Customer Reviews

The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

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I decided to take up the reader from Dallas who suggested that "Google dispels all of the 'research' done for this book".

Guess what? I found most all of the references agreed with the author's point of view. Most all referred to this as an "Urban Legend", where those people who state this theory in discussions do so after having only read about it once, or who are so committed to the Vietnam War - and I think one can make a noble case for it - that they are willing to try anything to discredit anyone who felt otherwise.

Ironically, the author notes that the relatively few cases in which there is evidence of it having taken place...mostly came from prior war veterans, dismayed that returning veterans "couldn't do what we did". In some cases, the reporting of drug use by some overseas veterans, sadly, helped feed some of this animosity.

The author, a Vietnam Vet himself, emphasizes that very, very few cases of this exist to begin with. All the more reason to treat this as the Urban Legend that it is.

Lembcke's thorough analysis probes the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran. He reminds us that the anti-war movement saw an ally in veterans and the largest group of veterans was in fact Vietnam Vets Against the War. While violence and 'spitting' did occur, it was normally against the peace activist or even the anti-war veteran, who received the harshest treatment from hawks and mainstream veterans organizations who looked down on them for losing the war.

However, the nixon administration needed to discredit both groups. Thus the strategy began to de-politicize vets by portraying them as damaged people and attacking the anti-war activists by introducing fictious images into popular culture to discredit their efforts.

However, like Howard Zinn in the People's History of the United States, the goal is not simply to set the record straight; but it also affects how we act today. This memory has discredited activism on college campuses in the 80's and 90's, especially during the gulf war. Students who equate activism with spitting on veterans quickly shy away from that type of activity.

The book does a complete job showing why and how this attack on our cultural memory was accomplished by looking at police reports, newspaper articles and films(since many people's primary reference for this war is rambo). This false memory has been damaging to activists, veterans and the country as a whole, and this book helps us to come to a better understanding of what really happened.

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."

StormWarning! five-fist salute to Jerry Lembcke.

I work in a field which often brings me to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. While at the memorial, I frequently hear tour guides, some of whom I know personally, talk of the alleged experiences of Vietnam vets returning to the US after their service. They were, the story goes, spat upon and called baby killers, and subject to other atrocities. What stands out of those commentaries is that they all use the same lines, the same clichés, and that they were all reported in third or fourth hand. "My cousin has a friend, whose brother got back from Vietnam, and..."

A friend of mine, a former Navy officer, and I have talked at length about those stories. From different sources, we learned that they're simply not true. In my case, first, I've talked with many a Vietnam vet---some of whom have returned from more than one tour of Vietnam---and have never had such an experience, and know no one who has. Then in the film "Sir, No, Sir" which I reviewed for Amazon.com, a Vietnam vet asserts that they didn't return to civilian airports but to military bases. So such atrocities couldn't have occurred.

My friend the Navy vet said that it was during an ROTC course taught by a Marine Lt. Col. that the issue came up. In one of the books for the course, the author(s) commented that it did not occur, and they apparently traced the sources of the myth.

Lembcke, a Vietnam vet himself, begins the book with a couple of observations. First, many, many a Vietnam vet had purchased first class SLR cameras from the PX. If there were so many cameras purchased, why is there not so much as one picture available of all these atrocities? Next, he asserts, and provides substantial evidence for the fact that many if not most returning vets were part of the anti-war movement! So (1) they wouldn't have done such a thing and (2) they wouldn't have tolerated anyone who did.

He goes on to examine how the myth developed during what I like to call Gulf War I: The Prequel. It was a tool to foster the "support the troops" campaign, i.e., we can't really support the premise for the "war" so let's get a pro-troop campaign going. What better way to discredit the anti-war protests than to suggest that they don't support the troops, just like the anti-war movement allegedly didn't after Vietnam.

The author wisely covers where the myth of the spat-upon vet may have developed. One whole chapter covers movies some of which were quite popular, such as "Coming Home." He brought up some others I'd never even heard of, at least one of which was a black exploitation film the title of which I don't recall at this point. At first I had problems with his bringing them, some of which he referred to as B movies, up. But after thinking about it, I realized someone saw those films, which perpetuated the myth that the returning vets were victims of the anti-war movement. Belief in that myth certainly provided a convenient political tool still used today: one can find the "support the troops" fervor even today, in those who won't even attempt to provide reasoning behind our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Back to the Vietnam Vets Memorial: during an anti-war demonstration a year ago, some Vietnam Vets were protecting the memorial because they'd "heard" that someone planned to disgrace it. At the same time, some of those vets were throwing horse manure at some of the demonstrators. I mention that as it fits into another context of the book, and my experience: Rather than the anti-war movement being responsible for any atrocities, the pro-war movement was far more inclined to such things---then and now. That's another irony that Lembcke brings up in the book.

The author makes a solid case, based on evidence, and some speculation based on the press and, again, films which were popular for the fallacy of the "spittin' image" victimhood. Where I had a problem with him is that he over-analyzed. It's been a couple of weeks since I finished the book, so I can't quote anything specific, but there were places he got into a bit of post-modernism. That may be academically trendy, but if he'd stuck to the evidence and the history, and reduced the book by about a third, he'd have convinced me even more solidly. There's a little too much psycho-babble---some of which may be valid, e.g., theories of why it's almost always women who're doing the spitting. But by and large, the author would have been more convincing to stick with the facts and avoid post-modernist theorizing.

The bottom line is that all evidence indicates that the "spittin' image" was concocted for propaganda purposes long after the Vietnam conflict had ended. It was developed to support military adventures that otherwise lacked support, and to discredit the Vietnam and later anti-war activities and activists.

I've read some other comments from Lembcke before and since the book. He clarifies that he never said such things never happened. Rather, he states that they certainly weren't as pandemic as popular mythology holds. For that statement, and the evidence to back it, I appreciate the book despite its weaknesses.

As Jerry Lembcke concedes, it is more difficult to prove something "didn't happen" than it did. Dispelling widely believed popular myths is even more difficult, particularly when they pertain to controversial issues surrounding a group whose word is supposed to be sacrosanct. Nevertheless, Lembcke offers a compelling argument that it was not common, nor is there any documentary record that anti-war protesters spat upon returning vets. Moreover, he argues that the myth of the spat upon vet is a product of a concerted effort by the Nixon Administration to distinguish between "good vets" (silent majority, did their job, got spat on) and "bad vets" (committed war crimes, grew long hair, joined the anti-war movement) as a means to isolate the anti-war movement and capture the "middle," which wanted "Peace with Honor."

To prove his point, Lembcke examined the historical record from 1965-1973 and found not a single documented instance of an anti-war protester spitting on a soldier. No arrests, no news reports, no photographs, no reference in any FBI file (protests groups were often infiltrated). Nothing. So if it was happening, virtually no one was reporting it or talking about it.

Moreover, the earliest examples of "spitting" being referenced during the war pertain to pro-war folks threatening to spit on anti-war protesters. The point that Lembcke is trying to make here is that it would not be difficult to imagine people interpreting the phrase "Vietnam Vets spat on at Anti-War Rally" to mean that anti-war protestors were doing the spitting when in actuality it was pro-war protesters spitting on anti-war vets.

According Lembcke, first hand accounts of being spat on began to emerge about 15 years after the war and share many of the characteristics of "urban myths"--peculiar similarities that don't add up--why always an airport? why is the spitter typically a female? Why did airport security allow protesters to "lineup" at a gate to spit? Why does the soldier always slink away rather than fight?

The shortcomings of the book are primarily that it is repetitive. It reads like it was originally a set of discreet articles which were later merged into a book, and therefore many chapters make the same point with the same facts. Also, the chapter on the nature of spitting and its psycho-cultural significance sounds like psycho-babble.

Beyond this it is an interesting and well researched account of a controversial subject.

Lembcke's book deserves a wide audience. It's interesting that the reviewers either love or hate his book. With respect to the 60's and Vietnam, this is deja vu all over again--i.e. there are the realists who see that it is a purposeless war with few if any consequences if the U.S. withdraws. On the other hand, you have the unquestioning hardliners who claim that withdrawal will irrevocably harm U.S. foreign policy. The former proved to be right, while the latter were hopelessly out of touch.
It was a tragically stupid war that was fought by young men who were generally idealistic (albeit naive) adventure-seekers who thought they might somehow become heroes (or at least not cowards) in the eyes of their countrymen, but as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy." The tragedy was writ large in Vietnam.
I have an acquaintance who is a psychiatrist at a VA hospital. He conducts group therapy sessions occasionally. He says that on more than one occasion, he's had guys who pour out their confidences and stories of trauma in combat. When he checks their military records, he finds that there is no way they could have ever been in combat in Vietnam, even though they offer convincing stories to the contrary. Are these the same guys who insist that they were spat upon and had rotten tomatoes tossed at them at the San Francisco airport? And by the way, weren't the long-haired, hapless Haight-Ashbury freaks and Berkley students generally too stoned to find their way to the SFO airport to harass war-weary GIs returning from Vietnam?
Airports, like elevators, are anoymous, impersonal places where strangers don't approach you. The image of someone accosting battle-hardened vets returning from the combat zone in the comfort of an airport in one of America's most upscale and mellow cities is simply a bit too apocryphal for this writer to accept.

The Big Easy

I thought this a well-researched book. His investigation of spitting on Vietnam Veterans is only one part. Even more valuable was his investigation of where the myth came from, and why. His descriptions of the manipulation of public opinion by the Johnson and Nixon administrations is most valuable, and most relevant.

Several reviewers state that Lembcke is wrong. "A University Professor," for example, states the following:

(1) There were many contemporaneous accounts of spitting, including spitting reported in the New York Times and Washington Post by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists.
(2) Contrary to Lembke's claim that such stories began appearing only about 1980, such stories were extremely common in the 1967-72 period.
(3) Returning soldiers frequently flew through civilian airports, the San Francisco Airport being one of the four official military debarkment points for returing servicemen flying directly from the Far East.
(4) The memoirs of one anti-war protester reports that his group tried to meet as many servicemen returning through the San Francisco airport as possible (with the greeting: "F ** K the Army."
(5) In contemporary accounts, women protesters were frequently witnessed spitting (Lembke makes the sexist claim that women do not spit).
(6) Many spitting stories do not fit the pattern that Lembke attributes to them (e.g., sometimes spat upon military reported responding violently).
(7) Some accounts of spitting were put forward by people who opposed the war, so Lembke's suggested reasons for their supposed lying are not always present.
(8) At least one anti-war spitter has come forward and admitted that he spat on Vietnam servicemen.
(9) Lembke reports some of the results of studies that he discusses in a way that minimizes the hostility to troops that was revealed in the studies.

This same reviewer went on to say, "Lembke appears not to have researched newspapers of the period with enough care to justify his extravagant claims, a defect that caused most of his factual claims about the lack of evidence to collapse when other scholars began examining them. If most of the hundreds of retrospective first-hand accounts of spitting contain no obvious errors, but Lembke's account contains errors on almost every one of his evidentiary points, why would a fair-minded reader credit Lembke's frequently mistaken account of no spitting over the accounts of people who were actually present?"

University Professor (or any other reviewers who argue that Lembcke is incorrect), please provide documented evidence for your statements.

Thank you.

Detailed and convincing analysis of the myth that vietnam vets and anti-war protesters were antagonistic (best epitomized by the image ofthe hairy hippy "spitting" on soldiers - an image that Lembke shows has been highly exaggerated, for politically manipulative purposes). Lembke's work is invaluable to contextualizing and debunking the current fashion of blacklisting of leftist academics and anti-Iraq war protesters, as well as the largely silenced foot soliders who criticize the war in Iraq today. Lembke shows how these recent moves to silence America's brave critical voices are part of a much longer history of right wing propaganda and violence. This book should be read in college classes on militarization, peace and conflict studies - also good for psych classes about trauma and memory.

Starting, with Nixon and Agnew, the Right has used the image of Anti-War protesters spitting on Vietnam Veterans and the Peace Movement being hostile to returning veterans to delegitimize the Peace Movement and political activism, especially on college campuses.

Lembcke proves that the popular perception of the Anti-War veteran being anti-soldier is historically inaccurate by noting that both Soldiers in Vietnam and Veterans from Vietnam and other wars played an important part in the Peace Movement. Veterans of World War II and Korea were involved in the movement against the Vietnam War as early as 1965 and several Vietnam Veterans such as Ron Kovic, John Kerry and Lembcke himself were prominent Anti-War activists.

Lembcke helps to reclaim the history of the movement against the Vietnam War and thereby help current generations of peace activists to know the history of those who both veterans and non veterans who fought against previous wars.

Every book I read, is very important to me, but this book is different. It shook me to my very foundation. It brought memories long buried. The courage of Lembcke to openly challenge popular myth that clearly misinterprets the lessons of Vietnam. Lembcke reopens an honest examination of the important issues learned by the generation involved directly with that war. Their story is finally told without political revisions and censorship. Thank you Jerry for your honesty