Spitting on the Troops: Old Myth, New Rumors

[pinboy3niner]

28. I was called 'Baby-killer' on my first pass from the SF Army hospital treating me for my wounds

I was hospitalized for 18 months at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco before being retired from the Army for disability.

Passions were high, and there were people in the antiwar movement who abused Vietnam vets at the same time that the movement was welcoming antiwar vets into their ranks and allying with VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War, organized by disabled VN vet Bobby Muller).

People who weren't there get rabid about crying 'myth!' based on a book that labeled spitting reports as false. When I read the book many years ago, I was struck by how dishonest it was.

The context at that time was that the Right was trying to smear the Left and the antiwar movement as anti-VN veterans. So a Leftist VN vet college prof wrote a book to purify the movement and defend it against those attacks. The resulting work was highly disingenuous, but ended up being cited as gospel by many on lthe left who accepted it unquestioningly.

I think the whole notion that the antiwar movement must be proved to be perfectly pure and always righteous is ridiculous. As with any movement--Occupy or Ferguson or anything else--it's not like you submit an application and get vetted and get training and a membership card. The movement is those who show up, and not all will behave perfectly.

Shit, I was on the receiving end of the slurs and I get it. And those names really hurt. Not so much for me...I was thinking of the guys in my platoon back in Vietnam and the meatgrinder they were going through. I didn't know who or how many would make it back alive, and that's what made those names hurled at returning troops really hurt.

But I cannot for the life of me see how recognizing the reality of what actually happened to us, including bad treatment by the movement in some cases, invalidates the antiwar movement in any way.

What still feels like crap today is that too many are so eager to invalidate our experiences without even listening to us. We're just being used--and abused again--by some who want to force our experience and our history to align perfectly with their partisan and ideological views.

I hate this shit but at the same time I have to laugh when I see the same old spitting arguments raised again as if this is what our conclusions about the war and the movement depend on. Really?