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Activist Reviews The Spitting Image: By Chris Ney
He was at least tacitly admitting that his motives for fighting had as much to do with long-term foreign policy goals as they did about defending Kuwaiti sovereignty, deterring aggression, or protecting Western access to petroleum. The Gulf War was about making the world safe again for U.S. imperialism, a task that required an exorcism of the remnants of pacifist and left-wing opposition to the war in Vietnam. The public relations campaign that accompanied the Gulf War—from the yellow-ribbon campaign to the “We Support Our Troops” bumper stickers—inspired sociologist and Vietnam vet Jerry Lembcke to investigate the images and myths that today surround the U.S. experience in Vietnam. Some of these myths are grounded in fact, others are complete fictions. All have been manipulated for political purposes. Yet none is more powerful than the image of spat-upon veterans assailed by antiwar protesters upon their return to their homeland. That myth still affects people, particularly those too young to remember the actual events of the Vietnam era, and motivates activists on both sides of the lines. Lembcke writes, for instance, about an incident that occurred during the U.S. intervention in Bosnia: A “leaflet circulated on the campus of Holy Cross College in Worcester, [MA], expressing opposition to the mission but support for the troops and the ‘hope that no student today will repeat the mistakes of the generation that preceded us—by spitting on Marines.’ ” Lembcke’s book tells the fascinating story of the creation of this myth—and presents hard evidence that refutes it. Examining media coverage of protests and veterans’ activities during the era, public opinion polls, film and popular culture of the period and personal correspondence of dozens of vets, Lembcke could not find a single report of an antiwar protester spitting upon a returning soldier! In everything he looked at, he “found only one material representation of the spat-upon veteran image—in a GI Joe comic book … from the mid-1980s.” The more textured story Lembcke tells relates the development of an antiwar movement by pacifists, liberals, students, radicals and veterans. He traces the relationship between the antiwar veterans and other antiwar activists from a 1965 march organized by the Fifth Avenue Peace Committee—which drew significant participation from veterans (including WW II and Vietnam veterans)—through the establishment of organizations like Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. One of the most important expressions of vets’ opposition to the war was the veteran- organized Winter Soldier investigation of U.S. atrocities in Southeast Asia held in 1971. In addition, the peace movement organized coffeehouses near military bases as support centers for soldiers and resistance by GIs in Vietnam. Soldiers’ resistance to the war ran from political education and organizing among the ranks to refusal to obey orders through desertion and “fragging”—killing—officers at the battlefront. Lembcke asserts that the image of antiwar veterans was so threatening to the political establishment (represented in the later years of the war by the Nixon administration) that creating a counter-image became a political necessity. “The trick here,” said Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman, “is to try to find a way to drive the black sheep from the white sheep within the group that participated in the Moratorium yesterday.” But Lembcke is not a conspiracy theorist, rather he is part historian, part media critic, part cultural anthropologist, a combination that creates a fascinating, if sometimes scattered, account of myth-making and war. To make his case, he draws on experiences similar to those of the United States in Vietnam, particularly Germany after World War I and France after its defeat in Vietnam. In both instances, stories of spat-upon veterans circulated widely after military defeat. The common thread is that the war was lost not on distant battlefields, but by betrayal at home. The Third Reich’s Hermann Goering claimed that young men, deserters and prostitutes ripped the insignia off the uniforms and spat on the returning soldiers. But in fact (and in striking parallel to the U.S. experience in Vietnam), by the end of World War I, thousands of German soldiers revolted against their officers and “to express their solidarity with a left-wing revolutionary movement that was growing across the land, … ripped the insignia from the uniforms of their own officers.” The story was repeated a few decades later in France. The French army suffered a serious blow to its prestige in its defeat by the Nazis in World War II. During the following decade, as French soldiers fought Vietnamese nationalists, the opposition of the French political left to colonialism translated into left-wing opposition to the war in Indochina. Military leaders blamed their defeat on the politicians of the Fourth Republic. In both Germany and France, the myth of the abused veteran allowed these European societies to understand their military defeat at the hands of foreign enemies. Not surprisingly, the ideologies of militarism are deeply tied to notions of empire and racial superiority. The same dynamic was at play in the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s (as reflected most prominently in film productions about the Vietnam war and its veterans). By implication, Lembcke suggests one explanation for the rise of xenophobia and racism in the United States following the war. Referring again to France and Germany, he writes:
To flesh out his theory about myth-making and Vietnam, Lembcke reviewed dozens of films about Vietnam veterans. The chapter titled, “Myth, Spit, and the Flicks: Coming Home to Hollywood” is one of the most interesting, offering synopses of Vietnam films ranging from mid-60s movies barely distinguishable from beach flicks to the 1976 psychodrama Taxi Driver, to the tragicomedies Good Morning Vietnam and Forest Gump to Blaxploitation to science fiction to gore. Not surprisingly, very few films depict Vietnam veterans as antiwar activists, but the filmography make the reader want to find video versions of those that do. For all its strengths, the book has two weaknesses. It attempts to cover too much material and occasionally pushes the evidence too far. For example, Lembcke writes, “The proof that antiwar activists and Vietnam veterans were mutually supportive, then, constitutes proof that they were not hostile to one another.” This logical weakness does not pervade the entire book, but the few examples might induce skeptical readers to question the book’s claims. In addition, this small volume seeks to present the history of the antiwar movement, the inner working of the Nixon-Agnew team to discredit the movement, more than 30 years of film representations of Vietnam veterans, plus theories about myth- making, image, sexuality and aggression. As a result, the author does not always tie up the loose ends. Despite these weaknesses, the book’s exposition of the legacy of Vietnam and the legacy of Nixon administration efforts to discredit the antiwar movement make this essential reading for any activist today, especially for those who, like me, were born during or after the U.S. war in Indochina. Dirty tricks and lies don’t go away—they just get recycled and return. Chris Ney is WRL’s Disarmament/Fundraising Coordinator. |
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United States has finally beaten the “Vietnam Syndrome,” proclaimed the
first President Bush during the Gulf War. 