By Denis Mueller
One of the lasting myths of the Vietnam War is that
veterans, upon returning home, were spat upon by anti-war
protesters. This is simply not true. There may have been
some isolated incidents of this kind of conduct but the
record shows that this type of abuse by the anti-war move-
ment did not occur when veterans returned. This is not to
say that some members of the anti-war movement were not
hostile, but by and large, the anti-war movement viewed
the veteran as a victim of our government's policies.
How does one disprove a myth? Well, one of the things that
can be done is to look at records of the time. Do any
incidents of spitting on veterans appear in either the Los
Angeles Times, New York Times or the San Francisco
Chronicle?
No, they don't! In fact, a look at articles in magazines
of that time period find no references to anti-war
protesters spitting on veterans. Neither are there any
pictures of these supposed incidents. Logic would dictate
that if this occurred, at the level that is said, then
some photographer would have taken a picture. In fact,
there aren't any existing pictures offered by the FBI, the
army, news services, the returning veterans themselves,
all of whom had the power to record incidents of this type.
Furthermore, there isn't even written proof of these
veterans reporting these alleged incidents to the proper
authorities.
Ask yourself this question, why are there not police
reports of spitting incidents? If veterans returned home
and were greeted by angry protesters don't you think some-
one would have been arrested? Yet there are no records of
this to be found anywhere.
So how has this become part of our national myth? John
O'Conner, a marine chaplain who would go on to become
Cardinal O'Conner speaks of anti-war protesters spitting
on soldiers at the Pentagon protests of 1967. This too is
a lie. There were hundreds of camera people there at the
time. We see pictures of protesters putting flowers in the
barrel of rifles, we see protesters and the police battle,
but no pictures of spitting. When asked to be specific
O'Conner declined. That's because it never happened and
O'Conner is a liar.
When Dr. Robert Lifton began giving psychiatric evaluations
of returning veterans, his work would serve to pave the way
for the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS.), Dr.
Lifton reported that no veterans gave any examples of this
kind of behavior. The fact of the matter is that the most
abusive treatment of veterans did not come from hippie
girls but from the administration and VFW halls across the
nation.
Many veterans that I have spoken to remember being abused
by VFW members who often ridiculed by them. They did this
by telling the returning veterans that their war was not a
real war or often asked them, "why they couldn't win their
war?" The other group to abuse veterans was Richard Nixon's
administration whose VA refused to treat them for Agent
Orange poisoning. Nixon also used informants against the
veterans that opposed the war and turned the FBI loose to
disrupt their activities.
There was, however, one group that did indeed spit on
veterans. It was the young republicans who spat upon on Ron
Kovic and other veterans at the 1972 republican convention.
The veterans were protesting and calling for an end to the
war in Vietnam and were greeted by the young zealots of the
GOP who cursed and spat upon them. Let's get the record
straight once and for all. It was the administration who
abused veterans by sending them to fight and die and then
not taking care of them afterward, not the anti-war
movement.
Sources: Interview with veterans for the documentary,
Citizen Soldiers: The Story of the VVAW.
The Spitting Image: Jerry Lembcke