I lived through that era and will place some of the blame squarely on the anti-war students. I opposed the war and am have been a strong Obama supporter in this election. The class divide between the working class kids who went over there and came home basket cases, and the smug students, was huge, and the contempt for the veterans when they came home was huge as well. The lesson of that was well learned for this war where we have learned to hate the war but love the soldiers. That was not the case during VN and those guys suffered horribly because of it.
Many of us treated the returning troops terribly. And the sad thing was at the same time we were mourning over the loss of friends and family in that godawful war.
And for those (not you mady) who are trying to call this pandering, I saw the speech. Obama was answering a man who was a veteran of VietNam and brought up the shabby treatment mentioning we are mean to returning troops. Obama agreed with him that we need to do more for our veterans but disagreed regarding how we treat our troops today. He said we disrespected them during VietNam but that even the most fervent opponents of this war are very respectful of the troops.
According to the soldiers at the time, and the questionaires they filled out for the VA, that isn't true. In fact, the soldiers themselves listed the anti-war movement as one of the groups that most consistently helpful in helping them resettle. I was there and i was a part of the anti-war movement. I lived in a military town and then in Los Angeles. In neither location, did I ever hear of an instance of soldiers being harassed. I recall nothing but sympathy and concern.
In fact, there is no mention anyhere in contemporary media of soldiers being harassed by anti-war protestors until sometime in the late seventies. Not a single news story, opinion piece, letter to the editor and none of the books published at the time by soldiers returning from the conflict mentioned this problem. This problem doesn't arise until after Rambo.
Personally, I don't believe it ever happened - so it just figures Obama would pick up on it to smear the people who were actually doing the good work. I think he's trying to purge the party of effective anti-war types.
Obama really is trying to split the party - why else would he say crap like this?
Read The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam written by Vietnam Veterans Against The War founder Jerry Lembcke. Yes, he was a Vietnam vet and yes, he was a founder of the anti-war movement,. He never saw it. And he can't document a single contemporaneously told incident.
Lastly, the most frequently told tale is of soldiers returning the war and being spat on in the airport - most frequently San Francisco's airport. Suffice to say that the security department, which still had some veterans from the sixties working there in the nineties, wanted people who asked about that to know that it never happened, and they never would have allowed to happen,.
It's fiction. It's bullshit that Obama brought it up and it's one more reason to not vote in the presidential race if he's the nominee. I won't vote for McCain, but Obama just gave me another reason to not vote for him either.
Well, it's right up there with your "Randi Rhoads" rationale for withholding your vote.
Are there any really substantive reasons you aren't voting for Obama?
And desire for ego gratification over the good of the country.
Did I ask you?
Shouldn't you be getting "ready" for those marches that might be coming to your neighborhood?
I know of no substantive reasons to vote for him, and you probably don't either. He's not progressive. He has no history of personal accomplishment. He's divisive. He has atrocious judgement.
Clinton will campaign for him if he's the nominee but I don't take my orders from her. I will not endorse the Democratic party being hijacked in service of non-progressive goals.
When I look at stances on issues and voting records, I frankly don't see a lot of difference between Clinton and Obama.
But there are a few concrete, substantive reasons I chose to support his campaign after Edwards dropped out.
1. CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are a huge issue for me. While he was a state senator he voted to place more stringent regulations on these operations by limiting their discharge of pollutants and required them to clean up their own messes.
2. While he was campaigning in Iowa, I spoke to other farmers involved in sustainable agriculture who attended listening sessions by the Obama campaign and they were much more impressed with his staff than with Clinton's.
3. Obama has called for stricter oversight of CAFOs by the EPA which would be a dramatic turnaround from the current administration, which seeks to exempt them from many clean air standards.
4. Clinton appointed Joy Philippi, former president of the National Pork Producers Council to be her rural campaign chair. If she would have listened to family farmers, her campaign would have understood what a slap in the face this is to those of us who are good land stewards. The Clintons had lots of unsavory ties to "Big Meat" when they were in Arkansas.
Now that's just one issue that has draw me to Obama's campaign. Is that substantive enough for you?
I know its much more convenient to portray those of us who support Obama as a bunch of Kool-Aid drinking Kids who are simply drawn to a cult of personality, but it simply isn't true.
And by the way, I have consistently said I will vote for Clinton if she's the nominee.
Hello?
Heeelllllooooo?
Little Otter, oh little otter?????
Thats what I thought.
I had a client show up. That is perhaps the best answer I've eve gotten from an Obama supporters. A hat tip to you.
de nada
Little Otter, please educate yourself. Read here http://slate.msn.com/id/1005224/ and then maybe do some more historical research. Just because you didn't witness it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I have educated myself. It didn't happen. No one can document a single account of such harassment being told until sometime in the late seventies.
Find me a story that was published, or recorded from the time of the war, and you'll have something. Until then, all you have is a whole bunch of guys engaging in rightwing mythology at the expense of the antiwar movement.
There's been an entire book written on the subject by a vietnam veteran and founded of vietnam veterans against the war - Jerry Lembcke. If you're interested in historical reality, you should that book out because he and his students did tens of thousands of hours of research on the subject and debunked effectively every tale they were told. Whehter it's soldiers flying in from Vietnam to commercial airports, hippies outside of airports, hippies on base - all of parts of the tale come apart. there are no arrests for harassing a returning soldier - and the police were always happy to arrest anti-war protesters. there are no news papers stories about it. No returning soldier complained about it in the questionaires they returned to the VA about their experiences coming home - in fact, the anti-war movement was frequently listed as one of the entitites that was most aggressive in helping soldiers readjust to life in the US.
If you want to educate yourself, read The Spittting Image: Myth, Memorty and the Legacy of Vietnam. This is a smear to delegitimzie the antiwar movement and they can use just as effectively against current anti-war activies as could in the past. The question is who do you believe - the American right who created this meme or the people who have actually done the research?
But go ahead - present us with a single contemporaneously told tale of soldiers being harassed.
Tell that to Nikko Schoch, co-founder of Veterans for Peace
"I was spit on. I was called a baby killer even though I had never carried a gun," Schoch said. "We're going to see more psychologically wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq. I hope we as a people can support them."
Source: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,60 0119904,00.html
The only person you'll find that rails against this apparent "myth" is Lembcke. In fact, almost any article I've read on the "myth" of anti-veteran protestors uses Lembcke, and only Lembcke as a source. I don't believe that spitting or harassing returning vets was widespread, but there is enough anecdotal evidence from living Vets, including anti-war vets to say that it happened.
Using your logic, we could excuse Germany's citizens for their leaderships demonization and murder of Jews during the Holocaust, since there is no evidence that normal people in towns knew about what was going on. You will not find one German newspaper from the late 1930's or early 1940's that reported on the widespread murder of Jewish people in the country. That does not mean it didn't happen.
I know, I know, Godwin's Law, but I'm not accusing anyone of Nazism, simply using it to prove a point.
We were disrespectful to the troops, we thought they should refuse to serve. We were young and didn't know any better.
In high school, that is. And my family all drove to D.C. for a huge rally. And even though my father was a college professor and every one of his six children was either already in or within years of attending the best colleges and universities in the nation, not one of us had contempt for the veterans of Vietnam. As an adult, I voted for every single proposition that provided benefits to veterans. I had a cousin who, thankfully, came back from combat in one piece, but I saw news reports of the numbers of dead people, including the people of Vietnam, and I saw how many soldiers returned without arms, legs, eyesight or sanity, and I was appalled by that.
I do not think I was alone in feeling the way I did. I was never smug about it. I knew the protesting was not about being cool or doing the "in" thing. I knew it was about the horror of war and stopping the killing. Unfortunately it would appear that Obama is using this as a way to pander.
I was not attacking anyone personally, and experiences vary. I was a college student at the time also, with a father who had served 4 years in the army in WWII and who was both antiwar and sympathetic to the men going over there. Many kids were. But more, in my experience, blindly ignored the guys doing the fighting or were contemptuous towards them, and their problems and it never occurred to them that the rights and difficulties of these vets meant anything at all. You had a good family and a realistic outlook, but many of the protestors did not share that.
It also did not occur to these kids that if it had been a war they approved of, someone would have had to go fight it.
I'm just giving my own experience. Yes, I read reports that some veterans were being treated badly but I honestly didn't see it around me at all.
I'm not a big fan of the military because it tends to be a conservative institution and supports people like Reagan. But I do try to separate that out from the individuals and what they go through.
My college-professor dad also served at the tail end of WW2, though not in combat because combat had ended by the time he went in.
Spot on. Obama's comments reflected exactly what happened. It's a damned sad day in America when you're called out for telling the truth. The returning vets were treated badly by anti-war protestors and by those who sent them. And Obama is right that it should not happen again.
To the credit of the population as a whole, I see a distinction made for the Iraq vets that they are significantly more respected than BushCo and the criminals who sent them.
He was the one who said he had been treated badly and disrespected for fighting for his country.
Obama's said some people were back them but his disagreement with him was that people are disrespectful of them now.
