Vets from Iraq/Afghanistan fare No Better than Vietnam Vets...it's all

[KoKo]

Bait and Switch! Sign up to get yourself killed and and come home and No One GIVES A SHIT!

At least Lisa Myers on NBC posted about it. Returning Iraq/Afghanistan Vets find their jobs GONE...even though they were promised that their service would be honored.

All the time...Vets get dissed and just like with Vietnam...after you "SERVE" you are gone from memory.

GET OUT OF IRAQ! GET OUT OF Afghanistan! We DU'ers who lived through Vietnam KNOW. It's REDUX of DISASTER!!!!

It never changes or ends....NeoCon's/Draft Dodgers send you to WAR and when you come HOME...no one cares..you fight for your life and your rights because these are Wars that ARE NOT EVER SUPPORTED!!!

[pocoloco]

1. At least they are not getting spit on, and

a few are finding good jobs in politics!

[KoKo]

2. Do you have a link from a Non-Fundie Sit about Vietnam Vets Spit on?

This is a perpetuated MYTH...that lives on in Conservative sites that "Anti-Vietnam folks like John Kerry "SPIT ON" returning Vets.

It's convenient and it's a myth. One idiot spit on a Vet and it was reported forever as an example of what went on with ALL Vietnam Vets.

Myth..and Repug Spin. Did anyone spit on Georgie Bush because he "got out of Vietnam Service? when he visited his Hometown? What about Cheney? Did anyone spit on HIM for his FIVE DEFERMENTS?

Let's do a fact check with links...Okay?

[Monkeyman]

3. Sorry thats no MYTH I got spit on

Airport in Chicago two young women spit on me and called me baby burner. 1972 after I got out of Reed.

[BrotherBuzz]

7. Many, many, many of us weren't spat on because we were fucking invisible

1972, I traveled from Travis AFB to SFO to JFK. One very long day that stuck in my memory because not one person said a damn thing to me the entire way. I was invisible. Brother, I'm sorry you had that experience.

[TahitiNut]

13. I did the Bien Hoa to Travis to SFO to DTW trip 37 years and 2 days ago.

1969 - Given a ride from OAB to SFO in a "flower power" VW van by Berzerkley hippie girl and her returning vet boyfriend. (Spat at in SFO while going for the plane.) Arrived in the AM in DTW and nobody there - took a cab at 2am. Not fun. 37 years and 2 days ago. I think about it each year at this time.

:hi: Welcome home.

[Monkeyman]

4. And one more time when I was in a parade last year by a Replug

Because I wore a Vote Democrat on my Jacket

[pocoloco]

5. Ain't got no friggin links but I got a disabled USMC Buddie

who claims he was spit on after he got off the plane from Nam in CA. I have no reason to question him. He has mentioned it several times!

[TahitiNut]

6. Again, it's NOT a myth!

It happened to me.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/TahitiNut/3
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/TahitiNut/11

[KoKo]

10. I keep hearing these stories and I trust DU'ers who post this but I

grew up in the South and had classmates behind me who went to Vietnam and one came back missing both legs and he was up for full College Scholarship..brilliant guy...no one spit on him...I was part of anti-war protestors at Yale University in late 1960's and early 70's and never heard advocation of folks taking out their anti-war views by "spitting" on those returning home...and I was in the midst of some really radical folks at that time.

I don't know all your experience or who was spitting but did you ever think it was a forerunner to our cowardly Freepers staging stunts?

Who did the spitting. No one has ever said who these people were and the folks I was with at the height of the Anti-War Movement just were into protesting and doing "flower power" and not into going after Vets.

Maybe my experience isn't "mainstream" but given my experience in the Loyal Military South with folks I knew and my exprience in the Northeast...I gotta figure I must have had some little peephole into what was going on at that time. :shrug:

On Edit: What was I doing at Yale when a bunch of folks like Bush and the rest of the Den of Thieves and Power Big Wigs were there?

I was typing papers for Ph.D. Candidates for low wages ast the Department of Engineering and Applied Science while my scholarship hubbie was plugging away in Med School. We had no money and it was an awful life because grad student wives made nothing and the scholarship didn't pay the bills. But, I was there when lots of folks who are in power now were there...like Lieberman...and I must have walked by them every day not knowing who they were and they didn't want to know me.

But...my perspective comes from that tumultuous time...

[TahitiNut]

12. By far, the most resistance in accepting the fact that it happened

... seems to come from folks who somehow seem to think it reflects on THEM. Lembke's "scholarship" was riddled with the fallacious syllogism that if it wasn't "spitting hippies" then it couldn't even be "spitting." There were other deep flaws in his treatment, but that was one of the most glaring.

I don't know WHO did it - at least I don't know what label I might apply to them that wouldn't raise the synaptic defenses of self-identified "birds of a feather." But let me be VERY clear: I DO NOT believe in collective guilt - or guilt by some demographic association.

Let's just quickly dispel a couple other fallacies.
- I don't know why anyone would assume that guys were spit at when they weren't alone - like at a protest. I never heard first-hand from anyone (and I've heard several instances that I believe are fully credible) who was spit at when he wasn't alone. It was the act of bullies - people in small groups showing off to their equally hateful 'buddies.'
- I have no idea why anyone would assume such instances would be reported, either in the press or in some police report. I think that's an insane assumption. No service person at the time wanted to get in a fracas with civilians, least of all when he was going home. To think that I, or any of us, would lose his temper is just nuts. Hell, I'd been shot at and dodged rockets and mortars for a year. Spittle is deeply insulting (and a betrayal), but it isn't life-threatening.

So, the difficulty some may have believing it is, I believe, testimony to the fact that there's just no bridging the gulf between those who spent their tour of duty in Viet Nam and those who didn't. This is why we Viet Nam veterans kept our mouths shut for so many years -- what's the fucking use??? (Some who 'spoke up' carefully tailored what they said for their audience.) After being dismissed and called 'baby killers' and treated like lepers - just how the hell does it make any sense to think there's not a fundamental inability to comprehend the experience? Talking to a wall is a waste of time - both for the talker and the wall.

Quite frankly ... I have my doubts anyone much cares at this point. There are less than a million of us left alive. Before too long, we'll all be dead and folks can believe whatever they want - and no vets will be able to say otherwise.



Yes ... I'm quite familiar with the alliance of convenience between good-but-not-affluent students and poor-but-affluent students in colleges and universities of that day - the days of student deferments. Indeed, the instructors and professors even turned a blind eye. This understanding is why I know that Smirk bought himself a degree - his course work was, without a doubt, done by others.

[H2O Man]

8. While it is not

a myth that Vietnam Veterans were spit upon and subjected to an array of abusive treatment, that does not change the fact that you are correct in your OP regarding today's issues. A person can watch Imus on MSNBC, and can be confident that he is in no sense a liberal or progressive. He has addressed issues involving veterans who are dealing with serious injuries, and how the neocon-republicans have neglected their needs. More, his very right-wing buddies attack VP Cheney and Co for their war in Iraq.

Some anti-war folks may have made errors in the Vietnam era. Progressive democrats try not to repeat them. That's a huge difference between us and the republicans.

[KoKo]

11. Thanks for bringing my post back to the issue of "how we treat our Vets"

and how it never seems to get better. "Spitting" isn't the issue except for the humiliation of those that it happened to. But the humiliation of being "forgotten" or at best "left behind" with a few veteran's services" is the ultimate insult.

We can all withstand slings and arrows (spitting) but to serve and be forgotten after the war when all goes back to normal for average Americans is the ultimate insult.

It doesn't change...and that's why going to war should never be done in haste or with ulterior motives by those who don't know what the hell they are doing because they haven't been there before.

Thanks for getting my post back on track.

[KoKo]

9. Okay...if you were "spit on" then what about these folks coming home from

Iraq and Afghanistan? Who cares enough about them to even "spit on them" if I take your analogy to the final point.

What I said in my post was that all these Vets are trashed when they come home. Look at the WWII vets. Not all went on and used the "GI Bill" to become Fortune 500 Execs....many were left with the scars to try to build a life and some made it an prospered...those who didn't we don't hear about.

It's the same with all wars....Vets serve and the "Flags Wave" and the Media lauds them...until after they come home. Then they are dust or left to their own devices to get along.

American Patriotism has such a short life span..that after the "Flag Waving" the support dies and it's gone.