More on Veterans Who Were Spat Upon

Carl, a Vietnam veteran from the bad days of ’67, writes:

Even though an entire book has been written about the alleged spitting on returning Veterans of the Vietnam War to debunk most of the stories, I still read stories from alleged Veterans who insist they experienced the ‘classic’ spitting event at an airport together with beating the living crap out of the alleged long-haired hippies.
John Kass of the Chicago Tribune quoted a Chicago restaurant owner, another Vietnam Veteran, with the same, tired story. I told Kass in an e-mail the same thing I’m repeating to you: one thing happens to one soldier in the military. He tells the story to another soldier. Years later, thousands of Veterans are telling the same story as though every one had the exact same experience. I hate to say this about my fellow Vietnam Veterans (but not the posers out there), but it didn’t happen as often as the stories say. Most of this spitting crap began after one of the biggest draft dodgers, Sylvester Stallone, pretended to be a grunt in a movie.
Long-haired hippies are the easiest and favorite target of Veterans, but we should be targeting the real bad guys, the lying presidents and congressmen who allowed wars to be started based on a lie. The hippies and freaks don’t have any power to start wars, and little to stop them. Just look at George W. Bush’s recent performance when he said he had “some extra time to answer questions” from an audience that wasn’t ‘prepared.’ Bush “didn’t hear” one question, claimed he truly didn’t hear the question, then guessed “more or less” 30,000 Iraqis died since we invaded their country. Bush’s performance that day puts the finishing touch on the truth that he is without a doubt, the dumbest muther fukker since time began, and the luckiest. What sinister force allows someone so incompetent to remain in the White House as he kills over and over and over without as much as a baby’s fart of concern? America HAS to be doomed when it allows a war criminal of Bush’s magnitude to stay in power.

Nicely said.

I’m a Gester

tshavel@kldlabs.com writes:

Why is liberal America in disarray ? Nobody has to buy your silly book to answer this question, it answers itself – the American liberals are in disarray, because they are liberals. The overwhelming majority of this country, including the left – finds your cartoons despicable. You wonder why being a liberal is a bad thing nowadays – just look at your cartoons. People like yourself, are responsible for giving liberals a bad name. You, and your ilk are the reason for the failure of your delusional agenda. Nobody agrees with you and your ilk – you are totally out of touch with mainstream America, both the right and the left. Even my hardcore liberal colleagues, reject your pathetic cartoons. Youre delusional if you think the majority of the left, accepts those sketches. You are rejected, by both the left and the right. Youre a fool, akin to something like a Court Gester.

I may be a “gester”–gesticulator?–but at least I read the news. Bush’s polls are in the toilet, the Senate threw out the Patriot Act, Republicans are revolting against Cheney’s go-go torture policies and now they’re being forced to admit that they’re spying on ordinary Americans. Liberal America in disarray? Maybe. But, at this point, does it matter?

Manufactured Soldiers’ Letters?

Henway wants to know:

Ted, I didn’t send you a link because you’d delete it for fear of virus, but here’s the story in a nutshell: A local SF Bay Area boy named Ryan was quoted in Bush’s speech the other day. The Fuehrer stated the boy wrote home to his family “I’ve seen evidence of the cowardice and ruthlessness of the enemy,” then goes on to say “the insurgents must be systematically killed or captured.” Shortly after Ryan was killed in Iraq, his parents allegedly received this letter, which somehow made a bee-line to Bush’s teleprompter.

Gosh, whatever happened to “Hi Mom & Pop, I am taking my vitamins,
don’t forget to bathe Fluffy, how is Aunt Frieda?” I don’t buy this letter for a second, and I asked the article’s writer, who works for The SF Chronicle,
if he could verify it, which seems like something cut and pasted from the Lincoln Group, and of course I got no answer. Aside from the usual lying, is this not the ultimate pissing on an innocent’s grave? What, besides seething, can be done about this?

Short answer: I don’t know. Medium answer: Since Bush and his minions lie as the day is long, it’s hardly conspiratorial to imagine that this is fakery. Longer one: There’s lots of evidence that the Bush Administration has falsified correspondence from soldiers fighting at the front in Iraq. This could be another example. Or not. Still, the fact that people have to ask this question is pretty sad.

Pretty Much Says It All

Jason writes stuff I just haven’t seen anywhere else:

Dear Ted,
I’m a big fan, read your articles and comics, blah blah blah, hehe. I just wanted to drop you a quick note in response partially to your last article about “support the troops not the war” slogan, or whatever it is. Personally have served in the military and even in Iraq I would prefer supporting the troops and not the war to not supporting either one. Life is hard over there, it is very difficult to be isolated from family and friends, and the support of my family and friends helped me endure some very difficult times. I realise that the slogan is somewhat of a fallacy. It is true that without troops the war wouldnt be fought, so by just supporting the troops does in fact support the war.
I thought long and hard before I went to Iraq, not because of cowardace, but I like you thought the war was illegitimate, with no declaration of war, false, because I knew all the rhetoric from Bush was crap, and most importantly I thought the civil war after the regime change would be consuming long and arduous. It is true that I voluntarily joined, but after you say yes as a free person your not free till the contract has ended, I think endutured slavedom is a good mental picture of the US military. Most importantly tho was that I like many others dont just have myself to think about, its hard to take your wife and baby of 12 months on a journey to Canada. Not to mention as messed up as this country is, I love it and desertion to Canada didnt seem the best option, not to mention its pretty fuckin cold up there.
The issue of a lawfull order stuff is a bunch of crap too. Existing in the military is existing in mediocrity. To survive in the military you have to not make waves, do as your told, and basically not be creative for your entire stint. Saying to your Captain or Gunny in combat “I dont think thats a lawfull order” will definitely get you court martialled, might get you beat up, or worse might get you killed. That law looks great on paper and is great for civilians and generals to wave around, but the legitimacy of not having to obey an unlawfull order is pure fiction.
I hated the idea of going to Iraq, but the casualness you portray leaving the military is just false. Walking away from the US service is hard in peace time, worse in war time, and never ever easy, getting progessively harder from a single private fresh from boot camp to Master Guns with 20 years in and 5 kids to feed.
Couple more thoughts before I go. I think a more liberal stance that would help the antiwar movement than “support the troops not the war” would be to portray the deaths of kids for what they really are. There is an american conception that the people who die are soldiers, and who were trained to fight and die. Thats just not true. You know who the soldiers that die over seas are? Kids, they are that kid that sat next to you in Spanish class, the quarterback of the football team, the nerdy
girl in the corner of the library, they’re real people. Changing their clothes doesnt change that they will never return to their family or ever start a family of their own. I think the best thing that we can do to stop the war is stop flashing numbers across the screen but pictures of Johny and Jane who they left behind, the high school sweet heart they’ll never see again, their high school teachers who thought they would be something great, or their grandparents who have now lost an husband, son, grandson and greatgrandson in every war.

I never meant to suggest that going to Canada would be an easy decision. Just the right one. Still, otherwise, this letter still blows me away upon the third rereading.

So There Were Assholes

Mike points out that there were jerks in the antiwar movement of the Sixties:

Good morning Ted,
I enjoy your editorials and cartoons regularly, and I support your point of view, which very closely represents my own. I’m a 57 year old Marine veteran of Viet Nam, Jan ’67 – May ’68. War caused my disillusionment of war: murder, torture, and atrocity was not my thing. I joined the Marines to “save America from communism”, as the propaganda of the time persuaded us.
Afterward, I marched with Viet Nam Veterans Against the War, carrying the front line banner, reading names of the dead on the state capital steps (in the rain), and I barged into Ronald Reagan’s office and laid my Purple Heart Medal on the marbled floor. After all, it was mine to do as I pleased, since I earned it the hard way: shot by a .51 caliber machine gun during operation Pike on my 19th birthday.
It has been my unpopular opinion during this particular illegal American corporo-fascist war, that the military and it’s individually content to commit crimes against humanity volunteer soldiers should not be supported. Therefore, I agree
whole-heartedly with your subject editorial. However, Jerry Lembcke and yourself are wrong that it was pure fiction regarding Viet Nam vets being spit on and called baby killers.
During rotation home, I was sitting on a bench in LAX, waiting for my father to pick me up. On either side of me was an Army helicopter pilot and an Air Force airman. Four “long haired, hippie, dope smoking, commie scumbags” walked up and confronted us boisterously, the mouthpiece wearing a dress blue Marine jacket with ribbons affixed. He began by spitting at our feet, calling us baby killers, and hurling epithets. I was anti-war then and embarrassed by their misguided attack.
The Army Warrant Officer and I exchanged a knowing look and stood to confront the punks, whom immediately withdrew in fear, I’m sure. We followed them to the baggage area. which was empty at that time of night, and began to issue them
some good ‘ol article 69 justice. A security officer broke up the melee, sent us on our way with a supportive smile, and ushered the young miscreants off.
I’m not proud of a few things I’ve done in this tough ‘ol life, but that’s one memory I savor, even when I let my freak flag fly. Keep the faith, I appreciate your effort.

For the record, Mike was right to kick those jerks’ asses. For this may surprise you, dear reader, but I would even be polite to Dear Leader. Even if he is a genocidal maniac, there’s no reason to be rude.

Support the Soldiers, Not the War?

Some amazingly interesting and enlightening mail came in this week as the result of my column last week, in which I questioned the current assumption among progressives that soldiers should not be considered responsible for enlisting and serving under an unelected dictator while fighting a war of aggression. Here’s one from Andy:

to: chet@rall.com

I’ve calmed down now, but I want you to read this anyway, as I wrote it.

Dear Ted,

Your piece on encouraging military desertion upset me greatly because it reveals a lack of understanding. Every last one of those soldiers is already dead. They died the moment they naively signed on that line believing they were doing the right thing. You don’t need peace protesters spitting at you for your soul to begin dying. First come the dreams. Then come the startle reactions, and you realise that the big brave man you once were has gone the day you find yourself curled up in a ball crying like a baby because a firework went off, or you caught the smell of diesel in the air. You get time to think it through in peace as you sit in jail after you nearly killed some poor fool who bumped you in the street, and you come to love the solitude and protection of jail because it is an institution whos simple rules of power you understand. When you return your family are overjoyed to see you alive, they don’t know you are walking dead. Over time your wife will learn to cover the bruises and live with broken bones because she doesn’t want to turn you in, but in the end she will leave you to protect her children whos lives have already started to descend into neurosis, depression and underachievement. But you thank God if your wife was pregnant before you left, because now your sperm, like your lungs, kidneys and liver is speckled with blood and burns like fire with the DU dust slowly eating your body away. If she left because you couldn’t have sex anymore she doesn’t realise how lucky she was to escape the slow burning death herself, or to push your legless deformed living abortions about in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Then you start to realise how they were the lucky ones who died quickly in action. So now you wander the streets and sleep in an alley, unemployed, unable to get medical treatment. Nobody told you before you went that you can never erase or forget those images and thoughts. If the alcohol doesn’t finish you off then the dope or the heroin or the lobotomising tranquilisers, or maybe a bullet to the head from your own pistol will.

Ted, I’m sure you are a very warm and human person, that your intentions are good. I can see that in your cartoons and other writings, and don’t think your own bravery in standing up and speaking out is lost on me. But you clearly do not speak with the sensitivity that experience would have given you. You quote Hollywood films apparently oblivious that their sick, violent culture of lies and hypocrisy is part of the propaganda problem. I think you don’t understand war, the pressures that make the “right thing to do” to stay beside your brothers and endure duty and sacrifice for what you were told is right by those you trust and respect, even though there is a gun at your back as well as in front of you. Since you have a platform to speak and much to say may I humbly suggest you direct your words against the lying, treasonous bastards who send the innocent to kill the innocent for nothing more noble than dirty profits.
Perhaps I’m wrong about you, but you should realise this phoney war has made cowards of us all. These chaps don’t have the same choices, the same degree of free will that we have sitting here pontificating and rubbing our beards. Most come from the poorest backgrounds, for them service is an escape not an adventure, a chance to feel good about something for once. They fall into the hands of the smartest manipulators, psychologists who know how to unleash the evil in a man, but not smart enough to put the genie back into the bottle. All very sad.
On quite another subject, have you ever heard of the artist Banksy who comes from my home town in England? He is a genius. Something tells me you would very much like him.

I do understand that most enlistees don’t possess the experience or sophistication to see past their recruiter’s slick sales pitch (see the world! bomb it!). That’s why I think the armed forces shouldn’t be permitted to enroll anyone under age 30. Wanna bet what that would do to our leaders’ plans to fight more optional wars, just for fun and profit?
I’ll check out Banksy.

ATTITUDE 3: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ONLINE CARTOONISTS, due out in June 2006, will feature the work of 21 cartoonists who are moving from the world of print into the Internet to produce some of the funniest, outrageous and innovative comics around.

In keeping with the format of the first two volumes in the ATTITUDE series of comics anthologies, ATTITUDE 3 includes cartoons by, interviews with and personal ephemera (like childhood photos) of each creator. Featured are innovative artists who focus on politics, others on social commentary and still more who are out to make you laugh. Find out why webcomics are the hottest new comics around through this primer to some of the medium’s brightest talents!

The featured cartoonists are:

1. Rob Balder: Partially Clips
2. Dale Beran and David Hellman: A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible
3. Matt Bors: Idiot Box
4. Steven L. Cloud: Boy on a Stick and Slither
5. M.e. Cohen: HumorInk
6. Chris Dlugosz: Pixel
7. Thomas K. Dye: Newshounds
8. Mark Fiore: Fiore Animated Cartoons
9. Dorothy Gambrell : Cat and Girl
10. Nicholas Gurewitch: The Perry Bible Fellowship
11. Brian McFadden: Big Fat Whale
12. Eric Millikin: Fetus-X
13. Ryan North: Daily Dinosaur Comics
14. August J. Pollak: XQUZYPHYR & Overboard
15. Mark Poutenis: Thinking Ape Blues
16. Jason Pultz: Comic Strip
17. Adam Rust: Adam’s Rust
18. D.C. Simpson: I Drew This & Ozy and Millie
19. Ben Smith: Fighting Words
20. Richard Stevens: Diesel Sweetie
21. Michael Zole: Death to the Extremist

Coming in a few weeks: pre-order information as well as a special offer for those who order multiple copies in advance.

Tomorrow on the Ted Rall Show

First and foremost: livestreaming! That’s right–now you can listen to the Ted Rall Show online, live, from 11 am to 2 pm Pacific Standard Time every Sunday!

And, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in live at 106.9 Free FM.

Up first at 11 am: the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the man sent by “rendition” to Egypt for torture and then, under torture, told the CIA that ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda included WMD training. Then–surprise!–once the torture stopped, al-Libi recanted his story, saying he had just told them whatever they wanted to hear to make them stop. This story ties everything together: renditions, torture and lies about prewar intelligence.

At 12 noon: can we forgive people who voted for Bush?

[NEW: Richard Pryor is dead. Assuming we can beep out all the cursing, I’m going to try to do a Richard Pryor homage hour tomorrow.]

1 pm features the Cartoonists Roundtable dishing on the industry and the week’s news. This week: Matt Bors (“Idiot Box”) and Jen Sorensen (Slowpoke).

See you tomorrow!

In my column this week I mentioned a 1998 book by Jerry Lembcke, “The Spitting Image,” which asserts that there was no published evidence that returning Vietnam vets were ever called “baby killers” or spat upon by antiwar protesters. Joe Hotchkiss of the Augusta (GA) Chronicle wrote in response:

Your most recent column included this sentence (emphasis added):
By the way, as Jerry Lembcke found in his book “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam” (1998), there’s no reason for antiwar types to feel guilty over the treatment of Vietnam vets–there’s no evidence of any kind that anyone ever spat on a Vietnam veteran or called one a “baby killer.”
Not according to nationally syndicated columnist John Chamberlain, who wrote in 1970 about Marine Corps Maj. Richard H. Esau, and the scorn heaped upon him by college-age protesters: “The major gets tired of being taunted with such questions as ‘How many babies have you killed?’ … His answer to the baby killer taunt is, ‘If I don’t kill you, I haven’t killed any.’” (May 26, 1970, The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle). What are the odds that Chamberlain managed to find the only member of the entire U.S. military who had been taunted as a baby killer? There obviously had to have been more.
Soldiers nationwide clearly were branded baby killers by Vietnam-era protesters and others, likely in the wake of the revelations that sprung from the My Lai massacre court-martial. Rock musician Frank Zappa wrote in his autobiography that, during one of his shows at New York’s old Garrick Theater around 1970, he called a young soldier onto the stage, and threw him a prop they used in the show, some sort of doll. Zappa then told the soldier to pretend it was a “gook baby,” upon which the soldier made a sick comical show of stomping on it. (The Real Frank Zappa Book, 1989) Not only were the baby-killer taunts happening back then, they were clearly part of the popular culture (or counterculture, if you want to look at it that way).
Also, in September 1983, Dr. Jack R. Ewalt said plainly, in a newspaper interview, that traumatized Vietnam War veterans were attacked stateside as “baby killers, women killers, the kids that lost the war.” (Chronicle, Sept. 7, 1983) Ewalt was the director of mental health and behavioral sciences in the Department of Medicine and Surgery at the U.S. Veterans Administration, and presumably not someone who just got through watching a screening of First Blood.
And Jerry Lembcke says there’s no evidence of soldiers being called baby killers?

Neither the Zappa anecdote nor Dr. Ewalt’s 1983 newspaper interview did much to change my conclusion that Lembcke was right. After all, Zappa’s memoirs were written in 1989, seven years after the release of the myth-making 1982 film “Rambo: First Blood.” He might have “misremembered.” And even if Zappa’s memory was flawless, the story he tells hardly is the same thing as a returning vet being screamed at or spat upon. And the 1983 Ewalt piece came a year after “First Blood”—while he may not have seen the movie (well, why not?) he certainly could have been affected by the Reagan-era historical revisionism then in full swing that sought to recast the Vietnam War as a noble endeavor that might have succeeded if the troops had been properly supported back at home.

The Chamberlain story, however, was a different matter, potentially disproving Lembcke’s thesis. So I asked him to dig it out of the Chronicle archives. Here it is, and thanks to Mr. Hotchkiss for sending it:

Unfortunately this clipping hardly dispatches Lembcke’s work to the trash heap of history. As I wrote to Mr. Hotchkiss upon reading it:

Dear Joe,
Thanks for sending the page with the Chamberlain column, which ‘ll reference on my blog. I don’t think being asked “How many babies did you kill?” is quite on par with being spat upon and having “baby killer!” yelled at you, though. Yes, there’s a linguistic similarity and the subject is the same–which is why it’s worth noting–but it’s really not the same thing as the post-Rambo myth. It’s like the right-wing hate mail I receive: If someone asks, “Why are you a traitor?” and awaits my response, that’s hardly the same thing as screaming “Traitor!” and spitting on me.

So that remains, well, unsettled. The rest of the editorial page on which Chamberlain’s piece ran back in the dark days of May 1970 includes more evidence that nothing really changes. First there’s the fact that “Dlibert” type humor is nothing news:

Then there’s David Lawrence’s call for expansion of presidential power, so that then-President Nixon would be free to launch new wars, such as the then “secret” invasion of Cambodia, without being required to obtain a declaration of war from Congress. Even back then there were neocons:

And the real humdinger: an editorial cartoon that insults “peace marchers” (at least there were some!) and argues for—yep—the “fly paper” strategy! Gotta beat ’em in ‘Nam before they come here to the United States!

Nothing really changes. By the way, the cartoon I did that will go online tomorrow, which mocks the flypaper argument, was drawn more than a week before I saw this.

Postscript: How offensive it must be to the Iraqis and the rest of the world to hear American politicians say that it’s OK to fight wars overseas but not here—as if the rest of the world was a sort of Fresh Kills to be crapped all over. I just wonder why they wouldn’t hate us.

Information About the Ted Rall Show

My radio station has its website up and running. Check out the Ted Rall show on Sundays, 11 am to 2 pm West Coast time, in San Francisco, at 1069freefm.com. There’s also a livestreaming button that should go live any second.