. They need it because otherwise their personal insecurities come crashing in on them.
The spitting story is a mythology not just a myth. For the American right it has come to symbolize something beyond the physical act of spitting. It has come to be the last defense of their sincere hope, that the left hates soldiers. Lacking any real evidence that the left hates soldiers they must rely on mythology. They can ignore without shame the fact that the Republican Party is cutting veterans health care programs only because they insist the mythology is true. Only then can they claim that the alternative to the Republican party is a soldier hating left.
Lembke points out the obvious in his work: Of the 3 million returning veterans who cycled through Vietnam, not one official report was ever filed with the police or airport authorities that involved "spitting." Of three million drafted veterans not one was ever reported to have beaten the crap out of some hippy for spitting on him, yet there are reports of fights between hippies and vets over other matters. There is no other explanation for this lack of evidence then what Lembke is saying, that leftists spitting on vets is more mythology then fact. As another poster pointed out, it's irrelevant. It only matters to those who can not accept that America can and has been defeated in a war. They NEED to be able to blame failure on the left. They need it because otherwise their personal insecurities come crashing in on them.
No worries, you were probably typing as I was posting. However, I don't think I'm confusing being "spit upon" with unemployment, nor do I think I'm following Lindren's lead. Several posts have addressed whether there are any pre-1980 news reports about Vietnam vets being spat upon - I found one, so I posted it.
For clarity's sake, I should add that I don't think that finding this, or even 20 more like it, would disprove the "urban myth" aspect of this argument to the extent that, as time passes, increasing amounts of people tend to claim taking part in an event of cultural significance, whether it is being spat upon coming home from war or having attended game 4 of the 2004 ALCS.
The problem here is that there is no way to actually know how many spitters and spittees there were. That there are contemporaneous reports would seem to suggest that these claims are not complete fabrications, but does nothing to prove to what extent they did or did not happen or why some would later claim to be spittle victims when they were not. I merely wanted to point out that at least one contemporaneous account would appear to exist and that it wasn't that difficult to find.
Tell it, brother. I grew up in a college town during that time. "Babykiller" was so common that I thought it was just another mildly pejorative nickname for a soldier or Marine (like "dogface" or "jarhead")until I was 12 or 13.
So, now that you have your strawman arguments laid out, would you like to try again, with some honest thoughts?
For one thing, that "sincere hope" is really just "honest observation."
If you don't think the Left (the real Left, not the centrists who lean left) hates soldiers, you've never been to any rallies by ANSWER or Code Pink, or had a real discussion with any of them.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Go read Bill Quick (Daily Pundit). He admitted over the weekend that he was one of the spitters back when he fancied himself a marxist revolutionary.
And before you start calling him a right wing toady and mouthing the usual stuff to avoid having to confront the truth he tells, keep in mind he isn't exactly on the conservative or Republican bandwagon - he was urging people to vote Dem this last election cycle.
Which war would that be? Because the only one I can think of is Vietnam. And there, the plain fact is that failure can be blamed directly on the Left. (Well, on the Democratic majority in Congress, acting to support the goals of the antiwar Left.) Whatever might have happened, what did happen was that Congress overrode a Presidential veto to ensure a North Vietnamese victory. You really can't get more responsible than that...
So, yes, in the case of Vietnam you can "blame failure on the left". Not indirectly, through the actions of the antiwar movement. Not symbolically, through spitting on soldiers. But directly, through official acts of Congress.
These 'students of gender behavior' never met any of my buddy's ex-girlfriends.
Fantastic--Lembcke has pushed back our frontiers of ignorance. Good thing that wasn't his dissertation; it would never have gotten out of committee and would, I suspect, be impossible to defend.
The idea -- and it is really an idea in the form of a mental image, and it is an image I have in my own libertarian (not lefty) mind -- is of a line of soldiers in uniform, coming down the mobile stairs from a 707 onto the tarmac, walking into the airport past an assembled line of angry protesters who hurled invective and spittle their way.
And Lembcke has convinced me that this is a false memory. It never happened that way. Not even once.
Lembcke has not "proved" that no returning Vietnam vet was never spat upon at an airport. He has not proved it because it cannot be proved.
But (regardless of Lembcke's politics; I sense that I don't agree with him on most points) he has raised an interesting point: why do I have this mental image, which I could have sworn was burned into my brain by watching the CBS Evening News or some such thing in when I was in 5th grade? I find it interesting that I -- a perfectly sane person, with no particular axe to grind on this issue -- am the unwitting victim of such a false memory.
That's why the research is interesting, and that's why Lindgren is barking up the wrong tree. If you want to focus on the more ridiculous "theorizing" of Lembcke, feel free to do so.
But his primary point is a good one, and it is an example of solid historical research.
[For similar good histories, check out the "modernity of tradition" scholars, who assure us (among other things) that our notions Scottish clans running about in their tartans c. 1600 are figments of the modern imagination.]
Do we need to get our minds right?
This whole discussion, at least on the Lembke side,seems to presume that there is nobody around to whom it happened. That's fine. The problem is, there are people around to whom it happened.
I see a logical problem there, someplace.
Alexande said: "Lacking any real evidence that the left hates soldiers they must rely on mythology."
WTF? I don't even know where to begin.
My guess is your splitting a hair here; i.e., the left may hate the military but it doesn't hate the soldiers. (Sort of like "love the sinner, hate the sin"?)
There are a couple of problems with this reasoning.
1. While the former Soviet Union recognized "The Army is the Guardian of the Party" and the People's Republic of China lionizes the People's Liberation Army as a source of national pride, leftist hatred of the military in the West is easily documented. (Maybe in the leftist mind the military is indelibly tainted by the West's colonial past.) Just off the top of my head, the thread runs from the socialist and anarchist movements in the 20's and 30's to driving ROTC out of elite schools in the 60's to the disdain for the military exhibited by White House staff in the first Clinton administration to the harassment of military recruiters by antiwar protesters in recent months. In the pages of leftist publications from The Nation to the New York Times, the contempt is thinly veiled, if at all.
2. The soldier (sailor, airman and Marine) are often quite loyal to, quite attached to and quite identified with the organization to which they belong, so the distinction between "sinner" and "sin" is lost on them. That's why "Support the Troops - Bring them Home Now" has failed to get much traction: "The Troops" consistently say they want to get the job done, want to WIN, and that involves staying there, not coming home.
The alternative, which all too frequently happens, is for the hypothetical leftist to dismiss this loyalty and identification. Canards about the the poverty, ignorance and stupidity of soldiers fit neatly into this leftist worldview: it's not the soldiers' fault - the poor dupes can't help it.
Alexand: "Of three million drafted veterans not one was ever reported to have beaten the crap out of some hippy for spitting on him..."
The cultural, disciplinary, legal and personal reasons why so few (few, not "not one" as you asserted) returning veterans reacted with violence to spitting incidents or reported said incidents to the authorities were more than adequately addressed - by current and former members of the military - in the previous thread on spitting (and, to a lesser extent, in this one). That you would even write such a thing reveals a profound lack of knowledge of the military culture and of soldiers.
There are also a number of other explanations (for the alleged lack of reports) than Lembcke's, which some of the other skeptical but much more thoughtful commenters - like Cold Warrior - pointed out.
Finally, it's not irrelevant. Rather than take the right to task for their alleged misuse of the spit-upon-veteran narrative, Lembcke says that it didn't happen and backs his claim with provably incomplete and shoddy research. He tries to claim that a particulary shameful chapter from the history of the antiwar movement didn't happen.
Yes, the Left loved
Vietnam Vets. I guess Iraq vets are not so lucky.
I'm afraid my snarky comment, above, was misunderstood.
I'll repeat in plain language: the summary of the report on Mr. Pickett DOES NOT mention spitting at all.
I was not in the military, but am attentive to what our soldiers have to say. You state "Canards about the the poverty, ignorance and stupidity of soldiers fit neatly into this leftist worldview: it's not the soldiers' fault - the poor dupes can't help it." Although I think it's a cynical phrasing, I concede there probably is some truth to this statement. How can I say such blasphemy? Well, every poll I've ever heard of on the issue demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of our soldiers believes that Saddam had a connection to 9/11. So, yes, the people that believe that are unfortunately naive and in a sense being duped. That's not contempt: that's truth.
And every interview with a soldier that I've heard, where the soldier wants to remain, it's b/c they do not want to leave their brothers and sisters behind. They're letting their people down by abandoning them is how they see it. It's not some other noble desire to bring "freedom" to Iraqis.
I know I'll get skewered for this. But fuckit: I respectfully and sincerely believe that "leftists" get nuance a lot better than "rightists." I immensely respect anyone who puts his or her well-being in danger in order to fight for our country. That's why me and my ilk are so horrified by the fact that a few bad people are exploiting my countrymen by doing whatever they can to convince them that they're fighting for our "freedom" or "way of life" (or whatever other Orwellian excuse) when in fact they're fighting for causes much more sinister.
Are the commentators here actually unable to make a distinction between supporting our troops and hating this occupation? That's hard to believe. If so, please consider Al Franken, who makes regular trips to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to entertain the soldiers, despite his being an American-hating liberal.