The Soldier as Spittoon

In this week’s column I quote an expert who says that there are no documented cases of Vietnam vets being spat upon when they came home to the United States. I received several replies from vets taking issue with that claim. Few were credible, some were, but the standout for what I think are obvious reasons was the following. Without comment, here it is.

I read you column semi-religiously, as an wonton agnostic should. I usually agree with you on theory, but this time I have to add to your details.

While not the returning wounded Vietnam veteran, I do have a spit story.

I was attending the State University of New York Maritime College in

1965-1969. On my first trip into NY City as a cadet, I was wearing my brand

new dress uniform. It was a Merchant Marine cadet uniform, dress blues, and

I was pretty uncomfortable in a new costume, but very proud of the fact that

I had it on. Being a freshman in college, and it being 1965, I really did

not come to a personal conclusion about Vietnam, but I was not anxious to go

there, nor would I have volunteered. My college position deferred me from

the draft, and I was going to graduate as a Merchant Marine officer which

would have deferred me as well.

I got off the subway at Lexington and 42nd Street and was walking to Times

Square. I was walking tall trying to support the look of the new uniform.

An rumpled old lady walking the other way was mostly looking at the ground.

As she came close she looked up and without any visible thought process at

all she hacked up the largest loogie you can imagine and hawked it right on

my lapel. As you can imagine, my 18 year old psyche was devastated. I

found some old newspaper to wipe it off, but I never again wore that uniform

without a though about her. That might have been good.

After graduating, in 1969, my first two assignments turned out to be in

Vietnam. The first 8 months out of school I was transporting Korean troops

from Pusan to Vietnam and taking 1 year vets home. (the group going home

was always smaller and much quieter) Following that I got a ship that

wasn’t supposed to be going there but ended up going to Vietnam forever. We

shuttled containers from Cam Rhan Bay to Saigon, Qui Nhon and Da Nang, back

and forth. The ship was shot at several times and hit once.

I went there dubious of our need to be involved, and while there fell in

love with the beauty of the country, and its people. I read and studied its

history and politics, and when I left after being there for about a year and

a half, I was no longer dubious. We were not there for the right reasons,

we were clearly not there for the Vietnamese and we were doing much more

harm than good. The body count kept rising, there was a big dent in the

number of baby boomers, but the sheer number of Vietnamese who were killed

was staggering.

My conclusion is that war has no winners. All losers, some worse than

others, the poor of both countries were devastated the most. Wealthy

Americans got deferments, or at worst, some post at Cubi in the Philippines

counting beer kegs at the O’Club. A very few ended up as officers away from

the fray, some like Kerry actually saw combat. Poor Americans were grunts,

and had a terrible rate of repatriation.

I am sure that we need a military, but wish we could take our lessons from

Switzerland. Train everyone, build fortifications at home, be ready to

defend, maybe even help police troubled areas so stability can be restored

but an offensive army is just that, offensive! Offensive to our values and

our Constitution and to the ideals of the founding fathers.

I wish I could thank that old lady!

Air America Appearance

I’ll be on Air America’s “Unfiltered” on Wednesday morning, at about 10:30, to discuss right-wing pro-Iraq War types who are now backpedaling. If the left had been as wrong as the right has been on Iraq, we’d be losing our jobs right and left, totally discredited. But the right shrugs it off and moves right along. Why the double standard?

REPOST: Limited Offer: Signed Copies of WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL and GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO

Yes, this offer remains in force! If you’ve emailed me already and haven’t heard back, my spam filter probably caught your stuff. Please try again. If you haven’t, now would be a good time to take advantage of this.

As long as they and I last–probably a month or two–you can buy your copies of my new books WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL: HOW WE CAN TAKE AMERICA BACK FROM THE RIGHT and GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO: ESSAYS AND CARTOONS ON THE BUSH YEARS directly from me. And I’ll sign the books to whomever you want!

Here’s what you do:

1. Send an email to me at chet@rall.com letting me know: (a) your address, (b) which books you want, (c) how many of each you want, and (d) how you’d like them all signed. I’ll email you back; don’t do anything until you hear back from me.

2. Figure out your payment. WAKE UP is $15.95 a copy. Priority mail is $3.95 to anyplace in the United States, so send me $20 (money order or check) for EACH copy of WAKE UP you want. EL BUSHO is available in hardback and softback. EL BUSHO hardback is $19.95 each, so send me $24 for each EL BUSHO hardback. EL BUSHO paperback is $13.95 so send me $19 for each EL BUSHO paperback.

3. Send your payment to:

Ted Rall

P.O. Box 1134

New York NY 10027

4. Payments by cash or money order result in quick shipping, within a week. Checks must clear first, so that means more like 2-3 weeks.

5. EXTRA BONUS OFFER: For an extra $50, I’ll throw in a unique 7×10 sketch of whatever I feel like–a rough draft of a published cartoon, an EL BUSHO, whatever. I’ll even take a request–but won’t honor it unless I feel like it. I will only do this for people who buy at least two books. Price is $200 for all others.

6. I will post notice on the when this offer expires.

The Onion

Better than a Pulitzer and a World Series trophy combined, I’ve been mentioned/lampooned in this week’s Onion!

In an article headlined “Nation’s Liberals Suffering From Outrage Fatigue”, there’s this tidbit:

“For a while, I wanted more fuel for the fire, to really get my blood boiling,” said Madison, WI resident Dorothy Levine, a reproductive-rights activist and former Howard Dean campaign volunteer. “I read the policy papers on the Brookings web site. I subscribed to The Progressive. I clipped cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall. I listened to NPR all day. But then, it was like, while I was reading Molly Ivins’ Bushwhacked, eight more must-read anti-Bush books came out. It was overwhelming. By the time they released Fahrenheit 9/11, I was too exhausted to drag myself to the theater.”

Sniff. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Shout Out to Jonathan Walsh

You sent me a money order from Japan but no address as to where to send your book. Which book did you want and where shall I send it? Please email me at chet@rall.com.

The Perfect Choice

For months Democrats anxious to restore representative democracy to our tortured nation have been asking me whom I thought Kerry should choose as his runningmate. My answer, each time, was always the same: John Edwards. He’s young, telegenic and likeable. And he’s from the South, essential to this year’s Electoral College map.

Another point worth making is, win or lose this fall, Edwards is being groomed for a future presidential run. This provides him with the spotlight he needs to gain national name recognition.

Ideologically, I would have preferred Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich. But this year isn’t about that. Because it is incumbent upon all patriots, regardless of party registration, to defeat George W. Bush and put him and his criminal gang of idiots and thugs on trial for corruption, torture and war crimes, Kerry must win. Period. Edwards is the safest pick towards that end.

Friends don’t let friends vote for Bush.

Time to Trade Up

Saddam Hussein, influenced by fascism, ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of people, fought two disastrous wars, turned his nation into an international pariah and ruined his country’s economy.

In other words, his record is identical to George W. Bush’s.

As we saw at his “arraignment” before a U.S.-picked Iraqi puppet tribunal last week, however, there is a difference between the two men. Hussein is much smarter, funnier and more erudite than Bush. When Saddam pointed out that Bush was the real criminal, who could argue? He even managed to defend the invasion of Kuwait! So why not swap them out? We get Saddam Hussein as our president; the Iraqis get Bush. Consider the benefits: we get gargantuan statues and a leader capable of using language–think how fast he’ll solve the Palestinian issue! and they get, well, the guy who’s really in charge anyway.

Death Threat Phone Fun

A hapless fascist Bush supporter called me the other day to warn me to stop drawing cartoons and writing columns. “Are you Ted Rall, the cartoonist? You better stop what you’re doing,” the guy, who sounded vaguely southern despite calling from the San Francisco Bay Area, told me. “We’re watching you and we’ll kill you unless you stop.”

Fortunately, through means I won’t disclose but you can probably imagine, I know this guy’s number, the fact that he lives in Palo Alto and is a Pacific Bell customer.

He’s at (650) 858-8365.

Fahrenheit 9/11

I bit the bullet and fought the crowds last night to catch the movie at the cinema across the street from Lincoln Center. Here’s my take:

Moore’s film is essentially divided into two halves. The first half, which covers the stolen 2000 election through the invasion of Afghanistan, is riddled with spin, missed opportunities and odd or incorrect choices to emphasize. The second half, which focuses on the human cost here and abroad caused by the invasion of Iraq, is heartbreaking–I actually cried a few times–and watertight. Moore is at his finest when he points out that our poorest people, those who live in the worst neighborhoods and hold the shittiest jobs, give up their lives and limbs to fight to uphold the same society that oppresses them back home, and when he shows the impact that their sacrifice has upon them and theirs. Awesome.

One wonders, however, about why some things were mentioned and others weren’t. On the 2000 election, Moore uses the essentially ceremonial Congressional joint session where black Congressmen tried to launch a protest about Florida rather than the true missed opportunity: the Electoral College, whose Florida electors were honorbound to cast their votes for Al Gore. Perhaps he felt that the American public was too ignorant to understand the legal nuances of our constitutional system?

As I wrote in my column this week, too much is made of the planeload of evacuated Saudis after 9/11, including members of the bin Laden family. A far more interesting question concerning 9/11 is, where was the US Air Force? Why had defense spending been gutted when it came to defense, while expanded to promote hostile actions overseas? Of course that could also be attributed to Clinton, which wouldn’t have fit Moore’s preconceived agenda.

For my money the most ethically dubious spin of the film concerns the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline deal. While talking about a meeting the Taliban held with Bush Administration officials in Texas in February 2001, he flashes a screen shot of a BBC website story about Unocal-led discussions with the US about the pipeline. Look fast or you’ll miss it–I almost did–the date of the article is 1997. The narration implies that happened under Bush, but it didn’t. The pipeline discussions began in 1995-6, were dropped after the 1998 bombings of the East African embassies and revived in 2001 under Bush. If anything, the facts are more damning than Moore makes them sound, for Bush revived a deal that Clinton had disowned after thoroughly explored. But Moore probably thought they were too complicated for the typical American moviegoer to understand.

There are other problems. Ties between the Bush families and the Saudis can be at least partly explained by the fact that the oil business is a small one; it shouldn’t be surprising that Saudi and Texas oilmen would invest in one another’s ventures or become friends. No-bid contracts with Halliburton to provide food to US troops in Iraq were bad enough–Moore mentions them–but Halliburton didn’t even do the work they were paid for, having ripped off the taxpayers. He should have referenced that.

And it goes on.

So F911 isn’t the definitive case-closed slam-dunk against the Bushie Imperium some have made it out to be. But it’s a damned impressive achievement nonetheless. For those of us who follow cable news obsessively and read the UK Guardian website every morning, there isn’t much here to learn. But for the vast majority of Americans who don’t, this will be their first exposure to footage of an ersatz president who talks and looks like a total idiot, imagery of dead Iraqi children and U.S. troops who don’t support Bush. It cherrypicks the best of the worst, bundles it all together and says: Look. Here’s the state your country is in and here are the men who are responsible. F911’s success is its success, natch—the mere fact that so many Republicans will see it, and possibly be forced to reconsider their support for their party standardbearer, makes it incredibly important.

Ted says: two thumbs up.

Cassandra Rall?

A long-time fan who’s been following me since my radio days wrote this today:

Good call on the draft. I think that was over a half-a-hear ago. You had posted the email to the selective service on the blog because they were hiring. I filled out the application and I have recieved two letters back. They seem really interested !

More recently, I have been hearing alot of talk about a better draft on the radio and elsewhere.

I am keeping track of your predictions. You have a really, really good record.

I consider myself the un-official score keeper for your predictions. Your first and greatest hit was the Bush victory..which you predicted on the radio when everyone thought it was a lock for Gore. The whole Stan foresight was understandably fuzzy, but you did say on the radio that it was an increasingly important area. Years later when Dan Rather rolled out that Studio-sized map and explained to confused American’s “These are the stans. You probably have never heard of them.” I was hysterical!!!

ps. “Wake Up” is seriously killer…I assume you know about all of the spelling errors. I’m getting El Busho this week.

Most of all, thanks for getting on tv and radio more!!!!!!!

I remember the KFI days. I believe they are creeping back. Right now you are THE leftmost point in America’s mind. Keep it up.

Well, yes. I have been right lot lately. If only I knew a good bookie, yes? Of course, it helps to have a working knowledge of the rise of Nazism…