Tom Hayden - civil-rights and antiwar activist, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), former California state senator, ex-husband of Jane Fonda (who the hardcore rightwingers still hate worse than Osama bin Laden or Bill Clinton) - thinks it's a great idea: You Gotta Love Her Nation 04/04/04.
Unlike the Republicans who are opposed to recognizing gay families, Hayden values family enough to defend his controversial ex-wife from the macho blowhards who still trash her for her trip to North Vietnam in 1972. His brief discussion of that trip is very much worth reading, because he puts it in a context one is unlikely to ever hear on Fox News.
It includes some telling quotes of then-President Richard Nixon discussing with his National Security Adviser Kissinger what should be done about "this shit-ass little country" (Vietnam). It's a reminder that Bush and Rummy and Chaney are in many ways very much the political spawn of Richard Nixon.
Hayden is more than willing to see a discussion of Vietnam that many Democrats have preferred to avoid and for which "the Republicans substitute the politics of scapegoating and sheer fantasy." He's literally correct about the "fantasy" part. And Hayden realizes what doesn't seem to have occurred to a lot of Republican attack dogs yet:
Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad. Young John Kerry's 1971 question--"How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?"--is more relevant than ever.As an illustration of how the right wing has built elaborate stab-in-the-back fantasies about the Vietnam War, Hayden mentions one of the most famous postwar legends. Let's hear it from that man of the people, Chuckie, aka, CHARLIE DANIELS, country singer and Regnery Press political hack (my emphasis):
When I think about brave men and women being spit on by dirty, stoned-out, jobless, pseudo-intellectual hippies whose only contribution to this nation had been to burn their draft cards, it makes my collar get about two sizes too small.Hayden says of this spitting-on-the-veterans folklore:
The popular delusions about Fonda are a window into many other dangerous hallucinations that pass for historical memory in this country. Among the most difficult to contest are claims that antiwar activists persistently spit on returning Vietnam veterans. So universal is the consensus on "spitting" that I once gave up trying to refute it, although I had never heard of a single episode in a decade of antiwar experiences. Then came the startling historical research of a Vietnam veteran named Jerry Lembcke, who demonstrated in The Spitting Image (1998) that not a single case of such abuse had ever been convincingly documented. In fact, Lembcke's search of the local press throughout the Vietnam decade revealed no reports of spitting at all. It was a mythical projection by those who felt "spat-upon," Lembcke concluded, and meant politically to discredit future antiwar activism.Also citing Lembcke's book, Bruce Franklin in Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (2000) talks about the spitting story:
The first allegations of such behavior did not appear until the late 1970s. The spat-upon veteran then became a mythic figure used to build support for military fervor ...As Franklin goes on to point out, that popular version of the folklore about the specific airports is easily debunked, because soldiers returning from Vietnam did not come to those civilian airports, but to military airports not open to the public.
Of course it is possible that isolated instances may have occurred. But if antiwar activists were frequently spitting on veterans or otherwise abusing them, why has nobody ever produced even the tiniest scrap of contemporaneous evidence? According to the myth, spitting on veterans was a regular custom as they arrived from Vietnam at the San Francisco and Los Angeles airports. We are supposed to believe that these men just back from combat then meekly walked away without attacking or even reporting their persecutors, and that nobody else, including airport security officers, ever noticed what was going on. For there is not one press report, airport security report, police report, court record, diary, video shot, or photograph of a single incident at these airports or anywhere else.
But this story isn't just interesting because it's a case study in urban folklore. It's become a politically useful myth, not least in demonizing the antiwar movement against Vietnam. As Franklin notes, "Before the myth arose, years after the war, the only veterans who ever reported or who were observed being spat on were antiwar veterans - by prowar partisans." (my emphasis) And he adds, "a 1975 survey revealed that 75 percent of Vietnam veterans were opposed to the war."
In other words, John Kerry and antiwar veterans like him were prominent leaders and activists in the movement against the war. Compare the newsclips of Kerry testifying before Congress, read some of the accounts of the veterans protesting against the Vietnam War, and see if they bear any resemblance to the drug-crazed derelicts described in the Chuckie quote above.
Hayden is right in his closing paragraph:
If I were George W. Bush, I would be terorrized by the eyes of those scruffy-looking veterans, the so-called band of brothers, volunteering for duty with the Kerry campaign. They look like men with scores to settle, with a palpable intolerance toward the types who sent them to war for a lie ... and who are determined that this generation hear their story anew.Tags: bruce franklin, jerry lembcke, tom hayden, spitting image, vietnam war
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