On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 10:17:03 -0800, Rudy Canoza says...
> >
> > That isn't what he ask for.
>
> That is exactly what he is trying to do.
>
Oh goody... another fucking liberal who thinks he's a mind-reader.
Written by a veteran, who became a PROTESTER, you dolt... he did NOT have
a subjective bone in his body to write about something OTHER veterans DID
experience.
=====
"The spitting on veterans was just a small part of the overall feeling of
lost honor, but it was real, contrary to Sirota's article, which appears
to borrow heavily from a review of a book written by socialist and war
PROTESTER Jerry Lembcke."
"In October 1967, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Reston's front
page article in the New York Times described his eyewitness account of
protest behavior so vulgar that spitting was the least of the
transgressions."
=====
Disrespect For Vietnam Vets Is Fact, Not Fiction
Spitting stories, while TRUE, aren't the point. But denial of what we
suffered dishonors us again.
By BOB FEIST
June 26, 2012 - 6:42pm
Counterpoint
I am a combat-disabled Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1968-69. I
was infantry, in the field, fighting the most misunderstood and unpopular
war in American history. I've studied the history, and I've lived it.
And David Sirota (just ONE other veteran) is wrong about the history and
policies of that war and about the treatment of returning military men and
women ("The myth of the spat-upon war veteran,"
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/157945515.htmlJune 8).
Contrary to protesters' claims, then and now, the Vietnam War did not
begin without good reasons. It was a direct result of the 1945 Yalta
Conference, where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill agreed to abandon the
Vietnamese (who had helped defeat the Japanese in World War II) and give
all of Indo-China back to the French. Despite U.S. economic support and
military advisers, the French lost the ensuing Vietnamese independence
struggle and withdrew from all of Indo-China. Vietnam ended up divided.
In the era when the North Vietnamese invaded the South, the world was
facing Russian colonialism, the spread of communism, nuclear arms, the
Cuban missile crisis and other threats to world peace. We fought to
"contain" communist aggression and adopted the "domino theory," believing
that if one country in a region fell, the rest would. Although the history
of the past 50 years is complex, it's fair to observe that the spread of
communism has been contained.
We need to remember that it was the South Vietnamese government that lost
their war, not the much-maligned American soldier. American service
members did not suffer defeat, even though most of us felt defeated.
Policy and politics out of Washington had failed, not the military.
Vietnam vets were raised in a society that honored veterans. Despite
Sirota's contentions, Vietnam vets were a bit crushed coming home. We were
not honored, but were treated as the face of an unpopular war.
I am not aware of many Vietnam vets who were not subjected to some
disrespect, either personal or from the culture that called us "baby
killers." We were shamed and embarrassed. My car (with a military base
sticker) was "egged." I bought a wig to hide my military haircut.
The spitting on veterans was just a small part of the overall feeling of
lost honor, but it was real, contrary to Sirota's article, which appears
to borrow heavily from a review of a book written by socialist and war
protester Jerry Lembcke.
In his purported study, Lembcke's sampling was not random, it was
statistically insignificant, and he stated that stories of spitting first
surfaced in the 1980s. And he espouses that post-traumatic stress disorder
was an invention of the government to garner support for the war.
But Lembcke is refuted by many other sources, including Jim Lindgren, a
Northwestern University law professor who cited news accounts that
documented many spitting incidents. One example: A 1967 Bucks County
Courier Times article reporting that two sailors were spat on outside a
high school football game by a gang of about 10 young men. One of the
sailors was stabbed.
Others:
In October 1967, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Reston's front page
article in the New York Times described his eyewitness account of protest
behavior so vulgar that spitting was the least of the transgressions.
Even Medal of Honor recipients were abused and "spat upon as 'monsters',"
according to the head of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, WWII
medalist Thomas J. Kelly. Kelly recounted how about 200 anti-war
protesters showed up one year to harass the Medal of Honor recipients at
their annual dinner. WWII Medalist James Conners was unable to avoid a
particularly obnoxious man yelling, "Killer, killer, killer." Conners
decked him.
o Other spitting incidents were reported by Pulitzer Prize winners Max
Frankel in the New York Times (November 1969) and Carl Bernstein in the
Washington Post (May 1970).
Lembcke is an avowed socialist and has tried to use incomplete or
dishonest research to lend credence to his government-as-pro-war
conspiracy theories, to use the 9-million-plus Vietnam-era veterans as
anti-war pawns.
Let's all stop listening to those who refuse to consider the facts. Our
Vietnam experience ended more than 40 years past, and it deserves to be
judged by history.
I do not wish to have my record of service dishonored again.
--
Wanna make a Conservative mad? Tell him a lie.
Wanna make "pretends he's not liberal" Rudy mad? Tell him the truth.