Most of the abuse leveled at veterans returning from Vietnam was done
by groups like the American Legion and was directed at the Winter
Soldiers, VVAW and those who threw their medals back.
The most
recent incidence of spitting on Vietnam War Veterans occurred in 2004
when the Republican "Swift Boat" campaign figuratively speaking spit on
decorated Vietnam War Vet, John Kerry.
From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/01-7
Out
of all the status-quo-sustaining fables we create out of military
history, none are as enduring as Vietnam War myths. Desperate to cobble a
pro-war cautionary tale out of a blood-soaked tragedy, we keep
reimagining the loss in Southeast Asia not as a policy failure but as
the product of an America that dishonored returning troops.
Incessantly
echoed by Hollywood and Washington since the concurrent successes of
the Rambo and Reagan franchises, this legend was the central theme of
President Obama's Memorial Day speech kicking off the government's
commemoration of the Vietnam conflict.
"You were often blamed for a
war you didn't start, when you should have been commended for serving
your country with valor," he told veterans. "You came home and sometimes
were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a
national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened."
It's
undeniable that chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration
unduly harmed Vietnam-era soldiers. However, that lamentable failure was
not what Obama was referring to. As the president who escalated the
Vietnam-esque war in Afghanistan, he was making a larger argument.
Deliberately parroting Rambo's claim about "a quiet war against all the
soldiers returning," he was asserting that America as a whole spat on
soldiers when they came home — even though there's no proof that this
happened on any mass scale.
In his exhaustive book entitled "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam,"
Vietnam vet and Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembcke documents veterans
who claim they were spat on by antiwar protestors, but he found no
physical evidence (photographs, news reports, etc.) that these
transgressions actually occurred. His findings are supported by surveys
of his fellow Vietnam veterans as they came home.
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