To Right Wing Republicans, no less!!

Yes, the spitting on vets and such did occur, but it was not as prevalent as Obama is painting it to be.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

See here. Or here.

It is, in fact, precisely a dolchstosslegende.

Yet another right wing talking point levelled by a Democrat against other Democrats. Lovely.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

As I mentioned over at TL: this will only increase the potency of his long-term friendship with Ayers, which looks increasingly lethal (Actions speak louder than words). When all you have is a personality-based campaign, personal attacks become legitimate and crippling.

Before anyone says, "But the economy will save him!" Obama has shown himself to be someone unable to speak or think clearly about policy, instead relying on empty platitudes, and has actively run on destroying the Clinton (economic) legacy and, thus, the Democratic brand. The man has nothing to stand on against McCain. The election will be a battle of personal narratives: patriotism, experience, and character ("judgment").

That's what someone said at TalkLeft

that the problem with Democrats is that they are all satanists who love killing babies.

Straw men are absurd and Obama gets away with it--for now--more than anyone save Bush W.

of all the dead
of all the loss
of all the lives
destroyed and lost
what comes to mind
but legends' gloss

is the lesson
that we learned
that limbs detached
have less weight
than tales of slights
of protesters' hate?

please, let me shake the hand
of one more limbless man
lest all memory fade
and straw men spit on barren graves

++++

Seriously, I spewed a lot of the anti-boomer crap, too, when I was 20. Then, you know, I grew up and learned not to believe every generational musings piece in Newsweek as some sort of accurate portrayal of history. And, unlike Obama, I can at least truthfully say that I'm not a fucking baby boomer, so my resentment was the normal telling the older folks to get over themselves. What's his excuse?

But, hey, at least he's not having trouble attracting voters over 50. So this shouldn't cause him any problems at all.

Obama's Inability to Hire Good Help Rears Its Head … Again
May 12, 2008 12:28 PM

We started covering Sen. Barack Obama's inability to hire good staffers in June 2007, when he blamed staffers for some opposition research trying to link Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, to outsourcing in India; for injecting some venom in the David Geffen/Hillary Clinton fight; and for missing an event with firefighters in New Hampshire.

In December, we noted again that Obama was blaming the answers on a 1996 questionnaire on a staffer; and was blaming his touring with "cured" ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin (which antagonized gays and lesbians) on bad vetting by his staff.

Those five buck-passing incidents were apparently not enough.

...

So, for those keeping track at home, that's ten instances of Obama publicly blaming his staff for various screw-ups.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!

(You of course could also add Austan Goolsbee, Samantha Power, Gordon Fischer, and retired Gen. Tony McPeak.)

That would be 14. We will continue to keep track.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/...

because I'm one of those people who have been vilified by the lie that troops were spat upon, for 40 years now, my whole adult life.

Pisses me off beyond belief that Obama repeats that lie. If he wants to reach out to the military and military families and veterans, fine, but not by lying and dividing. Maybe he could talk about the lies of the Bush administration and the thousands of American dead and the lousy care we give our wounded and the lousy equipment we sent them off to die behind, and tie that to the lies told by Republicans about the anti-war protestors of the 60's, protestors who only wanted to stop that senseless war and never once attacked the troops, only the politicians - and damn certain never ever once spit on any soldier or any veteran.

If you've got friends who say they saw it happen, I dare them to repeat that in print, with places and names. The VRWC along with the FBI and DOJ combed this nation for years looking for just one incident that could be used to bolster that lie, and never found a single one. Hundreds of thousands of protestors, including a lot of flat-out crazys, and not a single incidence of physical abuse of any soldier. We were all of us better than that.

Want to know why? Because a whole lot of us squashed that kind of talk flat out. Anyone who suggested going after the troops was immediately shouted down. The soldiers were our brothers and sisters, caught up by the same oppresive machine we wanted to stop. Only fools like Ayers and Dohrn thought physical attack was a right thing, and even they - when they started - only went after buildings. That made them criminals, not protestors, and I condemned them then and I condemn them now.

No anti-war protestor ever spit on a soldier. It is, I say, a lie.

exactly.

Miss you, hope the work is going well.

There are many in the comments saying it happened, emotions ran high in those days, so I don't doubt that it may have happened a few times. I know there were no lines of protesters waiting to spit on vets as the came home.

The lie is that this was the Modus Operandi of the anti-war movement, and Obama is repeating that lie, and must be denounced, I totally agree.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

willing to go on the record.

It never happened, not once. Pretty damn amazing, when you think about it. This is nothing but another VRWC lie spread and propogated until it gets imbeded in the public lizard brain.

You are the one making the claim, you bring me proof - or stop repeating it.

I was an itch in my daddy's pants at that point in time, but not much else, so I don't know(and unless your God(dess), omniscient and all, I don't think you can know either).

Here is the thread, though Lambert posted it above. I'll quote a couple of the commenters, and you can argue with them.

It did happen (5.00 / 1) (#33)
by dianem on Mon May 12, 2008 at 02:25:13 PM EST
Just not to the degree than many believe.

It happened to a certain extent but.... (5.00 / 7) (#144)
by Maria Garcia on Mon May 12, 2008 at 02:55:45 PM EST
...what people tend to forget is that it didn't happen just because people opposed the war, it happened because stories started to trickle out about atrocities like My Lai.

it did happen (5.00 / 2) (#92)
by Capt Howdy on Mon May 12, 2008 at 02:41:01 PM EST
I was there. I saw returning troops spit on.
it was a sad spectacle.

Viet Nam Vets Were Most Certainly Spat Upon (5.00 / 1) (#161)
by PssttCmere08 on Mon May 12, 2008 at 03:00:14 PM EST
and there are those that would like nothing more to sweep that under the rug.

No none of them claiming it was an everyday occurrence, or that Obama's comment is justified. They agree mostly it is a myth created by the Right Wing, in an attempt to turn people against the memories of the protesters, but want the record clear that yes, a few ignorant, full of themselves, "creative class" types, who were never really threatened with the draft, expressed their disgust for the war, in the most reprehensible way. Remember this is the same movement that spawned Ayers, so I don't believe it is out of the realm of possibility that it did happen. One commenter even makes the point that the people that they claimed did do it, are now the types who would support Obama.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

... there's no way I'd take the word of a TL commenter named "Captain Howdy." If he was there, there's something, somewhere to corroborate it. No source, no story.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

happen to someone I loved (a cousin) upon his return from Over There.

Granted, he was getting off a bus, in uniform, and had been "In Country" nearly three days since leaving "the 'nam," but yes, he was spit upon. He wasn't part of Calley's unit, but his uniform meant the same thing to the people gathered to display their spite.
The My Lai incident photographs and video had just come out. I was six or seven years old at the time.

Like my kid brother nearly 30 years later, he came home from war and wouldn't say a word about what had happened.

I will always owe them both for their service in horrible circumstances in terrible places far from home.

but you were six years old? By your age, 39, memories sometimes get cobbled up. Not saying this one, but it does happen.

This myth has kicked around so long, and been repeated so many times, that it has embedded itself in our collective remembrance. I was smack in the middle of one huge antiwar protest after another for more than four years, as an organizer and marshal for tens upon tens of thousands of people (a good number with more than one screw loose) and never saw anything of the sort. I never saw one single incident of disrespect for the troops themselves - not one.

Here's what Obama says:

One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country's call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated.

Too many? I say very few. Blame the soldiers? Didn't happen, beyond apparently one idiot where Sarah lived. Everyone I knew, everyone I spoke to, everyone I heard from, and that was thousands of people, were very clear that the government was not the troops, that the soldiers were beings sent to die and suffered from the same evil overlords we hated. There was no widespread confusion in our minds, but there was a lot of lying by the government and by the press, that's been repeated over and over and over.

Here's from a fellow who researched and wrote a book on the subject:

STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.

He’s disputed by one of the great whack sites on the internet, The Volokh Conspiracy, and yes just as asinine a source as you might imagine with that name. Nothing but a collection of third person accounts and fabrications, rebutted here.

Perhaps I overstated. Maybe, somewhere, someplace, some idiot behaved idiotically. But to use phrasing like “many” to describe anti-war protestors as blaming the troops? Bullshit. And worse, just lightly skipping over the stark reality of the time with “simply answered their country’s call”? More bullshit. They were drafted. It wasn’t a “call,” that you could chose whether or not to “answer”. The choices were go off and die, go to jail or flee the country.

This guy is really starting to piss me off.

of course, no cable tv then.

Both my husband and brother were in Nam and never mentioned it. My husband came back definitely against the war, but my brother --sort of a simple minded right winger. There is something about Southern brothers. Most of my friend's brothers are right wingers also--and we all avoid politics with them.

loved your comment; don't think I've seen en entire campaign summarized so succinctly: "When all you have is a personality-based campaign, personal attacks become legitimate and crippling."

thnks

"I find it ironic that Hillary has been done in by the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy"--Dennis Miller