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smooth · 01-04-2005, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dobster

Talking about Iraq, actually. But people had/have varied opinions of both wars didn't/don't they? Anyway, I don't live in The States of course - is there as much animosity against the troops in Iraq as we're informed there was against the Nam vets?

no, there isn't as much animosity against either set as you've been led to believe--at least from the anti-war/peace demonstrators.

if you're interested in a good read, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam by Jerry Lembcke is well written, not very long (about 200 pages), and not overtly academically styled.

Quote:

Dewey Canyon III, the protest in 1971 where vets (many VVAW) threw their war medals back at the capital building, is imortalized on the jacket of this insightful volume. Lembke dissects dozens of stories of 'Nam vets being spat on by the anti-war movement at home (usually, legend has it, by a young woman in the San Francisco airport). But even more importantly he eloquently exposes and breaks down who the myth serves, and the importance of accurate recollection:

"...Ironically if the real [emphasis added] Vietnam War had been remembered, the Gulf War might not have been fought. We need to take away the power of political and cultural institutions to mythologize our experiences. We need to show how myths are used by political institutions to manipulate the decision making process. And we need to dispel the power of myths like that of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran by debunking them."

"...instances of attacks of U.S. officers by their own men are all but forgotten in the popular remembrances of the Vietnam War. Many Americans today "know" that GIs were mistreated upon their return from Vietnam. Their images of Vietnam veterans run from the hapless sad sack to the freaky serial killer; for them post-traumatic stress disorder is a virtual synonym for the Vietnam veteran. But they have never heard of "fragging," the practice of soldiers killing their own officers. The true story of the widespread rebellion of troops in Vietnam and the affinity of GIs and veterans for the politics of the left has been lost in the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran."

This is a must read for anyone fighting to keep the real legacies of the Vietnam War alive. Lembcke goes into the history of how important past wars, their veterans, and the common summation of the public, are invaluable in building for support for the next war. He's also got a great filmography and references for further study.

"...How Vietnam is to be remembered looms large on the agenda of the turn-of-the-century legacy studies. Remembered as a war that was lost because of betrayal at home, Vietnam becomes a modern day Alamo that must be avenged, a pretext for more war and generations of more veterans. Remembered as a war in which soldiers and pacifists joined hands to fight for peace, Vietnam symbolizes popular resistance to political authority and the dominant images of what it means to be a good American. By challenging myths like that of the Spat-upon Vietnam veteran, we reclaim our role in the writing of our own history, the construction of our own memory, and the making of our own identity."

-- http://www.oz.net/~vvawai/sw/sw39/Sp...ge_review.html

Quote:

Jerry Lembcke. The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. Assisted by Harvey J. Kaye. New York: New York University Press. 1998. Pp. xi, 217. $24.95.

Among the cultural images that create historical meaning about the American experience of the Vietnam War, that of the Vietnam veteran who was spat upon by antiwar protesters carries particular weight. Recent analysis of the effects of the Vietnam War in American culture has revealed that the dominant cultural narrative of Vietnam veterans has to do with their treatment after their return from the war rather than their experiences in the war. So, for example, the symbolic recognition of the veterans at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (a memorial for the dead that is also specifically about the living) can be said to have offered recompense to veterans much more on the issue of their treatment at home than their service at war. 1
Jerry Lembcke's book looks at this image of the veteran who, having served his country and barely survived, is spat upon by representatives of the antiwar movement, and finds it to be an urban myth. Lembcke works hard to show that there is no evidence of such incidents taking place, and examines why this image nonetheless carries such tremendous cultural currency. He effectively demonstrates that, in fact, many Vietnam veterans turned against the war and formed important coalitions with the antiwar movement. Moreover, he pinpoints the ways in which the Nixon administration, and later the Bush administration during the Gulf War, had enormous stakes in depicting the antiwar movement as anti-veteran, effectively rewriting the cultural memory of protesters demonstrating at induction centers while recruits and draftees went off to war into a story of protesters demonstrating at airports when the worn veterans returned home. Lembcke makes clear that the government's stakes in this representation were high, in particular in terms of garnering public support for the Gulf War by convincing Americans that not supporting the troops was a fatal mistake of the Vietnam War. Once those hundreds of thousands of American troops were sent to the Persian Gulf, this narrative effectively helped to shut down public debate on the war's merits. 2
Using this image as his focal point, Lembcke, who is a veteran himself, examines the ways in which the spurned veteran has functioned as a myth that both aided in the stereotyping of the veteran as a mentally unstable psychopath and in demonizing the antiwar movement and the political Left. He covers this issue from many angles, discussing the role that well-meaning psychiatrists, in designating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a veteran ailment, played in perpetuating the myth of the veteran as isolated and unstable and analyzing the gendered aspects of the myth that women spit on men. Lembcke is at his most effective when examining the compelling history of the work of veterans against the war, the ways that the Nixon-Agnew administration created a public discourse of good and bad veterans, and the long-term effects of this myth on subsequent antiwar movements. 3
In taking on a topic that is both narrow (the specific image of the spat-upon veteran) and potentially vast (the cultural memory of the Vietnam veteran), Lembcke is faced with a particular set of challenges, and at times the book seems to be arguing not simply that no veterans were spit on by anyone but also that no veterans were ostracized after the war or mentally damaged by it. Furthermore, in arguing in detailed fashion about whether or not actual spitting took place, or, for instance, giving a detailed analysis of why the film Coming Home (1978) distorted the stories of the veterans on whom it was partially based, Lembcke seems at time to be arguing against himself. For as he makes clear, the cultural memory of the spat-upon veteran, which some veterans themselves remember, is, even if a kind of false memory, nonetheless still a memory that has cultural value: it acts as a symbol for the difficulties experienced by the veterans after the war and the invisibility they felt. At other times, Lembcke is skilled at walking that ever-important line between dispelling the myth and acknowledging the difficulties that do exist for many veterans. His book is an important contribution to creating a more complex analysis of the experience of Vietnam veterans and, importantly, of the ways in which the image of the Vietnam veteran (and the Vietnam MIA/POW) has been exploited to aid in furthering warfare. 4

Marita Sturken
University of Southern California

-- http://www.historycooperative.org/jo...5.2/br_73.html

and here's something by Lembcke himself:
http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=95

one of my undergrad soc professors knows him as a personal friend and had nothing but good things to say about the man. I never met him, but I did read his book. hope you read and enjoy it.